RUDDERLESS & SPINELESS
United have no leaders and no team spirit
WES BROWN says Manchester United’s failure to fight for fourth has shown up a chronic lack of leadership in Ralf
Rangnick’s squad.
The five-time title winner says an absence of any direction from within the dressing room is the main reason why qualification for next season’s Champions League has slipped from within their grasp.
Brown, 42, believes none of the German’s group had the ability to rally their team-mates and drag the club over the finishing line.
The former centre-half saw yet another chance to put the squeeze on Arsenal and Tottenham wasted on Thursday night following a limp 1-1 draw with Chelsea.
Frailty
And he pinpointed the lack of leaders within the club as a frailty that new boss Erik ten Hag will have to put right.
Speaking at the Watson Metters golf day, he said: “It’s not been good for a few seasons now. The team isn’t a team – everyone can see there’s something wrong.
“It’s been disappointing for a number of different reasons.
“For me, this season, when there were opportunities to really grab that fourth spot and when there was a chance for the players to step up, they failed to do so. No-one’s said: ‘Let’s get something – anything – out of this season’.
“It’s just not happened. Manchester United supporters have not seen anything like that type of fight.
“I always think the club should be there or thereabouts as far as Champions
League qualification is concerned, as a minimum.
“United have had chances to take it – and not been good enough.
“You’ve got to be strong mentally and know how to win games of football – perhaps when you don’t deserve to.
“Manchester United’s players haven’t been able to do that.” Brown admitted football has changed from when he broke into the first team as a teenager during the glory years.
That captains in the mould of Roy Keane and erstwhile leaders such as Bryan Robson, Steve Bruce and Peter Schmeichel are now few and far between – and not just at Old Trafford.
He said: “When I played there were a lot of leaders on the pitch. Today,
maybe not so many.
Mentality
“Playing with the likes of Roy Keane, they had that mentality. I’m not saying players now don’t care, they do. But if stuff had to be said, or sorted out, then it was.
“There were a lot of players like that in dressing rooms. I’m not talking just about Roy. Or just about Manchester United.
“But players change, the game has changed and leaders in football just aren’t as common as they once were.
“You need them, because every successful team is going to have patches when they need to tough it out.
“And hopefully, Ten Hag is the man who can sort it.
“He looks hungry, he did some good work at Ajax and I think the supporters are genuinely intrigued to see how he gets on.
“I think there is a big rebuild on the way. Players will go. He will have his own ideas but I do see change. And, potentially, a lot of it, too.”