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Everything you ever wanted to know about the cost of fish and chips and more
Three days ago I went to Ambridge’s fish and chip shop in Spilsby to get lunch for me, my mum, my wife and two kids. A run-of-the-mill affair, uncontroversial, and unremarkable.
As a fan and occasional exponent of legacy microblogging, I described my experience in as few words as possible, and - accompanied by a couple of boring photos - I published on my micro.blog website.
Now, I say this whole adventure into the great big outside world wasn’t noteworthy, but that’s not quite true. Mum had given me two shiny plastic twenty pound notes to buy the “two haddock, one chips, and three peas” described in my post, and I had given one back thinking that this “ludicrous order” couldn’t possibly cost more than twenty quid.
It turned out that it cost £20.40, so mum was right to offer me more, although I was also correct in thinking that £40.00 was about £20.00 too much.
On micro.blog, which is known for and proud of its general sedation and nuance, I received zero engagement. Par for the course, expected and absolutely fine. I post for myself, and my kids, and while I certainly don’t mind at all if anyone else comments, it’s not a problem if no one does.
Micro.blog has a clever in-built feature which allows you to “cross-post” things you publish to Threads (among others). So that’s where my fish, chips and peas post went, too.
Unbelievably, when I got back from our long family weekend away, my post on Threads had received over 167,000 views, 333 likes and 351 comments (indicating also that I have been mildly “ratioed").
Now, I don’t use Threads much and navigating and replying to all 351 comment isn’t viable. I thought it would be more fun to create a Fishy FAQs.
Fishy FAQs
Q: And?
A: And nothing.
Q: And…?
A: And nothing…
Q: And you point is?
A: Nothing. Other than that my mum was right that it would cost more than £20.
Q: What kind of ludicrous order is that?
A: Two haddocks - half each for me, my mum, my wife and ten year old. One chips - half for me, half for my ten year old and four year old to share. Three peas - one pot of peas each for me, my mum and my wife.
Q: Surely you check the total before paying?
A: You mean before ordering? Or before giving £20 back to my mum?
Q: Did they let you off the 40p?
A: No.
Q: When did you last buy a takeaway of any description?
A: November 2024 at the same fish and chip shop. I arrived after it had closed and managed to come away with a battered sausage and a few chips.
Q: Where is this?
A: Spilsby.
And some fact-checking!
Fishy Facts
CLAIM: Fish and chips is still better value than a fast food chain.
FALSE. For pure cost, McDonald’s and similar chains are better value.
CLAIM: BREXIT!
TRUE. Brexit has led to higher prices.
CLAIM: You have to factor in the full cost of getting fish from the sea to the chippy.
TRUE. It’s not just Brexit!
CLAIM: Make your own, it’s cheaper!
TRUE. It’s a lot cheaper, but also less convenient, takes longer and isn’t always or often practical.
CLAIM: No one forces you to buy it. If we all stopped buying fish and chips from the chippy, prices would come down.
FALSE. High prices are due to supply and other costs, not local demand.
CLAIM: Jacket spuds and pizza - fish is a luxury!
TRUE. Cheese is cheaper than fish!
CLAIM: Only 3 peas? You should have got a tin.
BOOM TISH!
CLAIM: 3 pot’s of pea’s? You and your mum will be farting for England!
TRUE. Although we only had one pot each (see above).
Lastly, and most importantly, here’s how prices vary across time and the country.
- Pre-lockdown: £6.50
- Post-lockdown: £11.95
- The other day: £15.00
- Here: £8.00/£19.50/£23.90
- Where I am: &16.00
- Kent: cheap as chips
- Sydney: £7.00
- Australia: £7.50
- Paris (cordon bleu 3 course meal with a bottle of wine): £30
Fish and chips price map of the UK
You Winchester, you lose some
I was chatting to one of the other parents at school yesterday morning and mentioned how little kid is totally obsessed with space, all day and every day. It’s literally the first thing he talks about when he wakes up, and he falls asleep watching Brian Cox videos. They had a special space day at school yesterday, too.
She helpfully suggested visiting the planetarium at Winchester, about an hour’s drive away.
I hadn’t thought about going anywhere outside of London.
Later yesterday afternoon I picked up my guitar for the first time in months, wiped all the dust off it, and strummed the chords to one of my old band’s songs, written by the singer who, coincidentally, hails from Winchester.
By evening, I’d forgotten all about school mums, planetariums and old mates, and I was more concerned about finishing my book and finding out whodunnit?
On page 306 of my book, right in the middle it said (in all CAPS and bold):
WINCHESTER
I checked out the planetarium and ordered four tickets for a nice family outing during half-term .
This morning I told little kid about it and he said he didn’t want to go.
What's out there?
What’s out there?
My space-obsessed four and three quarter year old might ask me that soon, so I better have an answer.
At the moment he’s happy to copy his ten and a half year old brother and stick with “What’s in Uranus?” for laughs. (Although he does actually want to know what’s in Uranus, too.)
Recently, I have been replaced by Professor Brian Cox on bedtime story reading duties.
Instead of me reading simple kids' books on space until he falls asleep, Prof. Cox narrates stories on YouTube about black holes, space-time elasticity and Fermi’s Paradox. It’s fascinating, and sends the little one off to sleep at least as efficiently as me reading to him.
I admit that while I was aware of Fermi’s Paradox, I hadn’t quite cottoned on to its significance.
That, in answer the the question “What’s out there?” there’s an unimaginably vast number of planets, stars, galaxies, etc., in an even more unimaginably vast and mostly empty space. And in spite of this vastness, there’s absolutely zero evidence (so far) of any kind of life at all other than here on our tiny, tiny speck of Earth. We’re alone.
Echoing Carl Sagan, Prof. Cox was quite poetic about it and described it as the Universe taking millions of years to come up with just the right conditions for an unbroken chain of evolutionary life to emerge that has an awareness of itself.
And that the Universe is a frighteningly violent place so it’s quite miraculous that we haven’t (yet) been smashed or fried in some astronomical event. In fact, we look odds-on to smash or fry ourselves first right here, right now.
Our evolutionarily advantageous over-confidence will inevitably lead us to self-destruction, as surely as boom leads to bust, as we ignore climate warnings from our wise elders, wage war on our brothers and our sisters, and repeatedly fail to think of the children.
We’re wedded to screens and technology as life passes us by. Doom-scribing, scrolling and trolling, when we should be out there talking to our neighbours, being the change we want to see in the ‘hood, and showing some fucking solidarity with each other. We’re not all perfect, we can all say and do the wrong things, even hold the wrong beliefs.
Identity politics has much to answer for, but the answer isn’t to dismiss people’s lived experiences. Each to their own, and everyone must be able to live their lives as they want to while not harming others. But when someone expresses themselves in ways that cause hurt or offense, piling on and ostracising them often just deepens divisions.
Instead, we need to find ways to acknowledge everyone’s feelings and guide each other toward mutual understanding. This isn’t easy, especially online, but it’s essential if we want to build real solidarity.
Because the point is that the people who want to colonize Mars, or make “their” country great again, or spend billions on war when our elders are dying in hospital corridors, are not on our side. If we could find ways to stick together, however we identify as individuals, we could challenge these concentrations of power and wealth.
I feel certain that if everyone had a decent home with enough food, meaningful and/or well paid work, and enough free time to pursue leisure interests with friends and family, then very few people would give a flying fuck about what pronouns people prefer, or if someone moved from one “country” to “another”.
Maybe then we can leave a planet that’s still inhabitable for our children.
Of course, it’s also possible that we are not alone. It’s possible that aliens are among us, badly disguised as awkward, orange humans, or owls, or neutrinos.
Who knows?
The art of a good sandwich
Let’s get something out of the way before we get into the meat, or the filling, of this post. A sandwich is two slices of bread. Buttered.
I don’t want to hear anything about OPEN sandwiches. Open sandwiches are like open marriages. Great if you want someone else to have your other half.
The art of a good sandwich:
-
Use multiple fillings. Four is a good number.
-
Less is more. Don’t over egg it.
For example, tonight I cleared out some leftovers and turned them into a great sandwich: two slices of ham, half an avocado (sliced), three cherry tomatoes (quartered), a squirt of mayonnaise, chopped dried chives and three or four spoons of sweet and hot jalapenos out of a jar.
Many times I’ve got halfway through a “classic” cheese and tomato sandwich and thought “it’s too cheesy.” A squirt of mayo and a sprinkling of chives world have saved it. Some of that jalapeno magic would have made it.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against sandwiches with fewer than four fillings. When I was recovering from Covid, all I could eat was cheese and pickle sandwiches. I like a jam sandwich occasionally. And if it’s a crust, I’ll even eat it in an “open” jam sandwich (or bread and jam as we call it).
Which brings me on to toast. Toast and marmalade is not a sandwich. Cheese on toast is not a sandwich. Avocado toast is not a sandwich. But two rounds of toast with a filling inside IS a toasted sandwich. (See how simple this is?)
Now, with toasted sandwiches I would advocate sticking to one or two fillings. (Melted) cheese is always a winner with the kids. Grown-ups might like to add some chopped ham, onions or mushrooms. My little kid’s current favourite is “honey toast”.
My year on micro.blog
I had a lot fun writing and publishing on micro.blog this year, and also looking back and picking out these (for me) highlights.
I started the year with the final (so far) part of my curriculum vitae series. The one where I found my dream job:
There was no welcome… it stank of piss. The only redeeming factor was that none of the inmates seemed able to move.
The beauty of the whole endeavour was that people needing care were no longer seen as tasks to be performed and checked off on a list, but as people who had lives, stories, senses of humour, wants and needs like everyone else.
Such a great thing could obviously have no future.
On the power of writing:
Having an hour or so in relatively undisturbed peace and quiet just to write whatever comes into my head has felt very therapeutic. I feel like something significant has changed within me, for the better.
On journaling:
Journaling is like legacy microblogging minus the passive aggressive bullshit and wit.
On the power of memory:
Nothing was where Jim remembered it. Like his hat, they were very much alive in Jim’s memory, but in the world we walked in the goalposts had literally moved, the final whistle had blown, and everyone had gone home except Jim.
On travelling abroad for the first time:
It all felt utterly surreal to me then, like being stranded on another planet, adrift in my bunk bed, alone in the halls of a spacecraft listening to the crickets and the ghostly sounds of train hours.
On local democracy:
The event itself was a repeat of several resident surveys and failed plans over the past twenty years or so. The problems are always the same. The responses from the council are always the same.
On my four year old’s analysis of the state of British politics after the results of the May General Election:
You can clearly see the Labour supermajority in red, and the Tory wipeout in blue. That they are two cheeks of the same backside is encapsulated in the red triangle atop the blue square in the centre.
On the state of our national game:
Nowadays managers - or coaches - are often restricted to, well, coaching players in training and on match days, and speaking to the media before and after games. They are seen as specialists rather than all-rounders, and more specialists from the world of finance are brought in to fire the tea ladies…
A clear and obvious error, if ever there was one, and yet we are forced to watch repeat after repeat, week after week of him getting it wrong. A bald man somehow getting balder…
Working from home has given me the time and space to transform how I work for the better. I’m better organised, more thoughtful, less rushed and distracted. I can honestly say that I’m now the most productive I’ve ever been thanks to a more comfortable, relaxed and focussed personal workspace.
On cheese:
Double Gloucester. Trump-like appearance, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a vote-winner. Biden-like quality: good all-rounder, mild, creamy, child-friendly, goes with most things, melts easily. Oily.
On the death-grip of neoliberalism:
Neoliberalism doesn’t change, and the more that the people are subjected to its bad decisions, its lust for war, for death, for oil, for money, for making the rich richer and the poor poorer, the harder it gets for people to change, and the fewer good decisions are made.
If you like guns, shooting people, torture, (mock) executions, (child) kidnapping, (attempted) murder, blackmail, gambling, Russian Roulette, cyber-stalking, identity theft, mob rule and police corruption, you’ll probably like Person of Interest.
On Lincolnshire sausages:
A special treat then was boiled sausages for breakfast. The skins would fall off, and we ate them with white bread soaked in the soup or broth they created in the pan along with a dash of English mustard.
On living and breathing music:
It’s hard not to love such amazing musicianship, singing and songs, all performed with unconfined joy in the moment.
And:
I do wonder if sometimes songs speak to me even when I’m not actively listening? When I do pay attention to the words they do carry meaning for me. They just needed to be heard.
On journaling (again):
Doing this work has made sense of a lot of daily, weekly and monthly events, habits, routines, scenarios, relationships, that otherwise would have remained loosely connected, strung together like the Christmas tree lights every year when you take them out of the box you left them in in January. In a mess, tangled up, half-working.
On the bales:
My fingertips took several days to regrow. I had fifty pence deducted from my wages for the cost of replenishing the first aid kit, and received a straight knockout for bleeding on the ropes.
On writing (again):
I write for me. It helps me breathe and to feel alive.
On local democracy (again):
If you’re lucky, you might see something done after a year or two of complaining.
On driving (and living):
Always look ahead as far as possible.
On Al:
We think Al is dumb. But we elect dumber, and Al will only get less dumb.
Southall Odours
I step out of my house and immediately notice the artificial “cotton fresh” scent of odour suppressants wafting south from the old Gasworks site. How can this be? They finished remediating the contaminated earth in 2019, and people have been living there in the new homes they built since 2021.
Still, it’s better than the smell of petrol, which is what we had to put up with day and night for months on end in 2018. Bad enough to wake us up in the night during the long hot summer.
And it’s better than the smell of tar, which we still get when the wind is blowing from the west. Before the asphalt plant was built, we didn’t get any odours even though there is also a Tarmac plant nearby. The Asphalt plant owners say that is because the Nestle coffee plant closed. The (burnt?) coffee smell masked the tar.
I get around the corner of my block, on my morning walk, and see the small industrial estate that was the bane of our life for months in 2022. The main culprits were the paper recylcling company, which had its own incinerator for burning (believe it or not) plastics and coated wooden pallets.
Their neighbour opposite was a custom kitchen furniture maker, which also had its own incinerator for burning laminated particle fibreboard. The garage at the front regularly burns stuff in an old oil barrel.
All of which contributed to some of the most disgusting odours imaginable blowing into our kitchen, bathroom and hallway whe the wind blew from the north-east.
I walked down the street to the corner where the local council installed a tiny corner “wildflower garden”, which my wife and kids loved because it smelled so good. Two years later, it’s reduced to a dumping ground (no one could have foreseen this).
Further on my walk, past the homes reeking of marijuana, and weaving in and out of the obstacle course of bed bases mattresses and pallets stren across the pavements, I reach the town and smell the food aromas.
I’m reminded of the old Honey Monster factory, which used to regale us with the smell of roasted (burnt?) onions (I know, right?).
And my first visit to Southall (in daylight hours), twenty odd years ago, turning left out of the old station and naively going into the underpass. The stench of piss that hit me! “Welcome to Southall!” indeed.
I finished my walk through the town and back up round and through the park. If I’d gone further up the canal by my sons' school I would have got the smell of the narrowboats' wood-burning stoves, which sometimes fills the school playground and causes kids to have to use their inhalers.
And if I’d walked along the main road home or by the junction with the big industrial estate I would have choked on the heavy air filled with the exhaust fumes from cars and lorries.
Southall stinks so bad that the council set up its own Southall Odours web page, email and hotline where you can report bad smells. Because if you don’t report it, the council can’t do anything.
If you’re lucky, you might see something done after a year or two of complaining, as long as you can withstand the constant gaslighting.
If you’re unlucky, and you’re not already dead or too ill to complain, you’ll be branded a troublemaker and excluded from local democracy.
Or you’ll be told to move by the council’s community safety director.
What you writing FOR?
I was in Hounslow, west London last year. I went to a cafe in a leisure centre. I’m not proud of it, I was volunteering with my son’s school. And I’m alone, I’m not eating or drinking and I’m writing in my notebook, right? Teacher walks over to me: “Hey, what you writing for?” Isn’t that the weirdest fucking question you’ve ever heard? Not what am I writING, but what am I writing FOR? Well, god dammit, you stumped me! Why do I write? Well… hmmm… I dunno… I guess I write for a lot of reasons and the main one is so I don’t end up being a fucking teacher!
Of course, this didn’t happen, and it the joke doesn’t really work like this. Leaving aside Bill Hicks unnecessary misogyny and condescending attitude towards our sisters in the hospitality industry - you have to admit, though, he would have been funnier than the (ri)bald bloke on Masterchef - the question stands. What am I writing for? Why do I write?
Well, the truth is, I write for a number of reasons. The main one being because it’s something I enjoy doing. Typing up blog posts on the fly in the cafe of the leisure centre where my son and his class did their weekly swimming lesson allowed me an hour to create something with no internal editor or censor stopping me. It was very cathartic. Writing this now with a pen and paper at the kitchen table is the same.
So, mainly I write for me, which is liberating. It helps me breathe and to feel alive.
But I also write for my sons. One day I’ll be gone, probably while they are still too young, and I’d like to leave them with something of me that they can get to know when that time comes. My oldest is always asking me to tell him stories about when I was young, but I’m very bad at that, and can’t remember much that’s appropriate for a ten year old anyway.
In my twenties, I used to write and receive back copious letters from friends, but also from my Dad and his Mum, my Grannie. One day my Dad’s letters stopped coming. There was no reason, or even hint of a reason. I was several thousand miles away at the time, so unable to investigate. The story I was told turned out to be a spiteful load of old bollocks, but at the time it was the only one I had, and so I believed it. I don’t feel like I know my Dad very well at all, but what I do know is that he seemed to find most enjoyment and fulfilment in his life when he was away.
After I explained to my son’s teacher that I was writing for pleasure, one of the swimming instructors at the next table gets up, stands over me and goes, “Well, looks like we got ourselves a writer!” while all the kids in their swimming costumes tried to peer over my shoulder from behind the glass screen to see what I was writing, laughing and pointing at me. That only lasted a few seconds, thankfully, before they all got on with their swimming lesson and left me in peace.
COPD
Last week I received confirmation of a diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) based on results of spirometry tests back in August (it took that long for my GP surgery to get the results from the test centre, and only after my own intervention after their repeated failures).
My GP helpfully seemed very keen to blame my twenty-odd year history of smoking.
I first smoked at about age 20. My parents were smokers (wasn’t everyone back then?). I was never a heavy smoker. The most I ever smoked was ten a day. It’s also true I smoked a number of other substances that didn’t come with filters. And then there was some vaping. I suspect that might have been the worst of the lot, but who knows? I haven’t smoked for ten years.
In my childhood, I remember several episodes of severe shortness of breath, e.g., when running around the sports field at primary school I collapsed gasping for breath, and unable to continue. I was never diagnosed with asthma. I was told to get up and stop being so weak.
As I got older, whenever the football season started, I could never get through a full game. I put it down to lack of fitness and stamina at the time, but whatever it was, the symptom was breathlessness. I was told to get fit and sent off on cross-country runs.
I had regular episodes of shortness of breath throughout young adulthood that were not triggered by exercise (I’d more or less given up by then, helped by a dodgy ankle). I thought it might be hayfever or a dust allergy.
Fourteen years ago, I needed a thoracotomy on my right lung after a chest infection went wrong. I developed pleurisy, a collapsed lung and an empyema. In the post-op, my surgeon said my lung was “as good as new”.
In the years before covid, I had frequent chest infections requiring antibiotics and time off work to recover. Then and now, I wonder if that was triggered by the Southall Gasworks remediation and air pollution?
I now see that studies show that exposure to volatile organic compounds (including benzene, naphthalene and toluene) is related to COPD.
The good news is that I had no symptoms of COPD, so it’s been diagnosed at an early stage. I’ve started with my new inhaler, and my wife reports that I’ve stopped snoring.
Clear and obvious error
After watching and re-watching the same three-second clip of nothing happening for so long that here in the UK we had to put our clocks back another hour just to have enough time to finish the game, the match referee (Ross from Friends look-a-like David Coote) turned to face what he knew would be a worldwide audience of millions of armchair experts like me yelling “VAR! WTF!” at the screen in front of us. You could see in his face and his body language that he knew just like us it was ludicrous. Another referee sat in a business park office just down the road from me had told him to review his original decision - that nothing had happened - because the ref had made “a clear and obvious” error of judgment.
The late penalty awarded by VAR and converted by West Ham and England’s Jarrod Bowen should duly result in the termination of the losing manager’s contract. That’s football. This VAR rubbish isn’t, but we have to live with it for now.
This particular fiasco neatly sums up the entire ETH tenure. A clear and obvious error, if ever there was one, and yet we are forced to watch repeat after repeat, week after week of him getting it wrong. Team selections, tactics, transfers, substitutions. A bald man somehow getting balder every time the full time whistle blows.
If only United had a VAM. A Video Assistant Manager. Another (more capable manager) sat in a nearby office watching the game on a screen like you or me, who could intervene at key moments during the build-up to the game (team selection), during the game (tactical changes and subs), and off the pitch (transfers, man-management) to a whisper into Ten Hag’s hairless ear: “Hold on, Eric. I think that signing Antony for £80m is a clear and obvious error” or “Hi Eric, Maguire’s a fucking liability mate” or “Eric, pal. We need to talk. Onana?” I could go on but you get the drift.
Now, I know everyone rightly hates VAR for ruining the game, and it would be unfair to blame ETH for ruining United. But VAM would make it much more entertaining.
Funny old game
In the good old days, football was a simple game. You had eleven players and a substitute numbered 1 to 12, no shirt advertising, a referee and two linesmen, a manager, a trainer, a physio, a scout or two, tea ladies, drinking culture, long hair and perms, the club chairman, a board of directors, a club secretary, a groundsman, a stadium in the beating heart of the town or city, fans, standing room only, electric atmospheres, matches on Saturday at three o’clock, live coverage on the radio, match reports in the Pink Final after the game, and highlights on Match of the Day at 10:30 the same night. Tradition and history.
These days, it’s big business. You’ve got a hundred players in the first team squad, shirt number bingo sponsored by online sports betting companies, the reserves, the academy, a women’s team, out on loan, transfer windows, exiled due to poor man-management, five, seven, nine subs to choose from, a referee and a substitute referee, assistant refs, refs sat in an office in a business park (a clear and obvious error), refs at home, refs in the studio, refs in the crowd, a manager, a head coach, a goalkeeping coach, various other specialist coaches, multitudes of doctors, physios, psychologists, data analysts, worldwide scouting networks, dieticians, head chefs, gambling addictions, agents, chief executives, directors of football, technical directors, presidents of business, heads of legal, heads of state, matches at any time from noon to after the last train home, an advertiser’s stadium out of town, sitting room only, live streaming all day and all night. Profit and sustainability.
At one time, a manager of a football club could expect to run all aspects of the club to a lesser or greater degree, or at least have a major say in how it was run. Nowadays, managers, or coaches, are often restricted to, well, coaching players in training and on match days, and speaking to the media before and after games. They are seen as specialists rather than all-rounders, and more specialists from the world of corporate finance are brought in to fire the tea ladies and keep the manager - sorry, coach - fully focused on his job and not get distracted by wheeling and dealing in the transfer market, player contracts, or appealing points deductions for spending beyond the club’s means.
United
Indeed, this is how United plc’s Dan Ashworth keeps Eric ten Hag successful on the pitch. Oh, wait. I’m no fan in particular of Jamie Carragher, but he might have had a point when described United last season as one of the most poorly coached sides in the Premier League. United’s usual set up is a chaotic mismatch of players out of form, out of position, out of confidence, and out of luck. Individual errors rule the day, and most of the players look lost and like they’d rather be in the physio room or gambling rehab. We rely totally on one player - Bruno - to create chances and score. This is a colossal failure of recruitment, of management, of coaching, of captaincy, of teamwork.
Fergie took six seasons to win the title after twenty six years of hurt, and three seasons after winning the cup in 1990. His team often looked like it wasn’t making any progress, but the cup win did see a consistent marked improvement season on season (13th to 6th to 2nd to 1st). Ten Hag produced a masterful cup win against all the odds, although perhaps City’s players were caught off guard expecting an easy win after United’s lucky semi-final win against Coventry. Every season Pep has them playing in a clearly identifiable system and is never afraid to switch players or tactics.
Ingerland
It’s funny to hear Morgan Gibbs-White talk about Ingerland’s new interim manager Lee Carsley and describe his qualities as basically being a father-figure. Most top-level professional footballers are with their clubs from the age of eight, and likely spend more time than most kids away from their families and any normal childhood - living the dream, nonetheless. You can understand why they would value this kind of man-management, someone who will stick up for them no matter what.
Ten Hag hasn’t got that about him at all. He’s lost a whole load of players in one way or another because he didn’t have the heart or the head or the guts to stand by them when they needed him. De Gea, Maguire, Wan Bissaka, Casemiro, McTominay, Sancho, Antony, Martial, Rashford, Greenwood.
The spineless corporate bosses meanwhile took an age to decide the safest bet was to keep ten Hag. Failure is expected and gives them half a season at least to bed themselves in and some new players, too, in time for a new manager. If he does well, then they made the right decision. If they had appointed a new manager he might have failed, too, with the current players, and that would have reflected badly on the corporate bosses.
At least we’re not Chelsea. Telling your captain that he’s not technically good enough. Successfully scraping through the play-off round of the Conference League. Moneyball gone mad (although they could have a decent team in three seasons…).