Who's to blame for the current crisis?

Lentwood said:
That's why I hate to say it (I really do) but I've lost faith in him, because he's NOT had the same problems previous managers had with poor planning, bad squad management, ludicrous transfer sagas, players bought for marketing reasons, contracts renewed to 'protect assets', £350K salaries handed out like sweets, interference from the Board and a lack of support in making big decisions.
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Fair post but I can't really agree with this bit. Arnold/Murtough while arguably doing better doesn't suddenly eradicate the build up of problems stemming from 10 years of Woodward in charge. While some of those issues have been resolved or diminished he is still dealing with the hangover of the Woodward era, so it doesn't seem fair to say 'we're running things better now, therefore it's just the manager's fault'

You left out the fact as well that Murtough has just let Ten Hag run the show on transfers. This is not what a DoF does, he's meant to help set the vision and stick to it, not just enact it on behalf of the manager otherwise he might as well just be head of transfer negotiations.

Against Galatasary we had five Ten Hag signings on the pitch, though I'm not sure if you can count Amrabat since he was played in completely the wrong position out of necessity. Onana is still bedding in as are Mount and Hojlund. That leaves just Casemiro who was an emergency stop gap signing (despite the PR team trying to convince us otherwise)

Look to the bench and it's barely any better, Evans an over the hill emergency signing, the 3rd keeper who is just there to make up the numbers while Heaton is injured, and Eriksen who I'd put in the Casemiro bracket of maybe being good for one or two seasons.
 
DRJosh said:
Why did we not have a proper succession plan after Sir Alex? I blame the person responsible for that
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I mean if we're being honest the person mostly responsible for the mess that was replacing Fergie was SAF himself. He was on a rolling contract from year to year and had been giving every indication he wasn't slowing down anytime soon. He decided in December he was retiring but didn't tell the club until March, fair enough that was his right but by that stage all the top coaches that were changing clubs will have already spoken for, for the next season. Pep, Ancelotti Jose etc, all changed clubs that year. He'd earned his retirement but in hindsight the best thing for the club would have been for him to stay on for a year and inform the club that summer he'd be stepping down in a year.

Should the club have had more of a plan in place ro replace him? Yes of course, definitely and if you listen to Gill's opinions on that over the years it seems like there was an idea at least in place. But that went out the window when SAF actually retired. A big part of our problems is we didn't have a DOF, which we of course wouldn't have had with SAF still around. Add in Gill leaving at the same time and it was the perfect storm clusterfeck that resulted in the worlds biggest club appointing a man like David Moyes.
 
stevoc said:
I mean if we're being honest the person mostly responsible for the mess that was replacing Fergie was SAF himself. He was on a rolling contract from year to year and had been giving every indication he wasn't slowing down anytime soon. He decided in December he was retiring but didn't tell the club until March, fair enough that was his right but by that stage all the top coaches that were changing clubs will have already spoken for, for the next season. Pep, Ancelotti Jose etc, all changed clubs that year. He'd earned his retirement but in hindsight the best thing for the club would have been for him to stay on for a year and inform the club that summer he'd be stepping down in a year.

Should the club have had more of a plan in place ro replace him? Yes of course, definitely and if you listen to Gill's opinions on that over the years it seems like there was an idea at least in place. But that went out the window when SAF actually retired. A big part of our problems is we didn't have a DOF, which we of course wouldn't have had with SAF still around. Add in Gill leaving at the same time and it was the perfect storm clusterfeck that resulted in the worlds biggest club appointing a man like David Moyes.
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Well said.

And as a consequence we’re caught in this continuous cycle of mediocrity. The irony is the man responsible for most of our success may also have been inadvertently responsible for our decline - which is still happening.
 
stevoc said:
I mean if we're being honest the person mostly responsible for the mess that was replacing Fergie was SAF himself. He was on a rolling contract from year to year and had been giving every indication he wasn't slowing down anytime soon. He decided in December he was retiring but didn't tell the club until March, fair enough that was his right but by that stage all the top coaches that were changing clubs will have already spoken for, for the next season. Pep, Ancelotti Jose etc, all changed clubs that year. He'd earned his retirement but in hindsight the best thing for the club would have been for him to stay on for a year and inform the club that summer he'd be stepping down in a year.

Should the club have had more of a plan in place ro replace him? Yes of course, definitely and if you listen to Gill's opinions on that over the years it seems like there was an idea at least in place. But that went out the window when SAF actually retired. A big part of our problems is we didn't have a DOF, which we of course wouldn't have had with SAF still around. Add in Gill leaving at the same time and it was the perfect storm clusterfeck that resulted in the worlds biggest club appointing a man like David Moyes.
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Well I don't agree that Sir Alex is in any way responsible for what is going on now.
He had just won the PL Again with an average squad.
And one thing about retirement is that once you have made your mind up, it is always best to go on your own terms and at the top.

A club like Manchester United should by now have had sufficient time and sufficient resources to have moved on and become successful again.

The people who are to blame are the owners and everyone involved in the playing side.
But especially the players.
They are plenty good enough to have made a much better start, even with the injuries.
And Ten Hag himself for not being firm enough and dropping underperforming players.
 
As fans we need to stop buying into the media distraction that it's either the manager or the players. They rarely ever point at the Glazers and co. just because they are afraid to lose access to the club's comms team or even worse, their jobs. It's no secret what the biggest problem at the club is.

The people at the top need to be made culpable for creating and fostering such an environment. They are mostly a bunch of nepotistic financiers and leeches who are unqualified to run what was the world's biggest football club. They are the ones who need to go immediately. The rest we can sort out with the right people at the top.

There's only one way out of this and that's a fan revolt.
 
Buster15 said:
Well I don't agree that Sir Alex is in any way responsible for what is going on now.
He had just won the PL Again with an average squad.
And one thing about retirement is that once you have made your mind up, it is always best to go on your own terms and at the top.

A club like Manchester United should by now have had sufficient time and sufficient resources to have moved on and become successful again.

The people who are to blame are the owners and everyone involved in the playing side.
But especially the players.
They are plenty good enough to have made a much better start, even with the injuries.
And Ten Hag himself for not being firm enough and dropping underperforming players.
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Well I don't know why you've quoted me then mate as my post was not in any claiming SAF was responsible for the current crisis.

It was about the clubs succession plan for SAF or lack thereof.
 
DRJosh said:
Well said.

And as a consequence we’re caught in this continuous cycle of mediocrity. The irony is the man responsible for most of our success may also have been inadvertently responsible for our decline - which is still happening.
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Well at the beginning yes but to be fair we've had the resources over the last decade to put things right. Thanks to the Glazers (mostly), Woodward, no DOF, Moyes, Van Gaal, Jose, Ole, Ralf etc we've lurched from false dawn to crisis in what seems like a never ending cycle of feckwittery.
 
Waynne said:
Yes the person to blame is the one who employed him. The heap of shite we've been waddling around in the past decade is due to owners who just don't give a feck. That don't give a feck attitude is all cascading down to the manager, the staff and the players. Owners who will stop at nothing to win on the pitch, to get the best in class personell to steer the ship will get my respect but in the here and now we're stuck with Ten Hag because getting rid of him now will only worsen the situation we're currently in.

I'm all for giving him the time he needs to sort things out. I'm not against it as its our only option now however the rest of the fanbase may not be so patient.
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So you saying poor owners have hired a poor manager?
 
stevoc said:
Well I don't know why you've quoted me then mate as my post was not in any claiming SAF was responsible for the current crisis.

It was about the clubs succession plan for SAF or lack thereof.
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In that case I apologise for misunderstanding your post matey.
 
the most unhinged of the threads....maybe :lol:

anyway, i blame Silvestre for not establishing a better succession plan for left back
 
It all comes down to the Glazers. They were just very, very lucky that Fergie's brilliance managed to disguise their incompetence for so many years.

If Fergie was on a rolling contract (which I believe was the case), then someone should have been keeping a rolling shortlist of potential successors, because obviously the risk was always there that he'd make a sudden decision to retire (if even because he was in his 70s by the end). This didn't happen because we didn't have a proper football structure.

You can try and excuse this by saying Fergie (and Gill) wouldn't have consented to that structure, which a) we don't really know, Fergie in particular was very fond of delegating responsibilities, and b) could have still been planned has a succession protocol for when he eventually retired.

Woodward was a disaster and had far too much influence over footballing matters. He was a Glazer appointment.

The absolute shit show that is our current financial situation is entirely a Glazer creation.

It all comes back to them.

We all know that Fergie flirted with retirement in the early 00s, but changed his mind. It's not particularly unrealistic to suggest that he could have changed it again not long after the Glazer takeover.

Two consecutive third place finishes, one in a season where Arsenal went the entire league campaign unbeaten (something he never achieved) and the next had Mourinho's cash-rich Chelsea breaking his PL record points total, losing just once, and conceding just 15 goals. When you add in what was essentially blame thrown in Fergie's direction for the Glazer takeover, he may well have considered retirement again, and god knows what sorry state we'd be in if he'd left in 2005.
 
DRJosh said:
Why did we not have a proper succession plan after Sir Alex? I blame the person responsible for that
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We did, and if we had stuck with it, we’d have another premier league or two in the bag.
 
sugar_kane said:
Fair post but I can't really agree with this bit. Arnold/Murtough while arguably doing better doesn't suddenly eradicate the build up of problems stemming from 10 years of Woodward in charge. While some of those issues have been resolved or diminished he is still dealing with the hangover of the Woodward era, so it doesn't seem fair to say 'we're running things better now, therefore it's just the manager's fault'

You left out the fact as well that Murtough has just let Ten Hag run the show on transfers. This is not what a DoF does, he's meant to help set the vision and stick to it, not just enact it on behalf of the manager otherwise he might as well just be head of transfer negotiations.

Against Galatasary we had five Ten Hag signings on the pitch, though I'm not sure if you can count Amrabat since he was played in completely the wrong position out of necessity. Onana is still bedding in as are Mount and Hojlund. That leaves just Casemiro who was an emergency stop gap signing (despite the PR team trying to convince us otherwise)

Look to the bench and it's barely any better, Evans an over the hill emergency signing, the 3rd keeper who is just there to make up the numbers while Heaton is injured, and Eriksen who I'd put in the Casemiro bracket of maybe being good for one or two seasons.
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Of course its all about context. I remember when Jose was in charge and after he finished 2nd, all some people did was talk about "net spend" over some arbitrary period and question why we had finished so far behind the oil cheats.

Under those circumstances, I defended the manager to the hilt, using largely the same arguments you have used to defend ETH...lack of support from a DoF, legacy issues with the squad, poor recruitment team etc...and again, with OGS.

The problem is though - are the problems that ETH has faced so insurmountable that it excuses a 7-0 defeat to Liverpool, being unable to win an away game and three consecutive home defeats to Palace, Brighton and Galatasary? Personally I don't think so.

As I said in my first post, he's been allowed to let players leave he doesn't rate - a luxury Jose, OGS and LvG didn't appear to have.

He's also been allowed to dictate who we buy - now, as you say, that might not be a good thing (probably isnt), but it's surely preferable, from a managers perspective, than having players forced on you based on their name and/or reputation. Either way, he can't say he hasn't been given what he's asked for.

I'm not yet at the point were I've totally given up on him, but I am slightly tired of the excuses made for him. Sure, in the context of winning the league, our senior management is well off it, but in the context of finishing top four and beating teams like Palace and Galatasary...I'm not sure those excuses wash with me. Not when the bad performances are becoming more common than the good performances.

My view is that if he doesn't get this team performing better, and we don't finish top six, he has to go.
 
The Glazers. They have zero interest in football. They run it like a business and don't care what happens. They are not even good at business because they allowed someone like Woodward piss off all the money that they allowed him to take.
The rest of the club managers or staff or coaching infrastructure or player scouting, negotiation, signing, extensions are all a result of the incompetence coming down from the Glazers.
 
I highly doubt any sane club would let 2 LBs go on loan leaving the squad with only real LB (Shaw) and a RB who can play as LB (Dalot) (somehow Lisandro who can also play there) at the start of this season when Shaw hadn't been injured yet, thought since this is Manchester United, that stuff happened anyway
 
Obviously the owners are a massive problem, but ETH has to take his share. We are in his 2nd season and we still don't have a definitive style of play. Ange has been at Spurs 5 mins and he's completely got the team playing to his chosen style of play. His lack of reaction when we are being beaten is a concern, we've seen him stand by and look clueless in games where we have been schooled. Strange substitutions, a lack of letting young players get time whilst watching week in, week out, senior players barely able to run at times. The likes of Casemiro, Antony, Bruno, Rashford and Onana have to know there is repercussions if you continue to play poorly. I appreciate he might be reluctant to fire inexperienced players in too soon, but at this rate their workrate and enthusiasm alone would be an upgrade.
 
stevoc said:
I mean if we're being honest the person mostly responsible for the mess that was replacing Fergie was SAF himself. He was on a rolling contract from year to year and had been giving every indication he wasn't slowing down anytime soon. He decided in December he was retiring but didn't tell the club until March, fair enough that was his right but by that stage all the top coaches that were changing clubs will have already spoken for, for the next season. Pep, Ancelotti Jose etc, all changed clubs that year. He'd earned his retirement but in hindsight the best thing for the club would have been for him to stay on for a year and inform the club that summer he'd be stepping down in a year.

Should the club have had more of a plan in place ro replace him? Yes of course, definitely and if you listen to Gill's opinions on that over the years it seems like there was an idea at least in place. But that went out the window when SAF actually retired. A big part of our problems is we didn't have a DOF, which we of course wouldn't have had with SAF still around. Add in Gill leaving at the same time and it was the perfect storm clusterfeck that resulted in the worlds biggest club appointing a man like David Moyes.
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Don't agree with this at all. It was not nor will it ever be SAF's job to decide who the new Manger should be. That is up to the club. What club in world football has a manager name his replacement? None.

You're in dreamland if you think SAF didn't inform the club until March that he was retiring. He kept if from the players yes, but not the board.

Same as David Gill leaving. The club had no plan in place for when he left. That's not Gills fault.

The problem we are in has nothing to do with SAF or Gill. It has everything to do with the owners not having any plans or understanding what it takes to run a football club. The fact that some people even think that shows what a good job the owners are doing at diverting attention away for their serious mishandling of our club. I can't think of another club run as bad as ours.
 
Well forget SAF ..he is not to blame.. it's been 10 years already
What needs to happen...
Recruitment drive to get young players from all around the world
Integrate them to the team
Setup umbrella clubs all around the world to get the best players especially Africa and South America
Restart basically
 
Anyone blaming anyone but the manager and team right now needs to look at what Newcastle have done.

Eddie Howe comes in and takes them from bottom of the league to the Champions League in 18 months.

Last night, stuff PSG 4-1. Goals from Fabian Schar and Almiron, who were signed under the rotten Mike Ashley era. Longstaff who is an academy player and one from Dan Burn, who was knocking about in the lower leagues not too long ago.

We all see the spirit and togetherness in that side. The polar opposite of United.

Yes, they have spent on Tonalli, Guimarães, Isak and Gordon, but half their players were signed under Mike Ashley, when there wasn't any transfer guru in place.

Yet still people are saying Ten Hag needs more time to get more of his players in. How about getting something out of what you have, like Eddie How has, with far inferior players?
 
The Glazers lack of knowledge and interest in the sport is what is essentially killing us. They at least need to be able to hire the right people to run the club but since they neither know the scene very well or even care about soccer they won't hire the best people to run this club. They were lucky to buy the club when we had one of the best managers of all time and didn't really have to make any crucial decisions when it came to hiring for important positions.
 
Its all about the manager. The reason why city are doing so well is because of pep being arguably the greatest manager of all time. When he leaves, watch them fall.

Its better to have a lion leading sheep than a sheep leading lions. The reason we won so much under ferguson was ferguson. Same with liverpool in the 70s.

Hypothetically if ferguson had stayed on for another ten years, we would easily have another four or five Premier leagues.
 
The Glazers. Obviously there is a discussion about the amount of money they take out of the club to service debts. But there main crime is who the have picked as executives and the culture that has brought up. From Woodward who clearly had no idea how to manage the football side of the business, and was more concerned by marketing and PR and image than creating a cohesive team. To Arnold Murtough and Fletcher, who have spent 1/2 billion under there watch and things are as much in disarray as they have ever been.

They are responsible for the culture problems at the club, the endless bank contracts, the weird press briefings (Wilson who is on the Guardian football weekly has bizarre story about the united press officers at half time) , over spending on mediocre players or flashy names.

At the moment there is no hope that things are going to get significantly better no matter who the manager is, because until the Glazer go, and new owner bring in there own team to run the club these problems are not going to be solved.
 
I think ultimately it has proven to be very difficult to succeed here in general. We can get into the different managers that have come and gone and certainly ther are plenty of arguments that can be made about their unsuitability. We did appoint some dinosaurs or never beens, which isn't exactly a good starting point for steering a ship as unwieldy as United post Ferguson.

But there is an undoubted pattern and I think ETH struggling is probably a nail in the coffin of the argument that it is just about managerial capability, if that ever was an argument with validity. ETH has an excellent track record, is young, has energy, is/was progressive. Unless you get one of a handful of elite managers that are generally not available then this is pretty close to the top of the list of people you would want to see at your club. Him or someone like him. At this point why would there be any confidence that a manager of a similar ilk can come in and address our particular challenge under the current structure? The odds are poor.

I think ultimately until the ownership changes it will be a continual struggle. I don't think the interest is there beyond the financial outcomes for them, which means the planning isn't there, the infrastructure isn't there, the communication is poor which impacts everything from signings to fan engagement with the club and destroys the atmosphere around the place. There's nothing to grasp onto that's positive except for the fact we are Man United and we have money each window which is just relying on the intrinsic value of the club. But everyone spends and they're doing it with more direction in every aspect of the above.
 
I agree with everyone highlighting the original source of this catastrophic is our lack of planning prior to SAF’s departure.

The truth is he was unique. A talisman surrounded by a core group of people who he could trust. He controlled all aspects of the club, alongside those people, in a structure moulded to exactly how he wanted it through decades of being in his position.

The fundamental mistake was thinking that at the time of his retirement, we were replacing a manager. Because we weren’t. We were replacing someone whose roles and responsibilities far transcended that of a typical manager.

We not only failed to realise that before his retirement, but also for several years after. Now I don’t know if that’s ignorance. Or Woodward wanting power. Or a proactive and bad decision. But we kept on thinking someone could come in and do what he could do.

And whilst we failed to deal with that, many aspects of our club have imploded. They’ve rotted whilst left unattended.

So we see many many threads here talking about our managers and our players and our style of play, but there is a house engulfed in mould which makes it uninhabitable. Doesn’t matter who we stick in it, they too will suffer from that mould and fail.

So for me, I do firmly blame the Glazers. Not because they leech our money (well, that too), but because as owners of our football club they have failed to appoint the right people with the right skill set to run this thing properly.
 
gaffs said:
100% ? Really?

Maybe this is the issue. If fans think the issues are 100% down to The Glazers, then it gives the players and manager a readymade excuse.

Sorry, but right now, we have a team of very experienced players who are not playing as a coherent unit and making awful individual mistakes. That has nothing to do with The Glazers.

The Glazers are bad owners, but they are not like Mike Ashley at Newcastle, who wasn't investing the money back into the squad. The manager is getting hundreds of millions each window.

As it stands, the DOF, his team and Manager are collaborating in player recruitment. Are you saying that is wrong? Because um sure people would be up in arms if the manager had no say.
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Jesus…

Even SAF was beginning to fail under the Glazers, he eeked out one last miracle and deservedly retired with his dignity.

The longer people pretend that this club can be successful with the Glazers at the helm, the longer they will laugh all the way to the bank and the club will rot.
 
Kelly15 said:
Don't agree with this at all. It was not nor will it ever be SAF's job to decide who the new Manger should be. That is up to the club. What club in world football has a manager name his replacement? None.
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Well the club asked him to pick his successor and he agreed to do it, so in actuality it was his job.

For the record then and now I thought it was a horrible idea for SAF to pick his own replacement as I always suspected he'd go for a British manager.

You're in dreamland if you think SAF didn't inform the club until March that he was retiring. He kept if from the players yes, but not the board.
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The timeline of his retirement is in his book mate, he didn't tell Gill until February, at which time Gill informed SAF he was leaving too. Then the Glazers were told in early March.

Have you read his book?

Same as David Gill leaving. The club had no plan in place for when he left. That's not Gills fault.
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Well ironically being the CEO it actually was part of his job but on this one the Glazers obviously had Woodward in mind for the role for a long time.

Kelly15 said:
The problem we are in has nothing to do with SAF or Gill. It has everything to do with the owners not having any plans or understanding what it takes to run a football club. The fact that some people even think that shows what a good job the owners are doing at diverting attention away for their serious mishandling of our club. I can't think of another club run as bad as ours.
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Currently? Yes I'd agree, good thing the post you replied to wasn't claiming anything of the sort then, eh?
 
100% Glazers. Honestly, I can’t comprehend the job security that Murtough and Arnold enjoy. All the Glazers have to do is give them clear football related deliverables and not simply tie unacceptable results to the manager alone. However, they don’t seem to care and that’s the main problem. We need owners who care about the footballing side of the club.

Fixing that would cascade to everything below. With that said, I do believe the things below need fixing as well. ETH has made some really questionable recruitment decisions as well as selection decisions and so he isn’t just a victim here. Also some players can’t seem to just try hard for 90 minutes.

So yeah, a shambles everywhere but to be successful we need to thrive because of the owners not in spite of them which is what we are trying to do now.
 
I think about Keane's comments about the United dressing room, full of dependable players, players you could look at and trust. You can easily imagine Becks and Giggs looking at Keane and thinking "we can rely on Roy to win his battles, do his job" and vice versa.

Imagine sitting in the United dressing room yourself as a player now. Who are you looking at and saying "we can rely on him", "I'm glad he's playing for us and not the opposition", "it's a tough game today but X can win it for us if we keep it tight.", etc. There's no one. None of them are dependable. Certainly too many of them aren't, such that no one can shine.

I imagine Bruno was that player when he first joined, a distance memory now.
 
McTerminator said:
Jesus…

Even SAF was beginning to fail under the Glazers, he eeked out one last miracle and deservedly retired with his dignity.

The longer people pretend that this club can be successful with the Glazers at the helm, the longer they will laugh all the way to the bank and the club will rot.
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Look at the football lanscape towards the end of SAFs reighn. Chelsea were strong, City getting stronger.
No longer did we have the pick of the litter in terms of transfers.

This thread is about who is to blame for the current crisis. Previous poster said it was 100% The Glazers.

Sorry, but I disagree. Too easy to scapegoat them for everything. People blaming them for a leaking roof. Come on now. That would cost a couple of hundred thousand to fix, if that. The Glazers are not holding out on that. We are paying Jadon Sancho more a week to play XBOX.
 
There's more than enough blame to go around, they're all under-performing. The players keep forgetting how to play football, the manager has failed to forge a team, luck has failed to keep our most functional players uninjured. Given the ridiculous amount of game time over the last year, the last one is probably more on FIFA than luck. I really hope they can turn it around because starting this whole cycle again would be tedious.
 
The injuries are crazy.
Pre season was a joke but that’s not gonna change till glazers got (30 more years)
Ten Hag needs a better number 2 that tells him who to substitute and when

We are a team in transition and a club in transition. Antony should be playing RB right now, we should add another player in Central midfield and only martial (or rashford ) on the left center and Hojland center.

martial just scored and I’ll put him above rashford, plus rashford needs to sit on the bench so that PSG rumors flutter, he plays well for England and then he comes back on to form. Same with Bruno. The guy is a shadow of his former self. I hated the idea of him as captain instead of Martinez, casemiro or Varane.

Winter time:
We should sell McTominay, buy a proper box to box.
Buy a fullback who can play either side, and sell one of Dalot or Bissaka
buy a striker(toney)
And we can save our season
 
Directly: injuries and utter rotten luck, who could have foreseen having THREE right wide forwards unavailable due to TWO domestic abuse cases and the other sheer fecking sloth. Indirectly: part of the larger symptom of problems caused by being behind the times (as an elite football club).
 
The left back situation is dire. Even the replacement for the two injured fullbacks is injured.
 
Amira said:
100% Glazers. Honestly, I can’t comprehend the job security that Murtough and Arnold enjoy. All the Glazers have to do is give them clear football related deliverables and not simply tie unacceptable results to the manager alone. However, they don’t seem to care and that’s the main problem. We need owners who care about the footballing side of the club.

Fixing that would cascade to everything below. With that said, I do believe the things below need fixing as well. ETH has made some really questionable recruitment decisions as well as selection decisions and so he isn’t just a victim here. Also some players can’t seem to just try hard for 90 minutes.

So yeah, a shambles everywhere but to be successful we need to thrive because of the owners not in spite of them which is what we are trying to do now.
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These two are surviving because employed by a board who haven't a fecking clue. They are dreading a takeover ever happening because will be out on their ear
 
Dont know were to start regarding who to blame. One or two good points in this article https://www.nrk.no/sport/drommenes-kirkegard-1.16584997.

Extract from «the cemetery of dreams»»

Very few of those who end up at United appear as a better version of themselves.

In Liverpool and Manchester City, promising signings move into more professional environments with better coaches, teammates and facilities. The two teams recruit well, but good players who go to good clubs also quickly become even better.

In United, this is the exception. The winger Jadon Sancho has gone from super talent to flop. The self-confident goalkeeper André Onana appears to be a nervous wreck. Stopper Harry Maguire was wanted by Pep Guardiola when United bought him for NOK 850 million in 2019. Now he is sixth choice.

Old Trafford has become football's answer to the Bermuda Triangle, a place where careers mysteriously crash.

Most agree that the unpopular Glazer family, who own the club, must get out as soon as possible. The debt is one thing, but in terms of sport they are accused of hiring people who don't know enough about football, which gives the coach hopeless working conditions.

From the outside, we do not see the processes that lead to United spending NOK 700 million on Mason Mount. But we know what previous coaches have said.

In 2019, José Mourinho claimed that the second place he had managed with United the year before was one of his greatest achievements as a coach. This was a guy who had won the Champions League with Porto and taken Inter to the treble. It seemed like a joke. But he was serious."People don't know what goes on behind the scenes," Mourinho said.

Louis van Gaal complained about the structure around him. Ole Gunnar Solskjær recently called the job "very difficult". And it's been a year and a half since Ralf Rangnick said the club needed "open heart surgery".

Ten Hag knew this when he entered. When he was interviewed for the job last year, he is said to have told United how much was wrong. And for a little while, it seemed like things were finally changing.

Scouts quietly disappeared out the doors. New roles were handed out. Ed Woodward, who was in practice the general manager, had already been replaced by Richard Arnold. When United started to win, it looked like Ten Hag had got things sorted.

But now United is in crisis again. The British newspaper The Independent writes about an internal atmosphere that is "poisoned".

They [United] are not alone: in France, no one is able to fix Paris Saint-Germain, and Barcelona was impossible to train towards the end of the regime of president Josep Maria Bartomeu. The culture in a club often comes from the top. Some of them just have a management that makes the coaching job impossible.

United fans will therefore have to wait for the Glazer family to sell the club, which has been talked about for almost a year.
 
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The current crisis? There’s a lot of blame to go around, including the players. But culpability for the ongoing crisis lies at the feet of the ownership for all the reasons already discussed. But I do want to mention the total absence of any strategic planning for the post-Ferguson era. It’s a well know story but the bottom line is that when we went with Moyes, we announced to the works that United were no longer a serious football club. We finally have a serious manager, but we’re going through a rough patch on and off the pitch that has a lot to do with the bad habits that were allowed to become bad habits by the owners.
 
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