The squad is broken

It's been obvious since early last season.

I said it months ago - we needed a significant rebuild over the transfer window, not just for quality but because the dressing room is mentally broken. We needed to bring in a bunch of new players even if they weren't that much better on the individual level than the players they were replacing, but so we could reset the culture of the dressing room. Obviously they should also be more suited to the way ETH wants to play than many of the ones we're trying to use today.

Once again I fear we've given the manager too much power. We needed to heed Ralf's warnings and commit to a significant rebuild. Instead we bought in ETH and seemed to let him say he wanted to start from the beginning, give all the players a chance to try again and only bring in the 'right' players. Combine that with our scouting team either being terrible and getting rebuilt itself so couldn't provide any recommendations, or ETH simply not trusting them and only wanting players that he himself had knowledge of, and we've set ourselves up for failure. I'm all for ETH being given plenty of time to get things right on the pitch, but we need somebody above him with much more experience in the squad-building phase to control that.
 
De Gea - basically lack everything as a goalkeeper. No command, sweeping, ball playing, high ball claiming, poor concentratin
Maguire - slow - making him prone to counterattacks. a bit panicky when pressed and loves to aimlessly head the ball forward without pressure.
Shaw - lethargic, casual. lacks fight and urgency.
Dalot - zero defending ability
Fred - prone to mistakes and possesion loss.
McTominay - jogging master. he lacks everything apart from duels and picking fights.
Rashford - plays like he is a rival fan forced to put on man utd shirt. lacks fight, urgency. makes no runs, fails to win any duals.
Bruno - no ball shielding. prone to mistakes and posession loss.
Ronaldo - old, lacks energy
 
The players have no dignity, they don't care to get humiliated over and over. Bunch of spineless losers. Hate them all.
 
Nothing is fecking broken, they're just bad football players, end of.
Bar Eriksen and maybe Varane and Ronnie, none of the starting 11 today should be on the pitch for a club this size, not even Sancho.
 
JeffFromHK said:
De Gea - basically lack everything as a goalkeeper. No command, sweeping, ball playing, high ball claiming, poor concentratin
Maguire - slow - making him prone to counterattacks. a bit panicky when pressed and loves to aimlessly head the ball forward without pressure.
Shaw - lethargic, casual. lacks fight and urgency.
Dalot - zero defending ability
Fred - prone to mistakes and possesion loss.
McTominay - jogging master. he lacks everything apart from duels and picking fights.
Rashford - plays like he is a rival fan forced to put on man utd shirt. lacks fight, urgency. makes no runs, fails to win any duals.
Bruno - no ball shielding. prone to mistakes and posession loss.
Ronaldo - old, lacks energy
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You forgot Eriksen who's been utter useless out there alongside Martinez.
 
Broken is the exact word Neville used last season.

Club has no will to fix it. Club is dying.
 
Makes the dicking around with FdJ rather than looking at other signings even more moronic.
 
Where are all the pre season tough guys gone? Tell us how we're dramatic and should stop supporting the club because we said we need signings and problems were obvious very early on in pre season.

Keyboard warriors all summer
 
Pity there wasn’t such a thing as a transfer window where we could sell these players and buy new ones…
 
The club is broken. There is no way there’s not a deeper lying problem here than the players or the tactics or the manager. This is brokenness beyond anything that can be quantified, and the poison that will prevent it from being whole again cannot be extracted.
 
BarstoolProphet said:
Hard to say as he doesn't share anything in public. But a statement could be to play kids and point to pre-season perfomances etc.
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He’s coming from Ajax to one of the worlds biggest clubs. Probably dreamt about a job like this for years. You think he’s going to come in and try rock the boat like that? No chance.
 
The other thing is I don't think the players are intentionally chucking it. I just think thir confidence in themselves and their teammates (the last bit is the most important) has gone completely.
They don't trust eachother
 
It would seem that it is very broken, new players are required, I know people are holding out for top players but we're not a top club anymore,we simply need better players not the best players, the best wont touch us with a barge pole. We need players that can get us into the top 6. Then we can work towards top 4. We could be mid table or worse without new hungry players.
 
Massive Spanner said:
He’s coming from Ajax to one of the worlds biggest clubs. Probably dreamt about a job like this for years. You think he’s going to come in and try rock the boat like that? No chance.
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Well apparently he had strong demands before accepting the job. Atleast that was what reporters told us. Also everyone were saying that he doesn't just go after the name of the club, more that the project fits him.
 
What the feck is causing this to happen? Most of these players have previously shown that they're capable of much better than this. While I won't claim that we have a decidedly great squad, nobody in their right mind can possibly say that its constituent parts are so woeful that being 4-0 down in the first half against Watford is expected. This is an entire team that chronically performs far, far below what they've proven they can do, and it's such a mystery to me. No amount of inadequate coaching or toxic dressing room culture can explain this level of grotesque ineptitude, and we're surely far beyond the point of blaming the manager, too.

I genuinely can't think of anything that would lead to this state of affairs. This is downright bizarre. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd say that the way it looks indicates that the players have collectively decided to sabotage the club, but I know that's not actually the case. It's just the only thing that would adequately explain how things can be this bad. Nothing else suffices. I simply cannot picture in my mind any reality where such things as aging club facilities, parasitic owners or negative vibes would cause an entire team to underperform so severely for such a long time. This is frankly inexplicable.
 
youmeletsfly said:
Nothing is fecking broken, they're just bad football players, end of.
Bar Eriksen and maybe Varane and Ronnie, none of the starting 11 today should be on the pitch for a club this size, not even Sancho.
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Ronaldo & Varane :lol: One of them finished since 2018, the other one hasn't shown shit at United
 
Relevated said:
Wasn't last season a write off?
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Hammondo said:
I agree but we have wrote off a lot of seasons and done nothing productive with it.
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Yes. But it wasn't about anything in particular. It certainly wasn't about building for the long-term.

ETH cannot possibly persist with this bunch and he would be well advised to stop saying we need to win every game and instead say that he wants a young and hungry squad - pretty much the same as Ralf.
 
Conor said:
I guarantee that behind all of their upcoming shite social media posts, most of the existing players from last season genuinely won't care about today, they didn't care about last week, and because of this, this sort of shit will keep happening. They are completely checked out, back to square one after whatever brief moment of positivity they experienced in pre-season.

Rashford, Shaw, Maguire, Dalot, Fernandes(and more not starting today) all need to be out of the team and never back in it, I genuinely don't care if we replace them with worse players, they just need to be fresh mentally.
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On the contrat, I think they care.
 
Adisa said:
Rangnick recognised it. It's a broken squad and needs to be dismantled. We can run through as many managers as possible but until we do what needs to be done, this will continue.
I don't even think it is a question of talent. I think it is psychological. They are not fit to play.
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No sh*t sherlock
 
Squad is shite but it's shite because of the higher ups.

Board made of 6 glazers
Woodward's uni mate as CEO
Some no mark as DoF
No squad planning and terrible scouting.

You can bin the squad but we'll just sign more shite to replace them.
 
They are mentally done. There is no confidence, when things don't go as they had prepared for, then it's all down hill. They give up, effort goes down, concede more.
 
The reality is every manager that comes in has to use the players that the previous manager used and in our case there’s still players there from when LVG and Jose were there, say what you like about Rangnick as a coach but he saw the squad was fecked and said we needed 10 players and loads out.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result and that’s what we do, let the new manager bring a few players in and expect him to ‘coach’ players that weren’t good enough 3 managers ago then fire the manager and start the cycle again.

If I was ETH I’d go to Arnold and say this squad is fecking awful and I can’t do anything like what you expect with them so scale down your expectations and I’m going to play the kids so the squad has a reset. Honestly bring Henderson, Laird, Mengi, Garner, Mejbri, Zidane and Garnacho into the first team and tell them there’s zero pressure and bin off the deadwood even if it means writing off a season or two.
 
Adisa said:
Rangnick recognised it. It's a broken squad and needs to be dismantled. We can run through as many managers as possible but until we do what needs to be done, this will continue.
I don't even think it is a question of talent. I think it is psychological. They are not fit to play.
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What’s frustrating is we’ve known this for months. It’s not a shock. Yet the club has sent the new manager with virtually the same team as last season. In fact they’ve given him a weaker squad than the one last year.
 
Adisa said:
Rangnick recognised it. It's a broken squad and needs to be dismantled. We can run through as many managers as possible but until we do what needs to be done, this will continue.
I don't even think it is a question of talent. I think it is psychological. They are not fit to play.
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It’s both. They were never good enough, but now they know it. McT, Rashford, DDG, Maguire, Shaw, Fred. Geniunely shipping all 6 out is a good start. Get what we can and start anew. Because none of them will ever be part of a successful team here
 
The club and everything under it is broken. It has been for a long time. We’re the anti Midas. Everything we touch turns to shit.
 
Chief123 said:
What’s frustrating is we’ve known this for months. It’s not a shock. Yet the club has sent the new manager with virtually the same team as last season. In fact they’ve given him a weaker squad than the one last year.
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Yep, Matic and Pogba had their flaws but they still had some technical qualities, now we still have McFred and the papering over the cracks option seems an attacking midfielder Eriksen in deep midfield.
 
Relevated said:
The Pep Guardiola is my idol chose to give them all a new start.

Everyone knew what these players are like and their ability

It's not their fault if you decide not to sell them opportunity after opportunity
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What opportunity? Have we got a good bid for De Gea, Rashford, Maguire, Shaw, McTominay, Fred or even Ronaldo lately?

It’s not on the manager. The board hasn’t backed him properly yet (both in terms of in- and outgoings) and the players have been beyond awful.

We’ll see how he reacts to this, of course. At some point he’s going to take a part of the blame for the results.
 
KeanoMagicHat said:
Yep, Matic and Pogba had their flaws but they still had some technical qualities, now we still have McFred and the papering over the cracks option seems an attacking midfielder Eriksen in deep midfield.
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Realistically they should have been replaced last summer. We knew Pogba wanted out. We knew Matic isn’t the player he used to be. Get their replacements in and give them a year to bed in.
 
De Gea has to be on thin ice. His blunder started the whole rout.

I still back Ten Hag. But the players will throw him under the bus like they did the previous three managers.
 
One or two players more won't solve shit. We need half a new team. Just as Ralph said in all honesty
 
JeffFromHK said:
De Gea - basically lack everything as a goalkeeper. No command, sweeping, ball playing, high ball claiming, poor concentratin
Maguire - slow - making him prone to counterattacks. a bit panicky when pressed and loves to aimlessly head the ball forward without pressure.
Shaw - lethargic, casual. lacks fight and urgency.
Dalot - zero defending ability
Fred - prone to mistakes and possesion loss.
McTominay - jogging master. he lacks everything apart from duels and picking fights.
Rashford - plays like he is a rival fan forced to put on man utd shirt. lacks fight, urgency. makes no runs, fails to win any duals.
Bruno - no ball shielding. prone to mistakes and posession loss.
Ronaldo - old, lacks energy
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Agree with all of this. Bruno would work well in a good team but would get rid of the rest. Just give them away, don't care.
 
Adisa said:
Of you think one player is making a difference, you don't understand the scale of our problems.
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I know our problems come mainly from the owners and not having football people making football decisions.
 
Kill 'em all said:
I know our problems come mainly from the owners and not having football people making football decisions.
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Even the team's problems cannot be solved by a single player or even a couple of players.
 
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