SAF set the winning culture of the club during his time here. He'd move players on if he felt they lacked or dipped 1% from the winning mindset he always wanted to instill and maintain.
SAF leaves, Moyes arrives. SAF winning culture is still there with the players but Moyes is so bad the players turn on him. In come LvG and then Mourinho and suddenly there's a lot of incoming (mostly dross) and outgoing (veterans, who actually implemented SAF's winning culture).
The new guys coming in (especially foreigners) won't set the new culture by themselves (naturally, since they're new and in a foreign country) which is when the existing bunch and upcoming academy lads who have been there for years set the tone of the squad, especially the outspoken ones. Unfortunately these guys proved to be Pogba, Lingard, and a bunch of others including Rashford later on.
I mean Lingard's basically admitted he wanted to have a good time playing for Man Utd. Not saying SAF had them training 24/7 drills but winning came 1st, then it was about having fun. People like Lingard are satisfied with the FA cup final goal and calling it a day. How many times did we say he's hiding from the ball in the big games? How many times did he disappoint us time and time again? How many chances was he given before signed Fernandes for the AM role?
Pogba Lingard Shaw Martial and later on Rashford set the tone for player power, enabled by the idiot executives up top.
For example, Mourinho was blocked from selling Martial. What message does that send? You're more important and we value you more than the opinion of the guy whose in charge of you ffs.
Pogba, allegedly (before the fanboys jump on), high fived people in the squad on the day Mourinho got sacked and said "no one fecks with me" before Carrick, allegedly, told him to pipe down.
From then on, its a rot. New guys come in, perform for 1 and 2 months, then see the lack of player accountability and lack of power the manager actually has, and revert similarly to the existing players. From then on the menality is "Maybe we'll play well maybe not, there's no repercussions. But we'll have fun doing it." Hell, they might even bullshit their way to a fat new contract thanks to the idiotic executives (DDG new contract which Mou said was insane, Phil Jones 5 year contract while barely playing 5 games a season, Luke Shaw new contract with his injury record, Pogba trying to be re-signed and thankfully refusing). Keeping in mind they are paid more than 1.5x their counterparts at rival clubs AT LEAST and underperform massively compared to them.
It was a combination of player power, which Lingard was also a part of, and gross mismanagement from executive level. To say he single handedly (or better yet, the players single handedly) ruined the culture is false. But to say he also didn't play a big part of it is also not true.
Maybe he isn't ready yet to admit that his mentality wasn't the level required for Man Utd (that shitty 0.012% cringe post comes to mind), or maybe deep down he doesn't feel he did anything wrong. In all cases, its good we got rid of him and most of that bunch of players down the line, and its even better to see a manager nowadays being given authority to require player accountability.
