Why have we been so crap for so long?

[SuperiorXI]

Teams that we face mostly seem to have a game plan and team cohesiveness whereas we look disjointed and err more towards 'hit and hope'. Often our quality gets us out of the shit and also sometimes we're able to have a good game.... but a broken clock is right twice a day.

From the outside looking in there appears to be huge changes required at all levels at the club which is really not good at this stage since we've continually been in this revolving door since SAF retired. It's plainly obvious he and David Gill held everything together; the rest of the executive positions at the club had not one clue about how to run a club of our size in the footballing department. You can point to losing key players but one of the crucial elements to football is replacing players and we have abjectly failed to replace ALL of our stars... this is unforgiveable.

 

[McGrathsipan]

Poor recruitment: Haphazard, with no apparent strategy or vision behind it. We're just scrambling to buy whoever is available most of the time, seemingly regardless odlf how they'd fit the squad.

Substandard coaching: Obviously I'm not privy to what's going on at Carrington but what other explanation is there for almost every player turning to shit at United, for regularly looking awful at even the very basics of football?

Club culture: Or, more specifically, the apparent lack of one. We keep underperforming players for too long, give too many chances to both players and managers, there doesn't seem to be a demand for excellence. 'Potentially good enough for top 4' is the bar these days.

Lack of identity: Ties in with the recruitment issue. We don't have a clear idea of what we even want to be, what sort of football we're aiming to play. It's just all over the place, changing on the whims of each manager.

All of those points are valid and point to a severe lack of good quality management, and I am not talking about first team affairs only. You can change the 1st team coach every five minutes for all the good it will do but when the executive management are not in tune this is what we get.
Times have moved on past the era of a Fergie doing everything. Look at city - they are doing it right as they have competent football men in the right positions.

United have developed a festering culture of accepting and even signing sub standard players. AWB,Sancho, Maguire etc - massively inflated costs for average players. Rashford and Lingard focused on non playing activity enjoying the celebrity of playing for United, Pogba and his circus, signing old fellas that were once good for commercial reasons, Ibra, Schweinsteiger Cavani etc. There is no player on that team that I would ne sorry to see go tomorrow. There are no leaders and I would question the winning mentality in every single one of them. Thats not to say that there isnt the potential for that mentality in some of them however when they are poorly coached and managed then what chance do they have?

The Glazers letting Woodward blame everything on the first team manager is where the fault is, but then again do the Glazers care as long as revenue is maintained? Probably not too much.

The first team affairs need to be in the hands of football men, preferably not affiliated with the previous regime for the most part.

This business needs a massive reset and ship out anyone that is not cut out for elite football , that includes coaching staff and players.
Get the right people into the right positions and start singing players that want to apply themselves.

 

[Nytram Shakes]

We have spent and managed the squad badly going back to before Fergie left (look at the amount of players who retired from his last squad in the following couple of years and the fact we hadn’t bought a centre midfielder is 6 years!)

We have made terrible managerial appoints either becuase of timing or simply the wrong people. Yeah Moyes was just a mess but The two that stick out as doing the most damage was going from LVG to Mourinho. Or going from a manger who likes to play with the ball developing young players to a manager who likes to play without the ball using experienced players. Both were given 100’s of millions to spend so of course we ended up with a basket case of a squad.

And then we appointed Ole who was not anywhere near the level of coach needed, and added Murtough and Flecther in director of football type roles. Even though they had zero experience. The end result is the this absolute mess of a squad, that has 9 million attackers that can’t play together, no midfield and an injury prone defence. Add to that the young players we had have slowely wasted away as the level of coaching of attacking players under Mourinho and and Ole has been appalling.

Really it all comes back to the people at the top have no idea how to run the football side of the buissness and even if that is changing with the appointment of Rangnick (which we don’t know it is yet) it’s gonna take years to sort out the mess caused by the last decade of bad management.

 

[We need an rvn]

I think Ralf's appointment is a step in the right direction but we have to be patient and see the project out. Leave the footballing operations to the guys who know football. If we can turn around that aspect of the club then the revenue will take care of itself.

They've been in charge since 2005. You'd have thought they would have learned how to run a football club by the time Gill and Fergie left in 2013, but they obviously didn't when you see who they put in charge.

I agree getting Ralf in to aid with the running of the club might help, but other recent acquisitions such as Richard Arnold to replace Ed (who also had feck all experience from a football perspective), Darren Fletcher (technical director at one of the biggest clubs in the world with zero experience) don't give me much hope and still think the current management team isn't up to scratch

Had we signed up someone like VDS, who is doing a great job at Ajax as CEO and has knowledge of our club, I might raise my head with a glimmer of hope

 

[R'hllor]

Why? We are not a football club. The End

 

[Mr Pigeon]

You don't get to simultaneously blame Ferguson and the Glazers. The board have been shown up as utterly incompetent, self interested businessmen and the fact that Ferguson managed to wrangle any degree of control while keeping them in check and keeping us successful is a miracle in itself. This in vogue trend of blaming Ferguson is lazy, embarrassing rubbish. What other manager in the world do you place the demand on to babysit the board and oversee the state of the club as well as win games? Because it can't be both, either you wanted Ferguson to surrender power and relinquish control to this incompetent mob earlier, while he was still manager, or you wanted to be successful for all those years we were. Rubbish, one dimensional thinking, the same as the utter myth that wont flush that he wasn't tactically sound, despite winning 13 titles and hitting 7 CL semi finals, winning it twice. Oh, that was just charisma and man management. Give him a dutch sounding name and you'd be creaming yourself in front of youtube highlights.

Absolutely bang on. I do laugh when people say he wasn't tactically sound. He built team after team, year after year, making little alterations along the way, but he apparently didn't know about attacking the space or double pivoting.

Also, why is it Fergie's fault that we hired Moyes? If the directors knew what the feck they were doing in the first place they wouldn't have needed to ask Sir Alex "erm, what do we do now?"

 

[SER19]

I am in no way knocking getting British players. But I think a huge problem we have is the British players we have are not good enough. My team would be De Gea, Dalot, Bailly, Varane, Telles, Van De Beek, Fred, Sancho, Cavani and Ronaldo. The only British players that should play would be Jadon Sancho and Mason Greenwood. I rate Mason Greenwood but I don't think he is ready to be starting yet. Would be on the bench for me. I think the British Cliche is a huge problem. Maguire and now Shaw have given horrible interviews. Basically need a British cull at the club. But sadly it won't happen.

I think Shaw is talented enough too, but I think you're right. AWB and Maguire represented what those in charge saw as safer bet signings, PL players, English and less likely to be as catastrophic as di Maria. We've ended up overpaying for very average players and overrating Rashford massively. I'm not convinced any of those 3 would start at another top 10 club. 3 players is 30% of your outfield. These guys have been near constants. We're simply not going to improve as a team while consistently playing these guys and hoping they just come good

 

[MoskvaRed]

The wrong people in charge of the club, resulting in a lack of any discernible strategy (other than to make money through commercial arrangements) and manifesting itself in poor and non-complementary managerial appointments. As a consequence, we have an ill-balanced squad, and, in contrast to our heyday under Fergie or to City who have the luxury of purchasing players from a position of strength to add to a settled team, we are permanently in fire-fighting mode. As we continue to hope in vain that player x, y or z is the missing piece of the jigsaw and and then have no clue how to assemble the puzzle, it starts to feel like one of those anxiety dreams where you end up further and further away from your destination.

Eight years and counting. By this stage in the post-Busby cycle (slightly before my time), we had at least had the Doc.years. This time round it’s been joyless.

 

[Ixion]

We have rewarded mediocrity for years. Players that should have moved on getting new contracts, players that have never won anything becoming some of the highest paid in the league, even old players getting brought back into the fold for no good reason. Too many think they have made it just because they play for us.

 

[D. Mungai]

United is a

• old team (ronaldo, cavani, matic),
• lazy team (rashford, sacho, shaw,greenword),
• technicality limited squad(AWB, Maguire,McT, Fred), high self imposed ego squad how have won nothing major for united but on very high wages,
• Alot of players who do not even start for their own countries,

• if you are honest every member of our squad has a very glaring defeciency, even the senior most players have very very glaring issues from Ronaldo (age), Bruno (Zero Control), Pogba ( least said the better), Maguire ( shocking footballer), Varane ( injury prone), Cavani (injury prone & Old), Matic ( No legs), DDG (stay on the line keeper) McFred ( least said the better), AWB & Shaw (they are just there playing for united, its their "dream" + good wages = perfect life)

A team is as good as its bad players, if your bad players are few with less pointers then the average range of being a good team is so high. City have no strikers but because they do not have poor glaring players they still outscore teams.

We are not as good as we thought, we have alot poor players in our midst and its telling.

We have one of the biggest wage bill in the league but we have never been in any title race for over 9 year now. We have spent large sums of money but we have never been involved in any title race in 9 years.

We have / have had in the 9 years without a title race
record british signing - Di maria
World record signing - Pogba
Record defender signing - Maguire
Record PL striker siging - Lukaku
Record teenager signing - Luke shaw
Second expensive fullback signing - Bissaka after Walker

Yet after all this there has never been a title race we have been involved in.
The problems started very very long time and we are very slow to react.

Even Chelsea have under gone through a similar problem with signings but they are quick to pull the trigger thus they tend to win PL & UCL

 

[Slysi17]

I think Shaw is talented enough too, but I think you're right. AWB and Maguire represented what those in charge saw as safer bet signings, PL players, English and less likely to be as catastrophic as di Maria. We've ended up overpaying for very average players and overrating Rashford massively. I'm not convinced any of those 3 would start at another top 10 club. 3 players is 30% of your outfield. These guys have been near constants. We're simply not going to improve as a team while consistently playing these guys and hoping they just come good

yeah I think Luke Shaw isn't too bad. I just would leave him out due to the interview he recently gave. Really makes him and the squad look bad. I just think the over reliance on British players is one of the reasons why we are so bad. I used to think Marcus Rashford was decent but I really don't think he is.

 

[Someone]

We can't really blame Fergie for getting the best out of his last squad. The simple fact is that since his retirement the club lacked any sort of direction under Woodward. We keep hiring managers with different philosophies which means with every manager we need new players to fit the new methods. Woody had no idea what he was doing, and refused to get any help around him. It really starts and ends with Woody.

 

[Houdini]

1. Raise of City and Chelsea buying the best players. You have a limited pool of WC players and we usually get the scraps.
the only players post/late Fergie who were considered the best in their position (or were rated to have that potential) we have got: DDG, Shaw, Sancho. All the others were panic buys, second strings, overpaid/overhyped mercenaries or finished players. We have to pay silly money for players who do not want to be here to motivate them.
2. toxic environment
3. Glazers
4. Glazers
5. oh and Glazers

 

[Red & White]

We have spent and managed the squad badly going back to before Fergie left (look at the amount of players who retired from his last squad in the following couple of years and the fact we hadn’t bought a centre midfielder is 6 years!)

We have made terrible managerial appoints either becuase of timing or simply the wrong people. Yeah Moyes was just a mess but The two that stick out as doing the most damage was going from LVG to Mourinho. Or going from a manger who likes to play with the ball developing young players to a manager who likes to play without the ball using experienced players. Both were given 100’s of millions to spend so of course we ended up with a basket case of a squad.

And then we appointed Ole who was not anywhere near the level of coach needed, and added Murtough and Flecther in director of football type roles. Even though they had zero experience. The end result is the this absolute mess of a squad, that has 9 million attackers that can’t play together, no midfield and an injury prone defence. Add to that the young players we had have slowely wasted away as the level of coaching of attacking players under Mourinho and and Ole has been appalling.

Really it all comes back to the people at the top have no idea how to run the football side of the buissness and even if that is changing with the appointment of Rangnick (which we don’t know it is yet) it’s gonna take years to sort out the mess caused by the last decade of bad management.

Exactly this.

 

[croadyman]

First up, people with no knowledge of football in main positions, like Ed. Then consistently poor and wrong managerial and coaching choices since 2013. Then, poor player purchases and overpayment of fees and wages since then. Everything has been wrong about Manchester United since Fergie and Gill left, except sponsorships.

What was it Ed said to Klopp? Adult version of Disneyland? All fun, no substance.

Yeah never ever gonna forgive that Toy Story puppet for costing us Klopp. I also feel frustration Fergie couldn't make Pep understand him in that NY meeting either

 

[alexthelion]

Sir Alex retired, yes, but unfortunately he had already made decisions or been party to decisions that led to the longterm decline of the club e.g. under investment in the side due to the American take-over - google Rock of Gibralta or read Keanes biography.

He loves the club, don't get me wrong and even in retirement he's tried to reverse things, but actually it made things worse from blocking Mourinho as his immediate successor, right up to phoning Ronaldo (age 36) in August 2021... which threw Oles project into turmoil.

The club allowed him too much power when he was the manager and by employing him as a well paid club Ambassador, he's become a thorn in every subsequent coaches side, namely a back seat driver.

Amazingly, Utd. have been here before, in the nineteen seventies.

So true.

You'd think someone would have pointed out that it's not the best idea to still have a legend's influence still around hanging off the shoulders of every following managerial appointment.
It didn't work for Sir Matt and doesn't seem to be working now with SAF's influence.

 

[croadyman]

So true.

You'd think someone would have pointed out that it's not the best idea to still have a legend's influence still around hanging off the shoulders of every following managerial appointment.
It didn't work for Sir Matt and doesn't seem to be working now with SAF's influence.

Yeah there is no doubt his influence around the club really needs to wane a bit

 

[matherto]

We haven't played consistently good football since 2008.

Slow, zombie football was the title of a thread back in around 2009/10.

We're still paying for that run of not conceding a goal in 2008/09 IMO, it became about getting a result no matter the cost of the football and then after that it was just about economy of attack, we would win but we would never win in a manner of sheer dominance.

Once SAF left and we lost his aura of 'we're gonna win, deal with it' then we became ripe for attacking and everyone had their fill and we've never looked even remotely like 'we're Man United, we do what we want' ever since.

 

[mu4c_20le]

We can't really blame Fergie for getting the best out of his last squad. The simple fact is that since his retirement the club lacked any sort of direction under Woodward. We keep hiring managers with different philosophies which means with every manager we need new players to fit the new methods. Woody had no idea what he was doing, and refused to get any help around him. It really starts and ends with Woody.

This. The only reason he's still asked for his opinion is because of Woody's sheer incompetence. Had the club been running well I doubt it would still be the case. I doubt he'd go for LVG or Jose over a more modern manager like Tuchel, for example.

 

[AshRK]

There is no strategy, just all over the place. If we really want short term success then we should have gone for Conte but we didn't and hire managers looking for long term result but then sign players like ibra, ronaldo and Cavani.

Not sure what do we expect. Also, I feel with City's success and continued dominance we are going to be a second best club for nearby future atleast till Pep and Klopp are here. So better let ragnick select the appointment and let that guy do his work. We at this moment are a 3rd to 6th level club and we have to look this a long term process and not have a scattered gun approach.

 

[alexthelion]

I am in no way knocking getting British players. But I think a huge problem we have is the British players we have are not good enough. My team would be De Gea, Dalot, Bailly, Varane, Telles, Van De Beek, Fred, Sancho, Cavani and Ronaldo. The only British players that should play would be Jadon Sancho and Mason Greenwood. I rate Mason Greenwood but I don't think he is ready to be starting yet. Would be on the bench for me. I think the British Cliche is a huge problem. Maguire and now Shaw have given horrible interviews. Basically need a British cull at the club. But sadly it won't happen.

How dare a British club actually play British players, even when they're better than the team you've posted.

 

[Paul_Scholes18]

Poor manager recruitmens really.

Ole did not even do that badly it is just he is not good enough.

Feels like we never play well as a team and that comes from the manager.

Certainly do not help that we got the wrong players. Chelsea have not been ideal with that either, but Tuchel sorted it out.

 

[Bwuk]

Woodward and a lack of planning.

 

[Kag]

Ferguson, Gill and the Glazers deciding that it was acceptable to sell our best players in order to manage interest payments was where it really began. That’s the root, way back when.

Since the Ferguson-sized plaster was ripped off there have been too many mistakes to count.

I said it when Ole was sacked: I don’t even know anymore. I’ve spent years making predictions and most of them have been hopelessly wrong so it’s now a case of wait and see.

 

[KiD MoYeS]

It is simple really - the club now exists to line the owner's pockets. Good football does not matter. Winning trophies does not matter. I guess they probably have another decade or so before the commercial aspects of the club begin to decline as a result of the shambolic footballing performance. Then, and only then, we might see their grip begin to ease. Nothing changes until they go. I have fully accepted this. The hope kills you.

 

[AndySmith1990]

We have spent and managed the squad badly going back to before Fergie left (look at the amount of players who retired from his last squad in the following couple of years and the fact we hadn’t bought a centre midfielder is 6 years!)

We have made terrible managerial appoints either becuase of timing or simply the wrong people. Yeah Moyes was just a mess but The two that stick out as doing the most damage was going from LVG to Mourinho. Or going from a manger who likes to play with the ball developing young players to a manager who likes to play without the ball using experienced players. Both were given 100’s of millions to spend so of course we ended up with a basket case of a squad.

And then we appointed Ole who was not anywhere near the level of coach needed, and added Murtough and Flecther in director of football type roles. Even though they had zero experience. The end result is the this absolute mess of a squad, that has 9 million attackers that can’t play together, no midfield and an injury prone defence. Add to that the young players we had have slowely wasted away as the level of coaching of attacking players under Mourinho and and Ole has been appalling.

Really it all comes back to the people at the top have no idea how to run the football side of the buissness and even if that is changing with the appointment of Rangnick (which we don’t know it is yet) it’s gonna take years to sort out the mess caused by the last decade of bad management.

I agree with all of this. It's a sad situation.

 

[Mickeza]

We’ve become completely driven by the cult of the individual rather than the collective. We don’t buy players to fit systems or teams - we buy them based on individual attributes. We’d never sign a Wijnaldum. We’d go for a bigger more obvious name such as a Pogba. And we all lap it up. We’d never get a Jota. We’d get a Sanchez. Rinse. Repeat. And when we do sign a player after targeting them for three years ala Sancho we go and get a Ronaldo a few weeks later fecking whatever plans we had for them up completely. We’re just an incoherent mess devoid of any semblance of strategy.

 

[croadyman]

We’ve become completely driven by the cult of the individual rather than the collective. We don’t buy players to fit systems or teams - we buy them based on individual attributes. We’d never sign a Wijnaldum. We’d go for a bigger more obvious name such as a Pogba. And we all lap it up. We’d never get a Jota. We’d get a Sanchez. Rinse. Repeat. And when we do sign a player after targeting them for three years ala Sancho we go and get a Ronaldo a few weeks later fecking whatever plans we had for them up completely. We’re just an incoherent mess devoid of any semblance of strategy.

Yeah biggest teams of individuals since the days of that Galactico era at Madrid

 

[Ghostrider318]

All comes down to 1 thing - Lack of vision.

After Moyes we shouldve really overhauled our club and gotten a DOF. A DOF would've atleast seen things from a footballing perspective and allowed us to plan better. Instead we bought in ton of deadwood for LVG which took us years to get rid of. Then we allowed mourinho to go shop as he wills. Then the weird public display of 'English players' under Ole which led to us splashing130m on Maguire and AWB. In between we splashed 50m for Fred who is a Box to box ball winner at best and we want him to dictate play from the deep when he cant pass 5 yards and also the curious case of VDB. Add the herrera free transfer, Jones 4 year contract, Keeping Matic and Mata on. The list is endless.

We are the architects of our own downfall because of incompetence and it does not look like that will change anytime soon.

 

[CloneMC16]

Time for managers: We backed managers financially, but not with enough time. We played crap under Jose, but tbh, Jose was right in hindsight about many things including Martial & Pogba. We don't trust managers any longer. SAF in 1989 finished 11th? Why didn't we sack him then? There will be short term disturbances in performance levels. You cannot change managers every couple of years. Define a system of playing football, get the best manager there is capable of doing that job and stick with him for 4 years at least. I didn't think Jose should have been sacked, neither Ole. Maybe that's just me.

This is a great post, but I do have a problem with this section. Nobody runs a football club like that any more. It's not the 90's. The average manager in the PL gets a little bit more than 2 years. I don't know what the numbers are for the other top leagues around the world, but I doubt it's far off that. You show something relatively quickly or you're out within 2/3 years.

Moyes didn't get long, but we were going to miss out on the CL. That was seen as unacceptable. LVG did the same thing. Mourinho lost the players and the results went to shit. The results went to shit for Ole as well, and he got longer than most clubs would have given him. I think a lot of United fans (and our board) keeping looking at Sir Alex and thinking we can find a modern version of him. That manager doesn't exist in the modern game. The longest serving managers in the PL are Klopp and Pep. Both are only still there, because they're successful managers. They already had quality CV's in the modern game, and shown quality from the beginning of their tenures.

Unless every other club has it wrong, I don't see why we should think we're special and go against what practically every other big club does. When we find someone as good as Klopp, I will happily give him more than 2 years if we're seeing some progress.

 

[Slysi17]

How dare a British club actually play British players, even when they're better than the team you've posted.

Do you even watch freaking football. Braindead comment when Harry Maguire, Aaron Wan Bissika, Scott McTominay and Marcus Rashford have been abysmal. Only player who you could say is Van De Beek but he hasn't been given a chance. Bailly is better than Maguire, Dalot is better than Wan Bissika and I would even play Elanga over Rashford.

 

[Green_Red]

Jesus wept. An op that doesn't understand why we haven't won the league since Fergie left. Have you got eyes in your head man?

 

[pcaming]

Because we refuse to build a quality midfield core.

 

[Newstyle]

Did not work with Moyes
Did not work with LVG
Did not work with Ole
Will not work with Ralf
New manager? Will not work

What’s the common denominator?

 

[Powderfinger]

All successful clubs have two things in common:

1) Football people in positions of power - either DoF, a very powerful and secure manager, or both - with a strong vision of the football they want to play to compete at the highest level and a coherent set of ideas regarding how to recruit for every position on the pitch in order to make that vision come to life.

2) An internal culture, supported by key players and other leaders up and down the structure, that truly prioritizes winning, high standards, and the pursuit of excellence.

United lost the first when Fergie and Gill left and then the second gradually over time.

Arsenal basically did the opposite, losing the second over time in the Emirates era even as Wenger stayed on, then Wenger himself.

 

[Tarrou]

shit owners

 

[lefty_jakobz]

All of those points are valid and point to a severe lack of good quality management, and I am not talking about first team affairs only. You can change the 1st team coach every five minutes for all the good it will do but when the executive management are not in tune this is what we get.
Times have moved on past the era of a Fergie doing everything. Look at city - they are doing it right as they have competent football men in the right positions.

United have developed a festering culture of accepting and even signing sub standard players. AWB,Sancho, Maguire etc - massively inflated costs for average players. Rashford and Lingard focused on non playing activity enjoying the celebrity of playing for United, Pogba and his circus, signing old fellas that were once good for commercial reasons, Ibra, Schweinsteiger Cavani etc. There is no player on that team that I would ne sorry to see go tomorrow. There are no leaders and I would question the winning mentality in every single one of them. Thats not to say that there isnt the potential for that mentality in some of them however when they are poorly coached and managed then what chance do they have?

The Glazers letting Woodward blame everything on the first team manager is where the fault is, but then again do the Glazers care as long as revenue is maintained? Probably not too much.

The first team affairs need to be in the hands of football men, preferably not affiliated with the previous regime for the most part.

This business needs a massive reset and ship out anyone that is not cut out for elite football , that includes coaching staff and players.
Get the right people into the right positions and start singing players that want to apply themselves.

Well said.

For one of the biggest clubs in the world we are so badly managed by the incompetent people put in charge by an incompetent ownership. If you want to be a top team/club it needs the right appointments in the right places, we have yes men taking up highly specialised positions without the knowledge or experience for them to back it up.

I genuinely thought this was the first time since SAF left that the club were going to go in the right direction with Ragnick’s appointment but it looks like it was another rush job to shut out any criticism of the owners after their Project Ole failed so badly. Ole could have been saved had the board went and hired a Rangnick-esque head coach to help him out (assuming OGS was their long term appointment)
Again a competent board would have foreseen the problem and met it head on.

We always seem to be late with crucial decisions. The hiring of a DoF, the sacking of Ole, the not buying players at the start of a window to get them integrated into the squad (instead of leaving it so we can maximise the clubs social media likes) we are so badly run I just cannot see it getting much better until either, we fluke a managerial appointment or the Glazers sell and we get an owner who prioritises the footballing product over all else. Both of which are at this stage unlikely.

 

[Invictus]

shit owners

This is it, the omphalós of the discussion; the Glazers are ignominious owners from a sporting-infrastructure perspective and were very, very fortunate to acquire an institution like United as they inherited:

• Juggernaut-like momentum because of the club's unparalleled success in the Premier League era.
• The vast appeal of a brand that was both relevant and steeped in history...which could be endlessly milked; and millions upon millions of supporters to enrich the enterprise.
• One of the most distinctive and accommodating stadiums in club football.
• League-leading revenues and some of the highest revenues from a continental standpoint (rivaled only by other grand old clubs like Madrid).
• A once-in-a-lifetime manager to pilot the craft for the next 7 years (after doing so for 2 decades already).

They did not have to build the club from the ground up (like Mateschitz with RB Leipzig), they did not have to rescue us from disarray (like Berlusconi with Milan), they did not initiate processes that had the club punching above its weight (like Srivaddhanaprabha at Leicester), they did not need to part with a lot of their own money to propel the team (like Abramovich with Chelsea). Everything was handed to them on a silver platter from their very first day as owners — they could waltz in as pure beneficiaries of the United empire (rather than essential contributors), let the greatest-manager-of-all-time wave his magic wand, make bare-minimum investments and sit back in their comfy seats. Once Fergie hung up his managerial boots, the onus was on them to maintain the culture and oversee positive organizational change — and they've screwed the pooch wrt. shouldering that responsibility. Whatever was bequeathed to them is now diminished:

• Close to zero natural momentum in the Premier League (as we wouldn't have won it for 9 seasons by May) or the Champions League (no longer a part of the elite).
• United still possesses vast appeal but it has eroded quite a bit; and while the club still has an untold number of supporters, the newer generations are not as enamored by its contemporary standing.
• Old Trafford is still one of the most distinctive and accommodating stadiums in club football, but it desperately needs extensive refurbishing.
• League-leading revenues, but the competition is breathing down our necks.
• Constant turmoil as the managerial position, a faaaar cry from where we were in 2005 (when we had the most stable manager in club football).

From a purely on-the-field standpoint, it's plainly observable that they can't...

• Lure and back the right manager at the right time on an independent basis.
• Appoint the right administrators to do some of the heavy-lifting for them (like Mansour at City with the shrewd appointment of Soriano and Begiristain).

Much of that is down to luck (as there's no doubt that they would love to have Guardiola or Klopp in charge at this very moment, who wouldn't?) but something's gone wrong on a worryingly regular basis over the last decade-ish — and they (or their book/house-keepers in the board room) just can't curate a consistently effective top-down culture of footballing excellence and accountability, act decisively enough (instead of simply going through the motions or reacting in a knee-jerk manner) or evidence the foresight to studiously scheme things ahead of time (like Fergie's succession, which was the most significant managerial shift in modern football). Mind you, things can change very quickly in the footballing world — and the appointment of the right manager at the right time can cure a lot of ills; but even with their NFL team, they aren't real visionaries and the outlook has been very boom or bust as they chewed through 5 different head coaches over a period of 12 years between playoff trips.

 

[Roboc7]

Terrible recruitment of managers and players combined with terrible owners. Worst thing is it’s only going to continue.

 

[Daengophile]

We have, for several reasons, ended up with an oversized squad full of players that are:

Too old
Too young/inexperienced
Not good enough
Bad attitude
Uncommitted
Injured all the time
Think they are in charge
Poor skills
Overpaid and reluctant to leave
Don't fit the manager's requirements

Etc.

Until all this has been sorted out we shall continue to be a jumble sale of individuals that we expect wonders from and sorting it out is clearly not something that can be achieved in a January transfer window

We need a DOF to set out an "Inventory" of positions, skills, ages throughout the club

Coaches at all levels need to be teaching the same style of play. Loanees also need to be at clubs with similar styles

This will all take years unless we are ruthless