Better to stay off for a while without having a coaching job than to be in a situation where you are left with what might not give you an impressive result to your CV. That's a more bad record than going off the radar. Moreover, coaches take a leave for a year+ just to have sometime of rest away from the troubles and stress of the job and later return to business.
I believe in Ten Hag’s strategy; he can manage the players he have to at least finish top four or top three in the Bundesliga because Dortmund is the only team I see as strong as Leverkusen, RB Leipzig and others are also good but I believe that Leverkusen will outperform them just the way it happened last season. We can’t just conclude by saying that the team will not do well just because some players left the team in the summer transfer window.
I am not sure that the Bayer Leverkusen sports directors and management are unaware how the situation might be. Perhaps they just wanted to make some money out of the players they have.
The sporting directors must be aware of all what is happening, and they might be doing it for the benefit of the team which we don’t know for now. The sporting directors needs to consider fans before making some decisions because now the team might be down for a while because most quality players will not join the team due to lack of quality players that will be in their midst.