I didn't want to say the C word but I cant hold it in anymore.......

UpWithRivers

Full Member
Joined
Dec 30, 2013
Messages
3,979
Are we cursed?

Seriously. Its beyond a fkn joke. Yeah we came second and won a few minor trophies but since Sir Alex left we have been through sht. Literally everything that can go wrong has gone wrong.
1) Spend over a billion pounds and literally everyone turns to sht. Look at Chelsea. We all laughed at them but at least they got a few good players. Look at Cole. Even with complete incompetency you would think we would stumble upon at least one star player. From Pogba to Sancho to Antony to Ronaldo and on and on. They never become the players they should be. I guess Bruno has been the closest but even he is contentious and now turned to sht.
2) Weird sht like Greenwood. He should have been our star. Who could have foreseen that?
3) Players that are inconsistent. We can never have a player that plays well year in year out. Its just fkn impossible it seems. Casemiro was finally the DM we needed and then he turns to sht. I know players form changes but our players go from a 7/8 out of 10 season to a 4/10. It's unprecedented. Add Rashford to this and on and on.
4) Injuries. Yes everyone has injuries but we seem to have more than our fair share.
5) Managers - You think we could stumble upon at least one good one. Chelsea did Ok with Tuchel and now look like doing well under Maresca. Yeah its too early to tell. But literally all our managers have been less than we expected. They come in. Spend a load of cash then collapse. rinse and repeat. In 10 plus years we should have managed to get one good one. Liverpool managed it. Villa managed it. Bayern managed it. Barca managed it. Not us.
6) Top players just doing weird sht. Look at Dalot yesterday. Just didn't track back. That has nothing to do with form, with being tired, skill, wanting it. Why? If it was ust once then you just say ok that was odd. But its all the fkn time with United players and different ones. Either inexplicably losing the ball or the man or doing some other stupid sht. Yesterday we let a defender run through our team in the 3rd minute! Thats odd isnt it? Well not really it happened a few days ago against Twente. How many odd things must happen? Downing tools. Not wanting it enough. Keeper letting it in etc

I can go on and on. Everything always just turns to sht. How much faith has anyone have that a new manager or new players will change anything? Well yes they will have a good season maybe win a cup but I mean really change it where we are a top team challenging for the Prem and Champions league.

Is it possible we are just cursed.
 
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We've won more trophies in our 'banter era' than most clubs do in a generation.
 
It's easy to blame it on being cursed than accept the club has been terribly run for years on end, pissing well over a billion quid up the wall.
 
No.

We are just terribly run, from top to bottom.
 
Think we suffer from entitlement more than a curse.

We forever pretend that we are this massive club that’s just a summer away from success.

The fact is, clubs sell good players at the right time. Even your best players. Chelsea gave up on Robben after he lit up the league. Liverpool lost Coutinho and Suarez. Arsenal have just sold really talented players. City sell players all the time.

We cling onto talent as if they’re going to meld into some super team. None of them fit part of a coherent plan, and we value single season performances as evidence of their point of value, not the weight of evidence.

De Gea should have been sold earlier. Shaw written off at least once. Rashford needs to go. Bruno too as he’s not fit for a system that must surely be looking to incorporate our new signing and most exciting young forwards. Why is Lindelof here? The Sancho and Greenwood debacles.

I’m as guilty of it as most, but we seem to look at squad building as a transfer window at a time. We rate our players based on their best level, rather than what they’ve shown consistently.

We still need this fabled ‘open heart surgery’ and that involves making difficult and unromantic choices. Let Shaw, Bruno and Rashford go and have fantastic careers elsewhere. They’re not going to lead us to major honours, so replace them with young £30m players that will at least help us develop a coherent style.

So no, TDLR, not cursed, just stupid.
 
We simply just don't appoint the right managers and we haven't had any sort of proper ownership of the footballing side of things until now.

A good manager can make the most out of a shit squad.
 
Someone wheel Barry Fry in to pee in the four corners of Old Trafford. That should do the trick.
 
I'd like to see us run properly first before declaring cursed, perhaps when we're constantly coming 2nd in everything we can say we're cursed
 
There is a bigger picture going on whereby we’re following the most successful era in English football history. We’re the biggest and most talked about team and players seemingly can’t handle the pressure.

There’s too many examples of players where good for clubs we signed them from who are shite, players who are good for their country but shit for us, or players who leave us that are really good for their new club.

A generation of fans signed up for continuous success, one league title after another, and the players that have followed have crumbled spectacularly when being asked to deliver that.
 
No we are not, we are just not ruthlessly ambitious enough.

Top clubs stop the rot and replace managers soon as it goes south and rinse and repeat until they succeed. We do the opposite and keep underperforming managers for far too long as there is a narrative that United shouldn't sack managers like other clubs do. The curse is indecision and blind hope leading to lack of action which is naturally damaging.

Every time we go for a manager there is an added pressure that they MUST succeed or somehow sacking the previous poor manager was a bad decision. There is also a pressure that our managerial hires are Fergie reincarnated - here to reign for 20 odd years as an overlord. If we hire someone and he doesn't work it, sad times...try another.
 
I've watched my team win two champions leagues, get to 2 more finals, win 13 premier league titles, 6 fa cups. Cursed, I am not.
 
Cycles. Football is game of cycles. Those who remember 80’s know the struggle. Then came 90’s. Almost 15 years of success. Now back to struggle. We will find our way back. Sooner than later.
 
We are not cursed. We are reaping the results of over a decade of bad decisions. Bad coaches, bad transfers, bad infrastructure, bad player policies etc…

Ten Hag is another in a very long line of mistakes.
 
Let's go through it step by step...
UpWithRivers said:
1) Spend over a billion pounds and literally everyone turns to sht. Look at Chelsea. We all laughed at them but at least they got a few good players. Look at Cole. Even with complete incompetency you would think we would stumble upon at least one star player. From Pogba to Sancho to Antony to Ronaldo and on and on. They never become the players they should be. I guess Bruno has been the closest but even he is contentious and now turned to sht.
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Too many bad signings outweigh the few good, and as the whole team is too often bad the few good ones can't change it to the better on their own.
UpWithRivers said:
2) Weird sht like Greenwood. He should have been our star. Who could have foreseen that?
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Nobody, but it happens. Other clubs had domestic abuse cases as well, just not with their upcoming superstar
UpWithRivers said:
3) Players that are inconsistent. We can never have a player that plays well year in year out. Its just fkn impossible it seems. Casemiro was finally the DM we needed and then he turns to sht. I know players form changes but our players go from a 7/8 out of 10 season to a 4/10. It's unprecedented. Add Rashford to this and on and on.
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Players like Casemiro simply are ageing. Too many of those in the squad over the years.
UpWithRivers said:
4) Injuries. Yes everyone has injuries but we seem to have more than our fair share.
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You don't. At times it was a lot, at other times it wasn't. But injuries are normal due to the high strain on professional players bodies.
UpWithRivers said:
5) Managers - You think we could stumble upon at least one good one. Chelsea did Ok with Tuchel and now look like doing well under Maresca. Yeah its too early to tell. But literally all our managers have been less than we expected. They come in. Spend a load of cash then collapse. rinse and repeat. In 10 plus years we should have managed to get one good one. Liverpool managed it. Villa managed it. Bayern managed it. Barca managed it. Not us.
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You had several good ones. But you never managed a sensible succession. That's the difference to the other clubs who don't need to destroy everything when they change managers.
UpWithRivers said:
6) Top players just doing weird sht. Look at Dalot yesterday. Just didn't track back. That has nothing to do with form, with being tired, skill, wanting it. Why? If it was ust once then you just say ok that was odd. But its all the fkn time with United players and different ones. Either inexplicably losing the ball or the man or doing some other stupid sht. Yesterday we let a defender run through our team in the 3rd minute! Thats odd isnt it? Well not really it happened a few days ago against Twente. How many odd things must happen? Downing tools. Not wanting it enough. Keeper letting it in etc
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When players start thinking (or unconsciously feeling) "What's the point?" these things happen. They think that because they lost faith in the managers ideas (that's the usual "downing tools" in reality, not something they do on purpose. Nothing odd about it, just the final end of the road for EtH.
UpWithRivers said:
I can go on and on. Everything always just turns to sht. How much faith has anyone have that a new manager or new players will change anything? Well yes they will have a good season maybe win a cup but I mean really change it where we are a top team challenging for the Prem and Champions league.
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You are overly dramatic. Just like the club's board. Which is exactly why this happens again and again. Never looking at the good stuff you can build on, always only seeing the negatives and always destroying the positives while trying to get rid of the negatives.
UpWithRivers said:
Is it possible we are just cursed.
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Just badly lead. That's quite simply all that is to it.
 
Offside said:
There is a bigger picture going on whereby we’re following the most successful era in English football history. We’re the biggest and most talked about team and players seemingly can’t handle the pressure.

There’s too many examples of players where good for clubs we signed them from who are shite, players who are good for their country but shit for us, or players who leave us that are really good for their new club.

A generation of fans signed up for continuous success, one league title after another, and the players that have followed have crumbled spectacularly when being asked to deliver that.
Click to expand...

Yes, but you can say the same about Madrid but they just keep winning. Under different eras, different players, different managers.

The reality is lack of 'winning mentality' in our club's core DNA. We don't a have a structure that ensures that the winning mentality is passed on from era to era. This is down to leadership.

If so, decisions made during transition and post-Fergie onwards would have been very different.

This is like building founding values of a country and putting the right structures in place for the country to prosper for years to come.

We had it in the past but Glazers and decisions made since have eroded it.
 
It’s not cursed. It’s incompetence. The Glazers and Woodward have been rank awful for us. Literally every permanent managerial pick they had didn’t work and they hung onto them too long.

They just throw money at problems and hope it goes away while keeping an eye that it doesn’t drain their cash cow too much.

Hopefully it changes with INEOS. The off field appointments and moves they’ve been doing is promising (but based on a pretty low bar set by the Glazers). I think they fecked up keeping ETH despite them clearly not rating him but everyone makes mistakes and they have time to rectify it without it sinking the entire season.
 
Add in that this is a period when Pep, Klopp, Ancelotti, Conte have been managing in the prem, stiff competition in the best of times, even if we had been well run still tough to beat Pep, should have been competing year on year though

The C word I would use would be culpable
 
I'd like us to try hiring (at the time of hiring) a best in class manager

It's one we haven't tried yet and one which I think would work out
 
Obviously SAF made some kind of deal with the devil to bring success to United. However, Satan being the known cnut he is tricked Sir Alex and the success would only last as long as he was with us. Now Lucifer, the absolute weapon, is cursing us with shite football and a leaky roof.

It's swings and roundabouts though, because Klopp made a similar deal to bring the title and the glory days back to Liverpool. The Devil, the eternal bell end, granted the deal but then hilariously gave them a single title during a pandemic. What I am basically saying is, COVID was clearly the devil's work designed to be a massive wind up of Liverpool.
 
Semigoodlookin said:
Obviously SAF made some kind of deal with the devil to bring success to United. However, Satan being the known cnut he is tricked Sir Alex and the success would only last as long as he was with us. Now Lucifer, the absolute weapon, is cursing us with shite football and a leaky roof.
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Well... maybe he didn't trick SAF, but SAF wanted to make sure that he would forever be the greatest United manager ever.
 
Concupiscent as in one day I hope to again feel a concupiscent anticipation whenever I watch United players walk onto the pitch.
 
We're not really in crisis. We're just a badly run club which is in the middle of a transition period. Any other team and its not really news, but because we're the mighty Man Utd every game we dont win is a crisis. So ten years of transition (because badly run) = meme club status.
 
UpWithRivers said:
Are we cursed?

Seriously. Its beyond a fkn joke. Yeah we came second and won a few minor trophies but since Sir Alex left we have been through sht. Literally everything that can go wrong has gone wrong.
1) Spend over a billion pounds and literally everyone turns to sht. Look at Chelsea. We all laughed at them but at least they got a few good players. Look at Cole. Even with complete incompetency you would think we would stumble upon at least one star player. From Pogba to Sancho to Antony to Ronaldo and on and on. They never become the players they should be. I guess Bruno has been the closest but even he is contentious and now turned to sht.
2) Weird sht like Greenwood. He should have been our star. Who could have foreseen that?
3) Players that are inconsistent. We can never have a player that plays well year in year out. Its just fkn impossible it seems. Casemiro was finally the DM we needed and then he turns to sht. I know players form changes but our players go from a 7/8 out of 10 season to a 4/10. It's unprecedented. Add Rashford to this and on and on.
4) Injuries. Yes everyone has injuries but we seem to have more than our fair share.
5) Managers - You think we could stumble upon at least one good one. Chelsea did Ok with Tuchel and now look like doing well under Maresca. Yeah its too early to tell. But literally all our managers have been less than we expected. They come in. Spend a load of cash then collapse. rinse and repeat. In 10 plus years we should have managed to get one good one. Liverpool managed it. Villa managed it. Bayern managed it. Barca managed it. Not us.
6) Top players just doing weird sht. Look at Dalot yesterday. Just didn't track back. That has nothing to do with form, with being tired, skill, wanting it. Why? If it was ust once then you just say ok that was odd. But its all the fkn time with United players and different ones. Either inexplicably losing the ball or the man or doing some other stupid sht. Yesterday we let a defender run through our team in the 3rd minute! Thats odd isnt it? Well not really it happened a few days ago against Twente. How many odd things must happen? Downing tools. Not wanting it enough. Keeper letting it in etc

I can go on and on. Everything always just turns to sht. How much faith has anyone have that a new manager or new players will change anything? Well yes they will have a good season maybe win a cup but I mean really change it where we are a top team challenging for the Prem and Champions league.

Is it possible we are just cursed.
Click to expand...

To state the obvious, there's no such thing as "cursed". So no, we're not cursed.
 
We’re not cursed. We just make really bad decisions time and time again. We’ve backed ETH to the hilt without him ever showing signs that he’s good enough. And then when it was clear that he needed binning in the summer, we decided to extend his contract and spend another £200m on players.
 
Kaush949 said:
Yes, but you can say the same about Madrid but they just keep winning. Under different eras, different players, different managers.

The reality is lack of 'winning mentality' in our club's core DNA. We don't a have a structure that ensures that the winning mentality is passed on from era to era. This is down to leadership.

If so, decisions made during transition and post-Fergie onwards would have been very different.

This is like building founding values of a country and putting the right structures in place for the country to prosper for years to come.

We had it in the past but Glazers and decisions made since have eroded it.
Click to expand...
Absolutely right yes.
 
You may be onto something here.

Only explanation I can find is SAF promised a lifetime coaching role to You Know Who while he was manager but then Woodward threw him out unceremoniously after SAF retired since his evil intentions were out in the open.

You know who wanted to make our 99 CL trophy as a horcrux but never got the chance as he was never alone with it. In his rage, he cursed the job and since then we have been underperforming.

Our house ghost, Sir Gary keeps referring to this urban legend. In case you are wondering, you know who is Lord Giggs.
 
Utd heap said:
We've won more trophies in our 'banter era' than most clubs do in a generation.
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Context is key. We've also spent the most. And for what? A few second rate trophies. Meanwhile, we've not come close to the lifting the Premier League or Champions League.
 
Only two managers in our club history have won the league. Winning the league or CL is not very common at Manchester United.

The trophies we’ve won post Fergie is still more than the vastly majority of football clubs will ever win.

We aren’t cursed you just happened to support the club during a very rare successful period.
 
My old dad used to say, that everything that's bad for you, begins with the letter 'C'

Coke (both kinds)
Crisps
Chocolate
Chips
Cake
Cookies
Candy
Condiments
Caffeine
Cancer
Cholesterol
Constipation
Collisions
Catastrophes
Conflicts
Corruption
Cnuts
City

Avoid all that and you'll be fine.
 
UpWithRivers said:
Are we cursed?

Seriously. Its beyond a fkn joke. Yeah we came second and won a few minor trophies but since Sir Alex left we have been through sht. Literally everything that can go wrong has gone wrong.
1) Spend over a billion pounds and literally everyone turns to sht. Look at Chelsea. We all laughed at them but at least they got a few good players. Look at Cole. Even with complete incompetency you would think we would stumble upon at least one star player. From Pogba to Sancho to Antony to Ronaldo and on and on. They never become the players they should be. I guess Bruno has been the closest but even he is contentious and now turned to sht.
2) Weird sht like Greenwood. He should have been our star. Who could have foreseen that?
3) Players that are inconsistent. We can never have a player that plays well year in year out. Its just fkn impossible it seems. Casemiro was finally the DM we needed and then he turns to sht. I know players form changes but our players go from a 7/8 out of 10 season to a 4/10. It's unprecedented. Add Rashford to this and on and on.
4) Injuries. Yes everyone has injuries but we seem to have more than our fair share.
5) Managers - You think we could stumble upon at least one good one. Chelsea did Ok with Tuchel and now look like doing well under Maresca. Yeah its too early to tell. But literally all our managers have been less than we expected. They come in. Spend a load of cash then collapse. rinse and repeat. In 10 plus years we should have managed to get one good one. Liverpool managed it. Villa managed it. Bayern managed it. Barca managed it. Not us.
6) Top players just doing weird sht. Look at Dalot yesterday. Just didn't track back. That has nothing to do with form, with being tired, skill, wanting it. Why? If it was ust once then you just say ok that was odd. But its all the fkn time with United players and different ones. Either inexplicably losing the ball or the man or doing some other stupid sht. Yesterday we let a defender run through our team in the 3rd minute! Thats odd isnt it? Well not really it happened a few days ago against Twente. How many odd things must happen? Downing tools. Not wanting it enough. Keeper letting it in etc

I can go on and on. Everything always just turns to sht. How much faith has anyone have that a new manager or new players will change anything? Well yes they will have a good season maybe win a cup but I mean really change it where we are a top team challenging for the Prem and Champions league.

Is it possible we are just cursed.
Click to expand...
Not unless you consider curse word to be "glazers" :) Fecking bastards
 
At this point the poor results don't even bother me as much as how terrible we've been to watch. I can't believe we haven't managed a season or two where we look like we got our shit together and developed a style of play, even if it didn't materialize into a PL or CL. Based on our average performance I'd say we've actually overachieved with what we've won over the last 10 years.
 
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