Reds players getting some awful advice!
‘SILENCE is golden’ is not a phrase many at United seem to be familiar with unless it is mulling over a manager’s sacking for a day or so.
There were more social media platitudes in the wake of the schooling by City. “I am hurt,” David de Gea wrote. ‘Harry Maguire’ sounded about as inspiring as an MP on breakfast television. “You haven’t heard from me on here because, as a United fan, I didn’t really know what to say after Sunday,” ‘Marcus Rashford’ wrote days after the shellacking by Liverpool last month, still saying something.
Players have a brand to cultivate. Fronting up in the wake of a chastening result is not as laudable as it once was. Players are now obliged to speak to rights holders who have paid hundreds of millions, or billions, for the access to speak to them and still tag it as ‘exclusive.’
Ruud van Nistelrooy once told me he always stopped in the mixed zone after a European game. The modern player is usually only there because they have to be and they rarely echo supporters’ feelings.
Neither does Phil Lynch. He is the head of media at United, but it is a struggle to recall his presence anywhere near the Old Trafford press box.
In an ill-fated podcast appearance, Lynch outlined his strategy to assist United players and their teams to ‘change the narrative’ and how they are furnished with ‘fan sentiment graphs.’ No, you are not reading Private Eye.
It should not need to be stated that the way for a footballer to ‘change the narrative’ is to play well. A footballer does not require media training for that, yet some of the players’ media teams value Lynch’s ‘narrative’ input.
One of the reasons why this United squad is overloaded with underachievers is many are thinskinned and fret constantly about the social media ‘narrative.’
One player has blocked this correspondent on Twitter and another has on Instagram. Another player’s representative blocked me on Twitter before the account was deactivated.
The father of a player informed me my coverage of their son had been ‘red-flagged’ by the player’s social media team. The player is still contracted to United but so peripheral it seemed inconceivable he could have a ‘team.’
Already this season, the relative of another prominent United player has sent me an abusive email.
A follow-up arrived in my inbox an hour later from the same address, claiming they had been ‘hacked.’ The aforementioned players are all still at United.
Maguire is the United captain and, in that role, has to rise above the noise, but the mask slipped on international duty with his ear-cupping celebration against Albania. By nodding in against the 63rd-ranked international side who
were 5-0 down at half-time, the defender felt he had silenced his doubters when his reaction actually proved their point.
ITV’s producers must have been high-fiving at the decision to book Roy Keane. “Embarrassing,” the former Reds skipper spat. He branded Maguire’s form ‘disgraceful’ and it has been. Ian Wright and Jermain Defoe, stood adjacent to Keane, agreed Maguire’s reaction was ill-judged.
Maguire would not have taken his boots off by the time the online backlash began, fuelled by Keane’s commentary. The United Twitter account, which had evidently ignored the fan sentiment graphs, then championed Maguire’s riposte.
“As a group of players we are going through a tough period,” his social media pages posted the day after the derby. The message was an insult to
United supporters as the player clarified last year he does not go on social media or read it. Maguire is managed by a professional agency but they have misread the room.
In fairness to him, Reece James’s cross at Wembley was a dream and he is not treated to such service from Aaron Wan-Bissaka, another United player with his own insignia and a vanilla Twitter account. The ‘Spider’ has often been tangled over the last year.
During his one and only preseason tour with United, WanBissaka was so monosyllabic on the few occasions a microphone was presented to him a senior United employee remarked, ‘this isn’t good.’
His Twitter account has so far been dormant this month. Silence has always been golden for WanBissaka.