Really, where are we now?

Our biggest strength is also our weakness.

Global appeal = commercialisation = fame = huge contracts = impossible to sell (club and players) = high expectations = stagnation
 
By the time we manage to get our act together and put controversies and injuries behind us we will be outside of the title race (if anyone even gave us a chance). We are already 6 points behind, lost 2 times to direct rivals with a third loss very plausible this weekend.

Looks like another damage control season with a fight for the top four and hopes of not crashing out of the CL too early.
 
As a fan since I was a 10 year old in 1967 you'll guess that I've seen a fair bit but right now there's a stench of mediocrity hanging over the club that's permeating every nook and cranny both on and off the pitch.
I've become so disenfranchised that I've binned Sky and BT/TNT and have only watched MOTD once this season.
I meet up with a group of older blokes once a week for a chinwag and there's not one City fan amongst them but plenty of their young relatives are which shows how things have gone over this last decade.
It's a long haul back to the top both on and off the pitch and I may well have carked by then so I might just have seen the very best we'll ever have been.
What a mess!
 
freddie the red said:
I meet up with a group of older blokes once a week for a chinwag and there's not one City fan amongst them but plenty of their young relatives are which shows how things have gone over this last decade.
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I spend a fair bit of time in Manchester for work, and I'm always surprised that I never see any City shirts around. It was an oddity at first, but now with a big enough sample size it seems to be how things are. Plenty of red, but no blue - which suggests to me that City are attracting this generations group of 'support whoever the best team is', and that's fine by me.

They'll all turn into the same frustrated and slightly entitled fans United have been afflicted with as soon as they stop winning everything.
 
Borys said:
It's a cleanup season, nothing less, nothing more really. There are some things to get excited about (Hojlund, I also think Mount will be a good player for us once we learn how to use him).
With so many issues all round I expect us to grind results and hopefully get top 4. However, just as last season we will need a lot of help from our rivals.
The transition takes much more time because we are such a mess. But one year from now we should be in much healthier place.
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Yeah. This is us resetting the bone.

The worst thing we can do is get rid of the manager. We'd be back to square 1.
 
1) We have greedy owners seemingly eager to invest but the reality is we signed Lukaku, Lindelof, Maguire, Fred and a few more for a whole lot of money while they should not have been in the club in the first place. All players that are not good enough but we splashed 250 mil+ on them. No club would pay those kind of fees regarding such players.
2) No Dof and investment strategy regardless of the manager
3) A spineless squad with the lack of a british core
This is not Manchester United at least not the way I see it.
 
norm87cro said:
1) We have greedy owners seemingly eager to invest but the reality is we signed Lukaku, Lindelof, Maguire, Fred and a few more for a whole lot of money while they should not have been in the club in the first place. All players that are not good enough but we splashed 250 mil+ on them. No club would pay those kind of fees regarding such players.
2) No Dof and investment strategy regardless of the manager
3) A spineless squad with the lack of a british core
This is not Manchester United at least not the way I see it.
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Agree with this bar the Brittish core. Brittish players are kinda overrated and there is no core to build around them, unless you want some fecking youtouber-like, Range Rover, driving primadonnas to run around your club.

However, to have a billion dollar business ran by some randoms, with no strategy in place is just plain stupid. I don't even need to start talking about the on-field issues, poor transfers, poor manager choices and shit like that. When the wrong people are running a business, it can go right only for a while and we are at that moment in time.

We're no closer to competing than we were under Jose or LVG and that says a lot about Manchester United as an institution, not a football club.
 
theballisround said:
Agree with this bar the Brittish core. Brittish players are kinda overrated and there is no core to build around them, unless you want some fecking youtouber-like, Range Rover, driving primadonnas to run around your club.

However, to have a billion dollar business ran by some randoms, with no strategy in place is just plain stupid. I don't even need to start talking about the on-field issues, poor transfers, poor manager choices and shit like that. When the wrong people are running a business, it can go right only for a while and we are at that moment in time.

We're no closer to competing than we were under Jose or LVG and that says a lot about Manchester United as an institution, not a football club.
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Yeah I agree with everything you said except the core stuff and I can explain that. The italians did that in the 90s with a handfull of truly class players and so can we. There needs to be an indetity and with a squad of 30+ players I really dont see an issue of 15-18 being british. But that is just my opinion its not something Im imposing on anybody
But yeah we dont even have world class international players or coaches for that matter.
 
norm87cro said:
1) We have greedy owners seemingly eager to invest but the reality is we signed Lukaku, Lindelof, Maguire, Fred and a few more for a whole lot of money while they should not have been in the club in the first place. All players that are not good enough but we splashed 250 mil+ on them. No club would pay those kind of fees regarding such players.
2) No Dof and investment strategy regardless of the manager
3) A spineless squad with the lack of a british core
This is not Manchester United at least not the way I see it.
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Our British players have been the biggest let downs recently. I think we just have a lack of quality on the pitch and in the non playing staff, and until we address this correctly, we'll continue to be up and down.
 
shabz said:
Our British players have been the biggest let downs recently. I think we just have a lack of quality on the pitch and in the non playing staff, and until we address this correctly, we'll continue to be up and down.
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Lindelof? Fred? Eriksen? Ddg? Telles? Martial? Dalot? This seasons Casemiro? Yeah all british mate. Fair enough we sold a few this season. Bar Maguire there hasnt been anybody bad in the british department. Sancho is obviously kicked out of the team (because of his and ETHs egos clashing) and Greenwood has been loaned for non football reasons. Dare I say he played well before all the non football drama?
 
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norm87cro said:
Lindelof? Fred? Eriksen? Ddg? Telles? Martial? Dalot? This seasons Casemiro? Yeah all british mate. Fair enough we sold a few this season. Bar Maguire there hasnt been anybody bad in the british department. Sancho is obviously kicked out of the team (because of his and ETHs egos clashing) and Greenwood has been loaned for non football reasons. Dare I say he played well before all the non football drama?
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Crazy to put DDG in there. Was our best player for years. Casemiro has been much better than everyone else you named, and 4 games into this season, you can't really judge him. How much did they all cost? There was no expectation on them. Maguire, Wan Bissaka, Sancho all crazy money, all massive disappointments with Maguire and Sancho being marquee signings in their transfer windows. City and Liverpool have been two of the best teams the league has ever seen in the last 5 - 6 seasons and neither have had a British spine.

My point is that it doesn't matter what nationality these players are. They're just not good enough, whether it's ability or mentality.
 
I bet Amazon wished they had a All or Nothing with us right now.

Champions League football starts next week lets start our season with a result on saturday and kick on vs Bayern
 
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Forum posters love to say everything is the best or the worst ever, but it is quite hard to remember more of a mess a month into the season.

An absolutely ridiculous first month of playing action - making Wolves look like Olympian athletes and lucky to scrape through with a win, losing the aways against top half of table teams like last year, and then lucky Forest are such pony to get away with a 2-0 deficit after 5mins,

Off the pitch, we've had the Greenwood circus, just starting another one with Antony, with Sancho thinking it's brilliant timing to act up himself.
We bought an overpriced kid with a handful of career goals for 70 or so million, who arrived injured, with the only other option a well past caring Martial.

Shaw is long term injured, obviously with Malacia out at the same time. Varane we all know will break down here and there, sod's law had it being the same time as Martinez. Amrabat seems to have arrived injured too.

Then you've got the whole Maguire farce. Ex club captain who won't budge on huge money. A player we've bought for 80m, yet are scared to field for 15mins.

This obviously all played against a backdrop of the Glazers still clinging on.

Roll on the next game.
I think :lol:
 
This season is about damage limitation for me.

ETH needs to do enough to keep his job until the takeover happens.

I was a lot more optimistic before the season started.
 
I’m going to be positive here. By the law of averages, we must currently be experiencing our lowest ebb this season, and for quite a long time in fact. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong in the last 4-6 weeks with a number of major issues all coming up to the boil at seemingly the same period of time.

If (and it’s a big if) we can start getting some key injured players back fit and others back on form, and the likes of hojilund and amrabat can breathe new life into the squad, I think we can get back on an upward curve and into a top 4 race again. Oh yeah, and a few weeks out of the media spotlight wouldn’t go amiss but that’s probably asking too much.
 
This is, once again, a transition season. There are players that need to shipped off to another club and of course the owners have no incentive to maximize the performance potential of the playing staff they employ. We'll make top four, maybe snake a domestic cup, but we will not be stuck in with the top clubs in the league or in Europe.
 
VivaRonaldo85 said:
I’m going to be positive here. By the law of averages, we must currently be experiencing our lowest ebb this season, and for quite a long time in fact. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong in the last 4-6 weeks with a number of major issues all coming up to the boil at seemingly the same period of time.

If (and it’s a big if) we can start getting some key injured players back fit and others back on form, and the likes of hojilund and amrabat can breathe new life into the squad, I think we can get back on an upward curve and into a top 4 race again. Oh yeah, and a few weeks out of the media spotlight wouldn’t go amiss but that’s probably asking too much.
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Gambler's fallacy
 
I still think we'll have a good season this year and by the end of the season the club will be much improved from where it was when ETH became manager.

- Onana is a big upgrade on DDG in my opinion.
- Yes, we have many injuries at the moment, but when everyone is healthy our back-line is basically sorted.
- Mount / Amrabat will I think both be solid, if unspectacular, additions.
- Hojlund and Garnacho give us some real development potential in the front-line.
- the fall-out from the collapse of Greenwood / Antony / Sancho is that both Amad and Facundo should get a real chance. I suspect by year-end one of them will have surprised and be contributing regularly.
- Mainoo looks a real talent and, for once, with Casemiro ahead of him, we won't have to rush his development but can take our time to bring him on at a pace that suits him.

I'm not overly concerned by all the off-field drama. The media love this stuff and over an international break it gives them something to talk about. But, most of it will be water under the bridge a month from now. The biggest concerns for me are the age of Casemiro and Erickson. Particularly Casemiro. I hope he has another year or two of quality football left in him. I'm worried it will become another Matic situation where he's good when he first arrives but can't handle the demands of a season anymore. It would be very helpful if Amrabat, Mainoo and Mount are able to significantly reduce the minutes of Casemiro and Erickson to help extend them a little bit.
 
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I'm fairly optimistic about the rest of the season, I'm liking the firm line that we're taking with under performers finally. I expect we'll be flying along soon enough, no less than 3rd in the league, last 16 or 8 in the champions league and maybe a domestic cup final.
 
Mike Smalling said:
I think we will be a lot smarter after a few games with Højlund and Amrabat in the side. If they are able to get up to speed quickly and improve the side, we could be ok once all the noise dies down a bit.
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This. If injuries do not continue to be this bad, or worse, then Hojlund, Onana, and Amrabat can give us some memorable games, with the support of the rest if our team at their best.

We will struggle, for sure, however. Players who should not be here will continue to be hit on team morals, and if Glazers do not feck off - nothing will really improve fundamentally. We need these fecks off asap, good January window and new club mentality by Summer
 
shabz said:
Crazy to put DDG in there. Was our best player for years. Casemiro has been much better than everyone else you named, and 4 games into this season, you can't really judge him. How much did they all cost? There was no expectation on them. Maguire, Wan Bissaka, Sancho all crazy money, all massive disappointments with Maguire and Sancho being marquee signings in their transfer windows. City and Liverpool have been two of the best teams the league has ever seen in the last 5 - 6 seasons and neither have had a British spine.

My point is that it doesn't matter what nationality these players are. They're just not good enough, whether it's ability or mentality.
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That is true (especially City) but I said earlier that is the way I see it so there is no need to mention other teams because Manchester United is not or will ever be Manchester City. And I do think it matters (the national structure of the squad) because I genuenly think it streightens the cohesion of the players and what the badge means to them (Trent kissing the Liverpool badge after dismissing Barcelona for example and lets be honest all of Citys latin superstars see themselves in Barcelona or Real Madrid at some point).I already said that is just my opinion and Im aware a lot of people dont share it with me. Some do though

Lindelof cost a lot of money (around 40 mil pounds) and its really not Maguires fault we splashed a fortune on him while we could have gotten a Championship level CB for a lot less.
Awb is doing ok and I guess I was a bit harsh on Dalot since he is doing ok too. I loved Ddg but he was a liability in his last 2-3 seasons.
 
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NewGlory said:
This. If injuries do not continue to be this bad, or worse, then Hojlund, Onana, and Amrabat can give us some memorable games, with the support of the rest if our team at their best.

We will struggle, for sure, however. Players who should not be here will continue to be hit on team morals, and if Glazers do not feck off - nothing will really improve fundamentally. We need these fecks off asap, good January window and new club mentality by Summer
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Yeah totally nailed it with second paragraph
 
Denis79 said:
We are not a team at the absolute top layer of football anymore , accepting this allows us to manage our expectations better. We have the capability to win in individual matches against any team, but keeping the pace with top clubs over time is a tall ask.

Securing a top 4 position and possibly clinching a lesser cup is where we are at the moment and where we have been for over 10 years now. Looking at it from this angle, I'm not worried about our season. A top 5 finish and a ok cup run seems doable.
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While spending more than any other club in the world over that time. Shambles.
 
buckooo1978 said:
My big worry is Ten Hag

We are an absolute circus....you think we are moving forward then someone drops an issue in his lap

it feels like his hands are tied in so many ways

If we aren't careful he will be gone
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Yeah he can only take so much before it will eventually all get on top of him
 
freddie the red said:
As a fan since I was a 10 year old in 1967 you'll guess that I've seen a fair bit but right now there's a stench of mediocrity hanging over the club that's permeating every nook and cranny both on and off the pitch.
I've become so disenfranchised that I've binned Sky and BT/TNT and have only watched MOTD once this season.
I meet up with a group of older blokes once a week for a chinwag and there's not one City fan amongst them but plenty of their young relatives are which shows how things have gone over this last decade.
It's a long haul back to the top both on and off the pitch and I may well have carked by then so I might just have seen the very best we'll ever have been.
What a mess!
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Yes I agree. I'm 63 and was hoping to see another manager have us playing for the title and Ch Lge before I pop my clogs, but every year we seem further away from it. For every glimmer of hope in one season, it turns to shit in the next it seems. I was hoping and still hope TH is the man to get us back to something like the Fergie years, but while the parasites are here, we have no chance.
 
Right now we are about three quarters of the way through a radical transition.

The amazing thing is we managed to finish third and win a cup when we were further back in our rebuild.

There is going to be an element of going backwards to go forwards while new players and a new system bed in. The injuries are killing us but, assuming all our bad luck is coming at once right now, I could see us kicking on significantly come November / December. There’ll be a few tough weeks between now and then but all that pain will be worth suffering to get us where we’re going.
 
wolvored said:
Yes I agree. I'm 63 and was hoping to see another manager have us playing for the title and Ch Lge before I pop my clogs, but every year we seem further away from it. For every glimmer of hope in one season, it turns to shit in the next it seems. I was hoping and still hope TH is the man to get us back to something like the Fergie years, but while the parasites are here, we have no chance.
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I too hope EtH is the guy but so much is wrong about the club on and off the pitch that he appears to be hamstrung left, right and centre.
 
I am not 63 but I am closer to 63 than 53. I firmly believe Eric is the man.
We may not have a PL or CL in our immediate sights but if we stick with Eric we will achieve these goals.
We all know the Glazers are the Albatross around the neck of the club. They need to be fecked out. The sooner the better. However, please, we need Eric to get us to the next level.
 
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