CHRIS WHEELER: Erik ten Hag is a man who has run out of answers ahead of a critical week. The Man United manager has no conviction or plan… it's all just white noise

In the foreword to Grit, Rigor & Humor, his book about the INEOS success story, Sir Jim Ratcliffe gets to the heart of what has made him one of Britain's richest men.

It's about an adventure with friends in the remote Kimberley region of northern Australia four years ago, when Ratcliffe's helicopter stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere and he saw a message on a whiteboard for every passing pilot. 'Don't do anything stupid.'

It was refreshingly simple advice that spoke to Ratcliffe's business approach. He remains a working-class man at heart with old-fashioned values.

The 71-year-old is also a ruthless entrepreneur and has surrounded himself with experts such as Sir Dave Brailsford, whose theory of marginal gains transformed British cycling. These are men who do not accept failure and demand responsibility.

Explaining the INEOS ethos, Ratcliffe wrote: 'Do your job fully, well and with pride. Prepare well and if you don't know the answer to a question, say so, but never twice.'

Those words came to mind as Erik ten Hag stood in front of the media after watching another depressing low point in Manchester United's season on Saturday, and tried to explain how he and his players had just been schooled by Bournemouth.

Ten Hag said a lot of words, but came across as a manager who no longer has any answers.

“I expected something else,” said the Dutchman, rather wistfully, and you regarded Ratcliffe's definition of severity as “the opposite of the opposite.”

Ten Hag looks and sounds like a man who doesn't know what to expect from his team from one week to the next, which is mind-boggling considering he's been in the job for 18 months and has spent £400 million on new players .

Andoni Iraola has only been in charge of Bournemouth since the summer, but his fingerprints were all over this great performance, in the way his team applied pressure and beat United.

The Reds' miserable season reached a new low when the Cherries stunned them at Old Trafford

Where is Ten Hag's hallmark at United? What is the identity of his team? These are questions Ratcliffe will be asking himself as he prepares to move to Old Trafford once his takeover of a quarter of United for £1.25 billion is announced soon.

It will take a little longer for the deal to be ratified, but Ratcliffe and Brailsford will soon be the key decision-makers.

Against this backdrop, Ten Hag enters a crucial week as United manager. He will be at Old Trafford on Tuesday for a decisive Champions League match against Bayern Munich.

Even if United manage to beat the runaway Group A winners, they will have to rely on the draws of Copenhagen and Galatasaray to progress to the knockout stages.

On Sunday, Ten Hag will then take his team back to Anfield, where they lost 7-0 to Liverpool in March. United fans could be forgiven for turning a blind eye to that one. Captain Bruno Fernandes has been suspended after being shown a yellow card for dissent against Bournemouth. With Christian Eriksen and Mason Mount unlikely to be available, Ten Hag must find a new number 10 or change formation.

Based on this rollercoaster of a season, the chances of United pulling off two big performances in the same week seem slim at best.

Many United supporters left the match early as their side produced a terrible performance

Of course, it's not all bad. That's the problem with inconsistency. United are capable of taking their game to the next level, as they did against Chelsea in midweek. Win and lose, up and down.

Ten Hag went into the match against Bournemouth having been named Premier League Manager of the Month for November, and came out as a contender for the sack race. United suffered their 11th defeat – their seventh in the league – in 23 games this season, meaning they have lost more Premier League games in the 10 years since Sir Alex Ferguson retired than in the entire 26 years the Scot was at the club worked.

Bournemouth, on the other hand, celebrated their first win at Old Trafford in the club's history thanks to goals from Dominic Solanke, Philip Billing and Marcos Senesi. Their fourth win in the last five games was well deserved.

Manchester United's new investor, Sir Jim Ratcliffe (left), faces a huge challenge

United worked in pouring rain in Manchester and were booed. They were sloppy in possession, slow in their marking and toothless in attack.

It reminded me of an unintentionally comical post from United's Twitter account 10 years ago on Saturday: 'David Moyes says #mufc needs to improve in a number of areas including passing, chance creation and defending.'

All these years later, Ten Hag is in the same boat. You wondered what on earth he said to his players before they took the field on Saturday.

Whatever it was, he could have done worse than giving them the same simple message that Ratcliffe saw on that whiteboard in Australia.