Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Ralf’s first job is to turn the United soap opera into a reality show
Legends queue up to damn every poor display with the words: This is Man United we are talking about
UNLESS you’ve been in a coma you will be aware that another Manchester United era has begun.
It has been eight-and-a-half years since the Sage of Govan cruised out of Old Trafford convinced he was handing over the ship to able hands in David Moyes.
But the soap opera his exit created feels like it’s been running longer than the one down the road in Weatherfield.
Ralf Rangnick is the fifth coach since 2013 charged with ensuring United’s footballers bring the same level of success as the club’s commercial juggernaut.
But, as Moyes, Louis van Gaal,
Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer discovered, the sheer burden of expectation Fergie’s legacy placed on their shoulders made them wilt.
So will history judge the latest appointment as the dawn of a new era or another error?
United claim Rangnick hasn’t been hired merely to guide them into next season’s Champions League but to create a brave new future.
That he’ll ditch all the hotch-potch philosophies and prick all the pompous egos that have beleaguered them in recent years and establish a clear blueprint for how they train, play and recruit.
But will the intense pressure on a 63-year-old who has never managed an elite club with global superstars prove too onerous? It’s a pressure that comes from many angles.
From supporters who gorged on two decades of glory and now see their bitterest rivals streets ahead.
From boardroom chancers and deal-makers who appear to lack the nous to do anything but make a quick buck. And from former players who filled their boots with medals when everything was right at United, who now fill them with TV money in return for explaining why everything has gone wrong.
There’s an array of legends queuing up to damn every poor performance with the words: ‘This is Manchester United we’re talking about, here. They have to be winning. And winning in style.’
Roy Keane even fired off an unhinged rant after a creditable draw at league leaders Chelsea on Sunday.
The man who never shies away from telling us it’s in “United’s DNA” to be winning titles defended buying Cristiano Ronaldo on the grounds “he got them into the next round of the Champions League, that’s worth so much to the club in terms of business”.
It made about as much sense as
Gary Neville’s blind defence of his mate Solskjaer after recent thrashings or Patrice Evra warning Rangnick he was taking on an impossible job because “you need to both play the United way and be a winner”.
There’s a wide gap between where many of United’s cheerleaders demand they should be, and where they are. The ‘in my day’ nostalgia means nothing as the team they face tonight, Arsenal, can testify, having gone from being England’s Invincibles to 17 years without a title.
United will not lift the Premier League in May, meaning they go into next season facing a 10-year gap since they were last English champions. It’s time to stop looking back. At Rangnick’s brief introductory press conference he spoke blandly about helping players fulfil their potential.
I’m sure if he’d been pressed on precisely what United now need his answer would have been similar to Jurgen Klopp’s, at his first Anfield grilling, when he said everybody who cares about Liverpool should throw off
“the backpack of history” and have a “restart”.
That’s exactly what United need before the title absence heads towards two decades.
There’s been too much soap opera of late at that dreamy old theatre in Stretford. It’s time to get some gritty reality back.
HAS The Ballon d’or become an episode of Dr Who? If not, how can organisers explain their constant desire to drag us back in time?
Lionel Messi has had a decent year but he was not the best footballer on earth in 2021. That was Bundesliga and World Club Cup winner Robert Lewandowski (left) who, with a month remaining, has scored 64 times for club and country this calendar year.
After missing out last year due to Covid when he won the Treble with Bayern Munich, it was undoubtedly his time.
The fact the organisers invented a new category called Striker of The Year to give the Pole a gong, said it all.
If these awards still need Messi to sprinkle stardust over them, why not just give him a Lifetime Achievement Award?
OF all the tributes to Ray Kennedy, the one that best summed up his unique talent came from Graeme Souness.
“He was one of the most underrated players I played with. Ray wasn’t brilliant at anything, but he was very good at everything.” Which was why he managed to win 17 England caps, six First Division titles, three European Cups, one FA Cup, a League Cup and a UEFA Cup. But, when Kennedy (right) was struck down by Parkinson’s Disease at the age of 34, robbing him of an ability to work, he had to put those caps and medals up for auction.
He received little help from the PFA but Liverpool and Arsenal fans never forgot the modest man who brought them so much pleasure and joined forces to launch a Ray Of Hope appeal to give their hero at least a little quality of life.
The tens of thousands raised helped to put, among other things, a speciallyequipped bathroom in his Whitley
Bay home. Kennedy’s most humble response was that being remembered by all those supporters meant more than anything else the game had given him.
RIP a legend and a gentleman.
I WAS glad to hear sane Brighton fans rally behind Graham Potter after he told the minority who booed his players off the pitch on Saturday that they needed a history lesson.
This is that lesson: 11 seasons ago the Seagulls were playing in League One in a half-empty athletics track and were so many millions in debt they were sponsored by Skint Records.
But this season they have consistently been in the top half of the Premier League, sitting above several big-name clubs.
As I’m sure Brighton’s Derryborn defender Shane Duffy would have put it, on hearing the jeers: “Catch yourselves on, ya ungrateful eejits.”