This is a low point in 30 years... Just getting stuck in won’t resurrect United
HAS it really come to this at Manchester United – where we are supposed to celebrate a 19-year-old kid’s excitable cameo in a 4-0 defeat at Liverpool?
New manager Erik Ten Hag will take over this summer with the bar at the lowest level I can remember at Old Trafford.
I have been watching United at every level for 30 years – as a YTS, father or opposition player – and I have never felt more saddened by them.
In a derisory performance at Anfield, at least Hannibal Mejbri made his presence felt, crashing into Jordan Henderson and Andrew Robertson where more celebrated players offered little resistance.
And I can understand Gary Neville saying afterwards: “He reminded me of Nobby Stiles, of Eric Harrison and the basic principles of being a football player: Compete, win your duels, fight for every ball.
“There’s only one kid who came on and demonstrated that he had the heart and the soul to play for Manchester United Football Club – him.”
I disagree. It’s good to see a young player trying to make his mark, but on another night Mejbri could have been sent off, which wouldn’t have solved anything.
United are back where they were at Oxford United in 1986, Sir Alex Ferguson’s first game in charge.
The whole culture of the club has to change, to
the values instilled by Fergie 36 years ago. Is the team more important than individuals playing to their own agenda? Sir Alex knew the answer.
Ten Hag must be given a minimum three years to implement his own culture, identity and philosophy because, as an institution, United is broken.
People have been getting rewarded for poor attitude, lack of discipline and selfishness.
I’ve never seen a United team where there is so much finger-pointing, armwaving, going through the motions and flouncing when things go wrong.
At every successful club, you train as you play. Judging by the soulless surrender at Anfield, and at Everton week before, I must ask whether the intensity of training is right.
And the recruitment over the last 10 years has been shocking. Liverpool hardly get a single one wrong in the transfer market. United have got far too many wrong – who sanctioned those deals?
It’s all very well chucking money at buying new players, but as well as being top-class footballers they have got to be the right personalities, with the right mentality.
There are good people at the club who understand what it means to wear that badge.
But when United legends are proud of a youngster simply because he gets stuck in at Liverpool, you know the club’s DNA has been damaged.
That DNA should include personality, character, bravery, selflessness, aggression, and desire with and withthe out the ball. By all means use statisticians and analysts, but where are the old-fashioned scouts who watch games and believe the evidence of their own eyes?
If they don’t make the Champions League, you wonder if it is worth them not playing European football next season so Ten Hag can spend more time with his players on the training ground.
I wasn’t good enough to make the grade at United. I was among the Class of 92 graduates who had to build my career elsewhere – at Crewe, Leicester, Birmingham, Blackburn and Derby.
But I will always be thankful for the grounding I had at Old Trafford. I understood what it meant to represent a fantastic club built on the values of Busby and Fergie.
And it makes me angry to see how far the standards have slipped.
Good luck to Erik Ten Hag – it’s going to be a long road back.