Nathan Bishop had built up the moment in his head for weeks.
Bishop, a goalkeeper at Manchester United during Erik ten Hag’s stint in charge of the club, went to pay the Dutchman a visit ahead of crunch talks regarding his future at Old Trafford.
But the 26-year-old’s visualisations instantly came unstuck once he knocked on Ten Hag’s door as he lifted the lid on the brutal interaction with the former United boss in an episode of the Beyond The Box podcast.
“I built this scenario up for some time,” Bishop said.
“I needed to go and speak to Erik about the contract I had been offered.
“I wanted to go out and play and experience new things, and maybe not sign the contract.
“I’d sat on this conversation for a long time. I had gone over it and over it.
“I didn’t think it was right that I deserved to go and knock on his door. ‘Who are you to go on and knock on his door?
“‘You’re not playing. You are just a joey. You are a training goalie. Shut your mouth, sign the contract or f*** off’.
“That is what I believed, and when you have something on your mind, you believe it, don’t you?
“But then I’d built it up, so I was like, ‘I am going to go and see him’.
“So it was two weeks or a month, and I’ve got to knock on this massive door. This door is huge, and I’ve got to knock on it.
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“He opens it. ‘Not today’. Shuts door.
“I was just stood outside of the door and was like, ‘what the f*** do I do now?'”
Ruthless Ten Hag
Bishop, now on the books of League One side AFC Wimbledon, was not the only United player to have been given the cold shoulder by Ten Hag during the latter’s turbulent stint at Old Trafford.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Jadon Sancho both found themselves out of the first-team picture under the Dutchman in very public spats.
Ronaldo was already at the club when Ten Hag joined as manager, and it quickly became apparent that he didn’t want to start him.
Of the first 12 Premier League games he was available for, Ronaldo started five.
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The Portuguese superstar then released his bombshell Piers Morgan interview, and that was the end of his second stint at Man United.
At the time, Ronaldo said: “The coach didn’t have respect for me.
“So this is why the relationship, it’s in that way. He keep saying in the press that he come to me, he like me blah, blah, blah, but that is only for the press, 100 per cent.
“If you don’t have respect for me, I’m never going to have respect for you.”
It was later revealed that Ronaldo was instructed to train away from the main group before his contract was mutually terminated, and he joined Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia, where he remains to this day.
Sancho also found himself left out by Ten Hag during the 2023/24 campaign when he publicly commented on the Dutchman’s reasons for leaving the winger out of his squad for a 3-1 defeat to Arsenal.
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The ex-Borussia Dortmund star essentially called Ten Hag a liar and refused to apologise, and the response was brutal.
The winger was omitted from the first-team squad, but it went further than that as he was left out of the WhatsApp chat and official squad photo.
Eventually, he joined Dortmund on loan before heading to Chelsea, but he never played for Ten Hag again, so Bishop’s experience with the Dutchman shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.