As a general rule, though I’m a massive sports fan, I try not to write about sports. There’s a mystique to sports journalism – a sort of sense that the people who write about it uniquely know their 4-3-3’s from their 4-3-2-1’s (they’re the same formation, guys), and their Mezzalas from their deep-lying-playmakers, and that they have contacts “in the game”, and so on. Best leave it to the professionals. So my own witterings are just those of a fan, like any other.
I said to my wife on Sunday morning that I feared there was something wrong with me. There it was: That tingling feeling of excitement in the pit of my stomach. New season, new manager, new formation, new way of playing the game. And yet, at the same time, the logical side of my brain was screaming at me that Manchester United are a terrible club, with bad players, and that God himself would have struggled to improve things after six weeks in charge. Erik Ten Hag wasn’t going to turn a team that lost to Brighton and Crystal Palace last year into winners straight away.
Or was he?
Reader, he was not.
When you look at this Manchester United team on the pitch, you see dysfunction from front to back. A goalkeeper who rarely leaves his line, and takes no part in playing out from the back. A 95million central defender with two left feet, who looks as if he’s in a vague state of panic every time he gets the ball. Two central midfielders who wouldn’t look out of place in the Championship, but would look very out of place in the Champions League. And then there’s Marcus Rashford.
We’re not supposed to say anything mean about Marcus Rashford because of all the excellent work he has done off-field. But it’s worth remembering that he is in a position to do that work because of the millions of pounds he earns for his performances on field. Those performances haven’t netted him a goal from play as a Premier League starter for fifteen months. On Sunday, he played against Danny Welbeck, a player unceremoniously dumped from United almost a decade ago for not being good enough. Welbeck was unquestionably the better performer. And he looked more committed, too.
In the aftermath of Sunday’s defeat, we got the usual flurry of transfer leaks to the press: United were looking at Marco Arnautovic, a 33 year old striker who presently plays for Bologna. United were looking at Adrien Rabiot, a central midfielder who Juventus think so highly of that they do not intend to renew his contract when it expires next summer.
From the outside, the problem seems relatively obvious: The club has a culture problem. And not the kind of “culture problem” that football writers usually mean. There was, for example, no obvious lack of effort from the players against Brighton. In the second half of the game, they banged and bashed away fruitlessly, but with effort, against the blue wall at the Stretford End. The goal they did get was so bad that it could almost only have been scored through sheer force of will, trickling over the line after a bit of penalty-area pinball.
No, the culture problem is that the club has an image of itself, and its players, which is at odds with reality. It thinks of itself as a “big club”, and its players as “stars”. And so, it would rather play Rashford, in his number 10 shirt and with his mega social media following, than look around for a Danny Welbeck, a cast-off with something to prove. Maybe Rabiot is that cast-off, but Juventus are not a club known for letting good players leave.
The most awful thing to happen, as a Manchester United fan, this summer, didn’t even happen inside the United structure. It happened across town, when Manchester City signed Erling Haaland for fifty million pounds: Just over half of what United paid for Harry Maguire. City paid that price not because that’s what Haaland is worth: He should probably be worth at least four times what they paid for him – but because that’s where he wanted to go. The best players in the world look at Manchester City and say “I want to play there”. They look at Manchester United and think “anywhere else – literally anywhere else”.
And so United are stuck with the Freds, and the McTominays, and rustling around in the bargain bin in Italy for a 33 year old striker who was a decent player in 2012.
Until the club comes to accept what it is: A once-great mid-table team with more in common with Everton or Aston Villa than with City or Liverpool, the problem will persist. They need to stop looking for stars like Frenkie DeJong, who will do everything he can to avoid playing for them, and look instead to players for whom United would genuinely be a good career move. Why not Ruben Neves from Wolves, for example? Or Tariq Lamptey from Brighton? Or, dare I say it, Danny Welbeck?
If the club wants to be great again, it must first come to terms with its present mediocrity. And fans like me have to stop being stupid enough to hope. Another season of pain beckons.