United’s stars are short-changing their supporters... imagine Robson, Strachan & McGrath allowing a lack of ‘motivation’

FAIR play to Romelu Lukaku for saying sorry to Chelsea fans following that Italian TV interview, but I couldn’t see the need for a grovelling apology.

His words, spoken when he was recovering from injury, were an honest assessment of where he felt mentally and where he perceived Thomas Tuchel’s opinion of him to be: “I’m not happy with the situation. I think the coach has chosen to play with another module. I just have to not give up and continue to work and be a professional.”

Words surely not as insulting to supporters as the cynical platitudes some players allow social-media teams to tweet for them after they’ve put in a bang-average performance, professing to “share your frustration”.

Which brings us to Manchester United. Luke Shaw was put in an impossible position before the TV cameras after his side’s gutless surrender to Wolves at Old Trafford on Monday. But when he played the interview back I hope he realised how unintentionally insulting his words were. “I didn’t think we were all there together. You look at the players, we have unbelievable quality but sometimes quality is not enough. We need to bring the intensity and more motivation.”

That a top international at a club like United feels he and his teammates “need to bring more motivation” to their game is about as damning as it gets. Maybe Shaw deserves praise for his honesty, especially as there appears to be far more disinterested players in a squad former Old Trafford full-back Gary Neville branded a “bunch of whinge-bags.”

But the fact that it can be casually dropped in as a defence for another woeful performance by the secondmost expensive squad ever assembled in English football sums up why United have struggled for years. The highly-paid players, like the highly-paid managers and decision-makers, seem to be cocooned in a culture of buck-passing.

How has this been allowed to happen at such a huge club? When United went 26 years without winning a title they may have had poor managers who trusted ageing stars for too long and made bad buys, but the teams never lacked motivation.

Can you imagine Bryan Robson, Gordon Strachan and Paul McGrath allowing that to happen during the 1980s? They wouldn’t have been able to walk into the pubs they loved to frequent and face the public knowing they hadn’t left everything on the pitch or had allowed their fellow pros to sulk as they struggled for “intensity.”

Their pride would never have allowed them to be seen short-changing the fans, unlike some of the current United stars whose pride appears to revolve around protecting their brand.

Players like Cristiano Ronaldo (above) who, once again, scarpered off the pitch on Monday, shaking his head, implying that the shambles had nothing to do with him. And he was the captain. It’s been too easy for United players since Alex Ferguson left. He would have sniffed out this lack of motivation and shoved the worst offenders out of the club.

Phil Jones was their best player against Wolves because he was motivated to ram back all the cruel abuse thrown at him over the past two years including, at times, while out walking with his family. Maybe some of his apathetic team-mates need to be humiliated in public to get their mojo back. Or maybe United’s interim boss Ralf Rangnick could take a leaf out of Tuchel’s book and leave every disinterested player who insults the fans and the club out of the next match-day squad.

That said, the motivation malaise appears so deep he might have to disguise it as Covid and ask for the game to be called off.