And in front
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What a wretched end it was to a year that started so brightly for Manchester United.
Erik ten Hag’s side went into 2023 in form and in four competitions: Manchester Citywere defeated in January, Barcelona in February and a first trophy in six years was lifted that month thanks to a Carabao Cup triumph over Newcastle United. The season concluded with a third-placed finish in the league, two cup finals and a home record which included an unbeaten run stretching back to September 2022. United lost nine Premier League games last season. They had already matched that by the time 2023 became 2024.
Looking back, the signs were there during pre-season in the United States as players grumbled in private about too much training and too little free time.
I didn’t want to see the signs; in fact, I considered it a positive that the manager was pushing them hard, considering United had gone into the previous season unprepared and had lost their opening games against Brightonand Brentford. And if they were only moaning about too much training, it was better than griping about too much commercial activity, as per previous trips.
During an interview with Lisandro Martinezin Las Vegas, he gave an invigorating answer when discussing the team’s prospects. “I have a good feeling,” he said. “There’s an incredible energy in this team, a big ambition, a strength, a hunger to win titles and taste glory. Honestly, we feel like a team and not just the players. I’m including the kitmen, the doctors, the trainer and his staff. We’re all working at 100 per cent and we’re conscious of the club we’re at. We’re fortunate to be at one of the best clubs in the world. We’re thankful for that and we will work, work and then work some more… (It’s realistic) to win every single competition we enter.”
Others were less convinced. While on that tour, I did a Q&A with former striker Brian McClair and we were asked to predict where United would finish this season. I said third with more points than last season and McClair, who also headed up United’s youth system until 2015, laughed at me.
“Between fifth and seventh,” he countered. “And that’s if United get lucky with injuries.”
McClair is widely respected, but I thought he had a touch of the former-employee syndrome. It is common for disgruntled former members of staff to get in touch after leaving United and they’re usually raging with injustice and talk of how bad things are now compared to how they used to be. Then you speak to people at the club and get a totally different view. Where does the truth lie?
In results on the pitch, usually — and United’s results so far this season have been horrendous. Injuries are a major reason. Ten Hag was without 11 players at Nottingham Forest on December 30. But why are there so many injuries? That’s something new investors INEOS will look at.
Manchester United are seventh and nine points off the top four after their loss at Nottingham Forest (Darren Staples/AFP via Getty Images)
But we can’t blame everything on injuries. United were bad right from the start of the season, battered at home by Wolves (yet won 1-0) despite Ten Hag playing his absolute strongest side of Onana; Wan-Bissaka, Martinez, Varane, Shaw; Casemiro, Fernandes, Mount; Antony, Garnacho and Rashford. United performed better but lost their second game, at Tottenham, 2-0. They were wobbling right from the beginning and suffered five defeats in the first 10 league matches of the season.
Little has changed since results-wise, though the injuries have got much worse. This is a team which struggles to score and to entertain. Luton Town have scored more league goals than United this term, from one game fewer.
Going out of the Champions League, with one win from six, was an epic failure. The chance was there to do something in Europe and, well, one win from six is one win from six. Even a third-placed finish in the group and Europa League qualification would have been a better-suited substitute since this side are not close to being Champions League winners. United finished bottom.
Ten Hag has picked his battles. Maybe he will be vindicated over how he has dealt with Jadon Sancho, for instance. Few fans will complain if the manager is proven right. They will usually side with the manager and the club over players, who are often seen as over-indulged and surrounded by people stroking their egos.
Critics are not hard to find, though. Members of the United squad despise former players picking them apart on television every week, with the punchiest bits primed to go viral. Some of those pundits said they would never become pundits who did that, but the world turns and much of the criticism is legitimate. But is it fair? Is it fair for club legends to pick up on the failings of players who might be better paid than they were, but can’t touch them for talent?
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Ten Hag is the manager and managers are usually fired, especially at the biggest clubs, when results don’t suffice. Yet he is benefiting from a) an acceptance that he’s been dealt a tough hand with all the injuries b) a reluctance to change managers yet again c) stasis — because who would fire him anyway? It’d be a poor reflection on those who appointed him. He has also built credit with that excellent first season, and has a point when he says how tough the league is, with competition from state-funded rivals adding to the difficulty.
Should he benefit from history? Would it have been right for Sir Alex Ferguson to have been dismissed having finished 11th in 1989 and 13th in 1990, three and four years into his United tenure? Many supporters thought so. Should Sir Matt Busby have been sacked having finished 15th in 1962 or 19th in 1963? Or 11th in 1969 when United were European champions?
My understanding, from multiple sources who asked not to be named to protect their relationships, is that many players have lost belief and confidence. They have issues with the way the club has been run and several didn’t think the strategic review going on in the background helped.
Comments like ‘he’s lost the dressing room’ are not accurate. All 25 players don’t think the same. Some are right behind the manager, others are not. The manager is entitled to have doubts about some players himself. Some have proved incapable of following his specific instructions on the field. Players have gripes, some of them legitimate, but all these negative views pile up — and dissipate in the glow of victories.
There are further complications: players’ PR agents working briefings from their clients’ perspectives happens for individual benefit rather than for the good of the collective. This annoyed Ole Gunnar Solskjaer during his time in charge as he felt undermined by some of those he publicly supported, even if privately he had major doubts about them. And some of the PRs are really not in tune with the mood on the street. They think that because they have a United player as a client they’re dealing with peak Lionel Messi, not someone linked to a side struggling to string consecutive wins together.
The injection of capital and personnel from INEOS can’t come soon enough. Though the deal has to be ratified, Sir Dave Brailsford has begun working at United and he and Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the INEOS founder, made a positive impression when they met staff at an Old Trafford meeting on Thursday. Brailsford wants to look under the bonnet at the components that make up his remit on the football side. There are heads of departments who are absolutely fine with that, confident that their areas are lean and mean and geared for success. And there are others who are coasting along and have more reason to worry. Brailsford needs to be ruthless — but then he, successful in cycling but without a significant track record in football, needs to prove himself and win the confidence of those staff.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, left, and Dave Brailsford, right, have been meeting Manchester United staff this week, including men’s first-team manager Erik ten Hag (Manchester United/Manchester United via Getty Images)
The strategic review that has led to this point has caused significant uncertainty among United staff and that has now become unease over what INEOS will do and what powers they will have. This has proved a distraction for some staff and, more subliminally, for players, undermining the authority of both Ten Hag and football director John Murtough.
United’s staff need to feel they are moving towards better times. The club is a major employee in Manchester and many of the staff are fans, yet they should also be put under pressure to perform.
When Richard Arnold told staff that United were chasing down Manchester City only three months ago and that they should ignore what they read in the media, a sizeable number of those he was talking to simply didn’t buy it. And when Arnold, who challenged the Glazers on several fronts, made a farewell speech at the Christmas party in Old Trafford’s Manchester suite in December, a lot of staff carried on talking rather than listening to him.
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You’re quickly yesterday’s man at United, another who gave it their best shot but left with a decent payoff and the words ‘Manchester United’ on the CV. That can be a blessing and a curse. At Old Trafford every misstep, every burned hot dog in the catering kiosk, is primed to go viral or be tabloid fodder since people love to beat the club with a stick. It’s a club where every win is overblown and every defeat is too — and where the negative does far better online than the positive.
I recently took a 30-second video at the start of training and uploaded it to social media without much thought. Then I watched in horror as 18 million people viewed it, delighting in the misplaced passes. There are millions who not only enjoy United being bad, but who also get excited about it. One fellow journalist told me that his editor told him: ‘Always lean into a crisis where possible.’ At least Ten Hag stays emotionally balanced amid this circus.
What is clear is that United need refreshing. New ideas, new people, new capital.
Too many players don’t cut it and United’s recruitment system simply has not been working. Ten Hag’s signings looked promising a year ago, though the view would be a lot less flattering now.
“Erik totally misjudged the qualities needed to play in the Premier League,” one leading agent, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect relationships, told The Athletic. “I rate him as a coach but if he had an experienced sports director alongside him, like he had with Marc Overmars at Ajax, then he wouldn’t need to worry so much about the recruitment side of things. You have Pep and Txiki (Begiristain) at City, at United you have Erik and ?”
We’ve kind of been here before. Indeed, when we started the United We Stand fanzine in 1989, the team were 10th in the table and we didn’t see a single league victory for 12 games. I laughed at that for decades and never thought we’d see a December as bad as 1989 again, when the team were defeated four times and didn’t win once.
In December 2023, United lost five games, though there were two wins. United haven’t lost five times in December since 1933, when the team were at the wrong end of the second division.
Back in 1989-90, when home attendances tumbled to 33,000 and expectations were lower, the first win UWS saw was in the FA Cup third round at Nottingham Forest. It was the game that saved Ferguson’s job and the team went on to win a first trophy in five years. The FA Cup mattered more in 1990, but United are out or have no possibility of winning three of the four competitions entered at the start of the season. Like then, the FA Cup is the only one left. The next game is in the FA Cup at nearby Wigan, where there will be a huge away following.
The mood is low, and if Ten Hag’s team don’t start winning when he has his players back, I’d fear for his job. Like Ferguson in ’89-90.
(Top photo: Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images)
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Wonder which walkers leprechaun theyre referring to here?
Roy Keane
What a gutless shower of cunts there are in the united dressing room.
Big Davy Brailsford needs to get them on the gas.
Who’s that elderly lady?
Think that’s the lady Tommy Docherty was having an affair with
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Spineless, “oh the mean man said nasty stuff on the tele about me 
”
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I see Werner turned down United & went to Spurs. 
Christ united have fallen.
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Werner would be a great signing, the likes of Bruno needs runners, not lads coming toward the ball and then cutting in when the get it.
ETH could be moving toward a counterattacking approach which the players are more suited to really. No point the next manager doing it and getting an upturn, he might as well do it and save himself.
Ans it’s the Liverpool posters who got all excited when they signed two Dutch dudds and were trying to claim it was a terrible reflection of Erik ten hag….
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Your other troll thread is going great pal. Don’t spread yourself too thin
Must be a terrible reflection of klopp that a young German turned him down to play for mighty Frank Lampard.
Big difference between Spurs & Chelsea.
Man United aren’t making any signings I thought in January.