This team is mentally and emotionally damaged. MUFC have PTSD

Stupid thread. I'm not one to say shit like this, but this is belittling a very serious mental illness to complain about football...
 
This is still true a year later.

Maybe every worse now because the new players like Casemiro, Martinez, Ericksen and Anthony have been on the end of some humiliating losses over the past year.
 


One of the things that's common to every new player or manager who signs for this club is a comment they make in early interviews. It's usually some variant of 'This club is absolutely massive, and you don't expect it.' I don't think it's a typical fan serivce comment, I think it's a crucial insight into what we're seeing on the pitch today. Show me another club which has won jack shit in over a decade despite spending over a billion pounds, and still has the third largest fan base in the world (I'd say higher because those numbers are from a limited source).

What this means is that a very unique additional challenge that each manager and player faces at Manchester United, is the amount of publicity and exposure for what are usually the routine ups and downs at most other clubs. Given the way social media works, it's usually reflected mostly in the negatives. I keep thinking of this infographic - no other group of players receive as much online abuse as those at Manchester United, literally. I am sure that if there were quantitative ways of proving it, we'd come to same conclusion in terms of online football content, percentage of talking time on talk shows/punditry, Reddit activity, news article coverage, etc.

Every mistake that a player makes is amplified a hundred times over and fed back to them in all the different avenues possible for consumption. These players are contractually obligated to use their high visibility to provide publicity for brands, but the same visibility feeds them with all this negativity and high pressure. They work in an environment that pummels their confidence after each mistake and requires serious fecking balls to survive and perform the same simple things that would be so much easier to do at most other clubs. Onana may have shown similar errors at Inter, but he was also instrumental in Inter's success last season. Similarly, there's a reason Maguire has fewer errors when in an England shirt, and it's not just because he plays in a lower block.

I wouldn't use a term as extreme as PTSD, but I firmly believe that the reason we can't hold on to leads beyond a few minutes, the reason players like Casemiro or Onana or Lindelof make schoolboy mistakes in defence, the reason the likes of Rashford or Antony overthink their decisions and implement them poorly, and the reason the team falls apart under pressure is because of mental issues.

I think the patches of football that are good in games under ETH are really good - we play fast, direct, attacking football. In almost all the games we've lost this season, we've had moments where the next goal feels inevitable. But it is all too predictable when our heads drop. One thing I've become aware of when watching games is notice how I'm feeling at points in the game - when we're going to concede next or make an individual mistake in a high stake situation. The extremely alarming reality seems to be that the players feel the same in those moments, too. You can see Onana's shakiness right as he's about to make that mistake, you can see defenders being shaky and get caught out of position right after conceding. You can see Rashford being hesitant before a call, and Bruno's low-chance through balls and crosses become more and more reckless as he loses his head.

I firmly believe that if ETH's (and the club's) fortunes can swing to either extreme depending on the teams mentality on the pitch, in the moment. When we are on song, we look really good (a fact that is so surprisingly dismissed in the ETH sack poll thread), and when we struggle, we simply collapse.
 
Gandalf Greyhame said:


One of the things that's common to every new player or manager who signs for this club is a comment they make in early interviews. It's usually some variant of 'This club is absolutely massive, and you don't expect it.' I don't think it's a typical fan serivce comment, I think it's a crucial insight into what we're seeing on the pitch today. Show me another club which has won jack shit in over a decade despite spending over a billion pounds, and still has the third largest fan base in the world (I'd say higher because those numbers are from a limited source).

What this means is that a very unique additional challenge that each manager and player faces at Manchester United, is the amount of publicity and exposure for what are usually the routine ups and downs at most other clubs. Given the way social media works, it's usually reflected mostly in the negatives. I keep thinking of this infographic - no other group of players receive as much online abuse as those at Manchester United, literally. I am sure that if there were quantitative ways of proving it, we'd come to same conclusion in terms of online football content, percentage of talking time on talk shows/punditry, Reddit activity, news article coverage, etc.

Every mistake that a player makes is amplified a hundred times over and fed back to them in all the different avenues possible for consumption. These players are contractually obligated to use their high visibility to provide publicity for brands, but the same visibility feeds them with all this negativity and high pressure. They work in an environment that pummels their confidence after each mistake and requires serious fecking balls to survive and perform the same simple things that would be so much easier to do at most other clubs. Onana may have shown similar errors at Inter, but he was also instrumental in Inter's success last season. Similarly, there's a reason Maguire has fewer errors when in an England shirt, and it's not just because he plays in a lower block.

I wouldn't use a term as extreme as PTSD, but I firmly believe that the reason we can't hold on to leads beyond a few minutes, the reason players like Casemiro or Onana or Lindelof make schoolboy mistakes in defence, the reason the likes of Rashford or Antony overthink their decisions and implement them poorly, and the reason the team falls apart under pressure is because of mental issues.

I think the patches of football that are good in games under ETH are really good - we play fast, direct, attacking football. In almost all the games we've lost this season, we've had moments where the next goal feels inevitable. But it is all too predictable when our heads drop. One thing I've become aware of when watching games is notice how I'm feeling at points in the game - when we're going to concede next or make an individual mistake in a high stake situation. The extremely alarming reality seems to be that the players feel the same in those moments, too. You can see Onana's shakiness right as he's about to make that mistake, you can see defenders being shaky and get caught out of position right after conceding. You can see Rashford being hesitant before a call, and Bruno's low-chance through balls and crosses become more and more reckless as he loses his head.

I firmly believe that if ETH's (and the club's) fortunes can swing to either extreme depending on the teams mentality on the pitch, in the moment. When we are on song, we look really good (a fact that is so surprisingly dismissed in the ETH sack poll thread), and when we struggle, we simply collapse.
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Good post. Did feel like all the talk about Rashford being selfish got to him when he fluffed that golden opportunity on Wednesday.
 
Didn’t a previous manager try to get these guys to talk to a sports psychologist before and they couldn’t be arsed?
 
Ubik said:
I never heard about the "couldn't be arsed" part but I'm pretty sure it was Rangnick that brought one in.
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Thanks. It was Ragnick;

One of Rangnick's first acts was to bring a sports psychologist to Old Trafford, with Sascha Lense, a close confidant during his tenure at RB Leipzig, joining United's backroom staff.
 
Thom Merrilin said:
Thanks. It was Ragnick;

One of Rangnick's first acts was to bring a sports psychologist to Old Trafford, with Sascha Lense, a close confidant during his tenure at RB Leipzig, joining United's backroom staff.
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Im fairly sure he didn't join. he stayed on at Lokomotiv or whatever club they'd joined. He didn't have a chance to bring in good staff. Who was going to leave a club to join us for 5 months?
 
Gandalf Greyhame said:


One of the things that's common to every new player or manager who signs for this club is a comment they make in early interviews. It's usually some variant of 'This club is absolutely massive, and you don't expect it.' I don't think it's a typical fan serivce comment, I think it's a crucial insight into what we're seeing on the pitch today. Show me another club which has won jack shit in over a decade despite spending over a billion pounds, and still has the third largest fan base in the world (I'd say higher because those numbers are from a limited source).

What this means is that a very unique additional challenge that each manager and player faces at Manchester United, is the amount of publicity and exposure for what are usually the routine ups and downs at most other clubs. Given the way social media works, it's usually reflected mostly in the negatives. I keep thinking of this infographic - no other group of players receive as much online abuse as those at Manchester United, literally. I am sure that if there were quantitative ways of proving it, we'd come to same conclusion in terms of online football content, percentage of talking time on talk shows/punditry, Reddit activity, news article coverage, etc.

Every mistake that a player makes is amplified a hundred times over and fed back to them in all the different avenues possible for consumption. These players are contractually obligated to use their high visibility to provide publicity for brands, but the same visibility feeds them with all this negativity and high pressure. They work in an environment that pummels their confidence after each mistake and requires serious fecking balls to survive and perform the same simple things that would be so much easier to do at most other clubs. Onana may have shown similar errors at Inter, but he was also instrumental in Inter's success last season. Similarly, there's a reason Maguire has fewer errors when in an England shirt, and it's not just because he plays in a lower block.

I wouldn't use a term as extreme as PTSD, but I firmly believe that the reason we can't hold on to leads beyond a few minutes, the reason players like Casemiro or Onana or Lindelof make schoolboy mistakes in defence, the reason the likes of Rashford or Antony overthink their decisions and implement them poorly, and the reason the team falls apart under pressure is because of mental issues.

I think the patches of football that are good in games under ETH are really good - we play fast, direct, attacking football. In almost all the games we've lost this season, we've had moments where the next goal feels inevitable. But it is all too predictable when our heads drop. One thing I've become aware of when watching games is notice how I'm feeling at points in the game - when we're going to concede next or make an individual mistake in a high stake situation. The extremely alarming reality seems to be that the players feel the same in those moments, too. You can see Onana's shakiness right as he's about to make that mistake, you can see defenders being shaky and get caught out of position right after conceding. You can see Rashford being hesitant before a call, and Bruno's low-chance through balls and crosses become more and more reckless as he loses his head.

I firmly believe that if ETH's (and the club's) fortunes can swing to either extreme depending on the teams mentality on the pitch, in the moment. When we are on song, we look really good (a fact that is so surprisingly dismissed in the ETH sack poll thread), and when we struggle, we simply collapse.
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I think you’re accurately identifying an important factor here. The pressure is written quite visibly in the postures and actions of these players. It’s not a rational decision that is involved- they always refer to ‘ we’ve got to do better’ in interviews, but the truth is at the moment, they can’t. And it’s not because they simply don’t care , in my view. It goes deeper, and in that sense does resemble a sort of PTSD. The club really does need a thoroughgoing reset, top to bottom. If the Glazers cared in the slightest they would feck right off for the sake of Manchester United.
 
Ali Dia said:
Im fairly sure he didn't join. he stayed on at Lokomotiv or whatever club they'd joined. He didn't have a chance to bring in good staff. Who was going to leave a club to join us for 5 months?
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This is from the Athletic:

Ralf Rangnick has confirmed the addition of Sascha Lense and Chris Armas to his coaching staff at Manchester United.

Lense, 46, visited United’s Carrington base on Monday

That sounds to me like he at least started working for the club.
 
Thom Merrilin said:
This is from the Athletic:

Ralf Rangnick has confirmed the addition of Sascha Lense and Chris Armas to his coaching staff at Manchester United.

Lense, 46, visited United’s Carrington base on Monday

That sounds to me like he at least started working for the club.
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Apologies, it was a fella called Lars Kornetka who supposedly was his right hand man while he did a lot of his best work. He stayed on in Russia when Ralf came here. My bad,
 
Labeling what these pampered prima donnas have been through as 'traumatic' is a bit of a stretch. They're just paper tigers, lacking the mental fortitude to cut it at the sharp end for any consistent time.
 
gaffs said:
It was clear to me after the collapse today that this squad have just been through too much. Too many different managers, too many punishing defeats, too much criticism, too much disappointment. They have PTSD.

They are shot, they are fragile and they are maybe the easiest team in the league to beat.

All it took was the De Gea mistake and we were cooked. The players can see what is next and they completely implode and lose any confidence that the manager may have been trying to instill in them during the week.

Individually, the majority of the team are good players, they could go on to play in an organized Premier League team. But put them together and they look like a bunch of shell shocked veterans coming back from war.

The only answer is to rip the heart out of this team. I dont care if it means selling some of these players for next to nothing, or leaving highly paid players on the bench.

I would rather ETH assemble a team of no names and drill them hard. It seems to work for Brighton, Brentford and many other Prem teams.
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You are not wrong but it goes back to the fundamental question - if top management stays the same, are you going to get the restructuring we badly need? The fact is if Glazers stay and it looks like they will because they are shameless leeches, changing the manager, getting in a DOF won’t matter. This club is so fundamentally flawed from cultural, operating model and structure lens that merely chasing a new manager or new players won’t impact much.
 
Esquire said:
You are not wrong but it goes back to the fundamental question - if top management stays the same, are you going to get the restructuring we badly need? The fact is if Glazers stay and it looks like they will because they are shameless leeches, changing the manager, getting in a DOF won’t matter. This club is so fundamentally flawed from cultural, operating model and structure lens that merely chasing a new manager or new players won’t impact much.
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Of course, a better structure is required. Way too much negative noise at this club right now. What do we hear from City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Newcastle - next to nothing.

But i don't think it impacts the day to day of coaching and managing players, unless it is something that impacts the first team directly, like Sancho being sidelined.

I cant imagine players are going out on the field and thinking, "oh, i wish we had a better director of football". That is not making our players make dumb mistakes.

I still stand by my original post, which was from Aug 22. Too much scar tissue in this team. Last year, there was success but too many humbling defeats. This year it is even worse and it is impacting the newer signing, not just the Brunos, Rashfords etc who have been used to seeing changes of managers and bad defeats.
They have a bit of adversity, then its, "oh no, here we go again" and all of a sudden it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 
Yeah I definitely think this is a thing. Even when we’re playing well - like at Spurs - something not going our way collectively breaks us. It’s like PSG and the CL - except all the fecking time.
 
I just can't think of any solutions at the moment. The team is in tough spot mentally, it's very hard for them to get out of that on their own.
 
It's the culture now. This club has suffered so many humiliating defeats without any repercussions. Liverpool at its worst wasn't getting stuffed 6-0.

The fact that most players who played in the defeats on 2022 and 2023 are still here is just pure weakness.

Rashford, Bruno, Maguire, MCT, Shaw, Martial etc have been here for years and they keep losing and they don't just care. Even Bruno, we renewed his contract when he was hardly playing well.

The all become infected here. Imagine going to a workplace where nobody cares how anyone is performing and bad productivity for long periods is rewarded. Why the hell would a new hire try his best every day?

We need to sell them almost all as soon as possible so we can save Licha, Mainoo, Garnacho, Diallo and the next transfers. That's where ETH lost it. He didn't see that and trusted them. And that was the mistake of not keeping RR. He saw them at their worst so he knew how weak they are.
 
led_scholes said:
It's the culture now. This club has suffered so many humiliating defeats without any repercussions. Liverpool at its worst wasn't getting stuffed 6-0.

The fact that most players who played in the defeats on 2022 and 2023 are still here is just pure weakness.

Rashford, Bruno, Maguire, MCT, Shaw, Martial etc have been here for years and they keep losing and they don't just care. Even Bruno, we renewed his contract when he was hardly playing well.

The all become infected here. Imagine going to a workplace where nobody cares how anyone is performing and bad productivity for long periods is rewarded. Why the hell would a new hire try his best every day?

We need to sell them almost all as soon as possible so we can save Licha, Mainoo, Garnacho, Diallo and the next transfers. That's where ETH lost it. He didn't see that and trusted them. And that was the mistake of not keeping RR. He saw them at their worst so he knew how weak they are.
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You don't need to keep Rangnick to learn about that. In fact that can all be condensed by the consultant into a ppt slide for each player together with an overview in a 15min presentation. I'm sure that was done to some degree as part of the handover.
 
Gandalf Greyhame said:


One of the things that's common to every new player or manager who signs for this club is a comment they make in early interviews. It's usually some variant of 'This club is absolutely massive, and you don't expect it.' I don't think it's a typical fan serivce comment, I think it's a crucial insight into what we're seeing on the pitch today. Show me another club which has won jack shit in over a decade despite spending over a billion pounds, and still has the third largest fan base in the world (I'd say higher because those numbers are from a limited source).

What this means is that a very unique additional challenge that each manager and player faces at Manchester United, is the amount of publicity and exposure for what are usually the routine ups and downs at most other clubs. Given the way social media works, it's usually reflected mostly in the negatives. I keep thinking of this infographic - no other group of players receive as much online abuse as those at Manchester United, literally. I am sure that if there were quantitative ways of proving it, we'd come to same conclusion in terms of online football content, percentage of talking time on talk shows/punditry, Reddit activity, news article coverage, etc.

Every mistake that a player makes is amplified a hundred times over and fed back to them in all the different avenues possible for consumption. These players are contractually obligated to use their high visibility to provide publicity for brands, but the same visibility feeds them with all this negativity and high pressure. They work in an environment that pummels their confidence after each mistake and requires serious fecking balls to survive and perform the same simple things that would be so much easier to do at most other clubs. Onana may have shown similar errors at Inter, but he was also instrumental in Inter's success last season. Similarly, there's a reason Maguire has fewer errors when in an England shirt, and it's not just because he plays in a lower block.

I wouldn't use a term as extreme as PTSD, but I firmly believe that the reason we can't hold on to leads beyond a few minutes, the reason players like Casemiro or Onana or Lindelof make schoolboy mistakes in defence, the reason the likes of Rashford or Antony overthink their decisions and implement them poorly, and the reason the team falls apart under pressure is because of mental issues.

I think the patches of football that are good in games under ETH are really good - we play fast, direct, attacking football. In almost all the games we've lost this season, we've had moments where the next goal feels inevitable. But it is all too predictable when our heads drop. One thing I've become aware of when watching games is notice how I'm feeling at points in the game - when we're going to concede next or make an individual mistake in a high stake situation. The extremely alarming reality seems to be that the players feel the same in those moments, too. You can see Onana's shakiness right as he's about to make that mistake, you can see defenders being shaky and get caught out of position right after conceding. You can see Rashford being hesitant before a call, and Bruno's low-chance through balls and crosses become more and more reckless as he loses his head.

I firmly believe that if ETH's (and the club's) fortunes can swing to either extreme depending on the teams mentality on the pitch, in the moment. When we are on song, we look really good (a fact that is so surprisingly dismissed in the ETH sack poll thread), and when we struggle, we simply collapse.
Click to expand...

Really good post.

I've been banging on about the mental aspect for ages. It surprises me that a lot of fans aren't taking this into account. Think about it, we've had great players like Casemiro etc and all seem to succumb to the pressure. Why? They wouldn't make half the mistakes elsewhere that they make with us. It's definitely something else with our club.
I know nothing about sports psychology but can only think the first thing the team needs to do is ignore all media (especially when they're in this bad form). Just shut it out.
Next thing, the coaches need to employ someone to devise a method which the team can use to counteract the negative feelings/thoughts. I'm not sure how to explain it, but I think it's not talking therapy as such but just something practical? I dunno, but something needs to be done.

We need to remember that the pressure is different from the normal. In the past we had Sir Alex as a buffer between the team and the press for example, plus he had credit in the bank. Arterta struggled for a few seasons but you didn't see the media etc go after him for every mistake - he had time to just build. Alternatively, no United manager is able to build and move forward because of all the negative attention that turns toxic quite quickly especially with the media fanning the flames.

Changing managers etc won't change anything at this point. I think all of us is just gonna have to hold our nerves and get through it somehow.
 
He basically means his message isn’t getting through to Bruno and Rashford.

Sir Moanalot and Sir fecking Sulkalot.
 
I do agree with some not being able to deal with the pressure. Has Rashford overthought what’s been written online? He’s recently gone from being too greedy to now trying to pass in the wrong situations.

If anything the club should be actively stopping these guys reading social media and having mental health coaches. No doubt we don’t do any of this.
 
This is why I think we need a manager that is good at building people up, amongst other things. I don't think this would happen under Fergie, and I'm sure there are others that share the same leadership traits that can build a player up. Klopp does it, Ange has done it. It's all well and good saying 'you need to change your body language' but that body language is a symptom of something deeper and our managers are failing badly at part of their job with regards to building confidence, belief, resilience in players. They have to truly believe what they are being told and buy into it. If you convince a player he is better than he is, you will get more from that player than a player that is lacking in belief. If you do that with a whole team then that's when special things happen at clubs. Jose used to be great at this pre United. Let's not forget many of them are still young guys in the grand scheme of things.
 
People probably do underestimate what it's like to play for Man United. The fans in this country are vile and nothing gets the dribbling masses excited like United in crisis.

The players seem to get engulfed in this and it almost becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The players are almost guided by hand into a crisis by the media bullshit and the laughing hyena oppo fans.

Fergie never had this problem as firstly he had players with a much stronger mentality but also didn't have the ridiculous social media circus and every moron having a sounding board for their ridiculous opinions.
 
gaffs said:
Of course, a better structure is required. Way too much negative noise at this club right now. What do we hear from City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Newcastle - next to nothing.

But i don't think it impacts the day to day of coaching and managing players, unless it is something that impacts the first team directly, like Sancho being sidelined.

I cant imagine players are going out on the field and thinking, "oh, i wish we had a better director of football". That is not making our players make dumb mistakes.

I still stand by my original post, which was from Aug 22. Too much scar tissue in this team. Last year, there was success but too many humbling defeats. This year it is even worse and it is impacting the newer signing, not just the Brunos, Rashfords etc who have been used to seeing changes of managers and bad defeats.
They have a bit of adversity, then its, "oh no, here we go again" and all of a sudden it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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I don’t disagree with you, and think your original post is a great one. It is actually a very nuanced analysis not just from a Manchester United standpoint but is a question which plagues every troubled large organisation. You called it PTSD and others call it lack of “mentality”. This is why people who are just asking we need to get ETH out need to understand that getting prime Sir Alex in won’t fix the problem on the performance of the team. The commonality of all these years in the wilderness is the culture. Players say they want to compete. But why will they die for the cause when they know top 4 is good enough with the Glazers? Or that if they don’t get top 4 only the manager will be sacked? Think about it, we only managed to get rid of the likes of Bailly this summer. How many years did it take for them to get John Murtough into a football director role?

I am afraid that this situation will be the subject of a future Harvard business school case study. How can owners be so single mindedly focused on valuation creation that they willingly destroy the culture and soul of an organisation that made it wildly successful in the first place.
 
Di Maria's angel said:
Good post. Did feel like all the talk about Rashford being selfish got to him when he fluffed that golden opportunity on Wednesday.
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I don’t think he had a single shot on goal on Tuesday night. After something like 19 shots at goal in a recent league game. Definitely a response to criticism. But obviously impossible to know if it’s criticism from the manager, or external.
 
Jazz said:
Really good post.

I've been banging on about the mental aspect for ages. It surprises me that a lot of fans aren't taking this into account. Think about it, we've had great players like Casemiro etc and all seem to succumb to the pressure. Why? They wouldn't make half the mistakes elsewhere that they make with us. It's definitely something else with our club.
I know nothing about sports psychology but can only think the first thing the team needs to do is ignore all media (especially when they're in this bad form). Just shut it out.
Next thing, the coaches need to employ someone to devise a method which the team can use to counteract the negative feelings/thoughts. I'm not sure how to explain it, but I think it's not talking therapy as such but just something practical? I dunno, but something needs to be done.

We need to remember that the pressure is different from the normal. In the past we had Sir Alex as a buffer between the team and the press for example, plus he had credit in the bank. Arterta struggled for a few seasons but you didn't see the media etc go after him for every mistake - he had time to just build. Alternatively, no United manager is able to build and move forward because of all the negative attention that turns toxic quite quickly especially with the media fanning the flames.

Changing managers etc won't change anything at this point. I think all of us is just gonna have to hold our nerves and get through it somehow.
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Good post and agree with you. From a business study alone, current situation with our club is fascinating, but I’m not a masochist and don’t enjoy it one bit. But even us on the outside can see it and I’m sure the club employes sports psychologists to talk to the players. These are multimillion pound assets and it cannot be the case that the club won’t take care of their mental well-being/resilience. But this thread is a good one in that there is actually some thought going into trying to figure out what’s wrong with the club and some practical fixes. That said, it doesn’t matter whether it is a simple lazy statement or the conclusion of a deep reflection - it’s clear that first and foremost the culture needs a reset and without the Glazers going and the players knowing they will pay the price for failure, I’m afraid we will at best, even if ETH rights the ship shortly, be only a “fight for top 4” club going forward.
 
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