Times like this, you can just sit back and enjoy without getting nervous. I felt like this towards the final days of the Moyes and Mourinho era. The season is already over and expectations are on the floor, so there are no hopes that can be raised and subsequently dashed which would ruin your day. It’s fun watching United knowing that whatever the result, it will have no bearing on your mood. There is also the possibility of being pleasantly surprised, alongside being strangely intrigued about how we are going to lose or draw. At the same time, if you want the manager gone, you can hate-watch so as to pick out the flaws in their tactics or system. These are my coping mechanisms for having to watch dour football played by a team that has pretty much checked out.
I didn’t reach this phase with LvG because he had credit in the bank with Juanfield and he followed that up with another win at Anfield. While his football was by far the most boring to watch, the wins at Anfield matter to me on a sentimental basis. As for Ole, I was always rooting for him even though it was unlikely he would turn it around.
As for the Ralf era, I cannot remember anything after getting eliminated from the UCL. We were not playing for anything, and this was reflected in the performances. I have wiped that era out of my memory.
With Ten Hag it’s just…meh. The football is dour. The players have checked out. The manager’s decisions are baffling and his personality is divisive and alienating. But it is a win-win for me. If United win - great. If United lose - it accelerates the path to a new manager, then we can enjoy another new manager bounce and get excited for a fleeting moment until it all goes down the drain again.
I’ve accepted that this has always been the reality of United fans and the Sir Alex era was the exception rather than the norm of United’s post-war history. I’m grateful to have experienced the last decade or so of the SAF era. I have also come to accept that, unlike other super clubs such as FC Bayern, Barcelona or Real Madrid, we do not dominate across generations. We only dominated and had such expectations due to the absolutely freakish levels of genuis of a man from Glasgow.
The main thing that annoys me about United right now under Ten Hag, in the context of the reduced expectations of the post-SAF era, is that if we aren’t going to seriously challenge for titles I at least want to be entertained. Under Ten Hag right now, we aren’t being entertained and I am not confident that we will seriously challenge. I can have one or the other, but I can’t have both. This is why I currently hate-watch United as a coping mechanism. It gives me something trivial and unimportant to complain about so as to distract me from real life problems…
