A rapid return to United’s theatre of screams

Like a set of shiny keys being rattled in a bid to distract a crying child, May’s FA Cup win helped deflect the attention of many tantrum-throwing Manchester United fans away from just how atrocious their side had been all season. In his post-match interview at Wembley, Erik ten Hag cut a rather smug figure in which he blamed the myriad shortcomings of a team that was demonstrably the worst side to call Old Trafford home in nearly 30 years entirely on knack and other factors completely out of his control. Their eighth-place finish in the league with a negative goal difference was nowt to do with him, so he couldn’t figure out why he was being quizzed about his future.
Despite a trawl of Europe in search of a replacement for Ten Hag, the Sir David Brailsford hive mind was unable to identify one and instead decided to keep the Dutchman in place but with a bevy of new coaches. While the Community Shield, an unconvincing Premier League win over Fulham and an unlucky defeat at the hands of Brighton due to a rogue aquaplaning kneecap may have helped United fans delude themselves into thinking things were on the up, yesterday’s visit of Liverpool almost certainly provided a timely reality check. Having held their bitter rivals twice last year and knocked them out of the Cup, on this occasion United were simply obliterated. “There are many games to play and I know where we will be at the end of the season,” blathered Ten Hag after the game, failing to specify if he was referring to Manchester United or him and his team of assistants.
If the pre-match unveiling of United’s new defensive midfielder Manuel Ugarte wasn’t the highlight of the afternoon for most United fans at the time, they will certainly have been gazing wistfully towards his spot in the posh seats at half-time. A liability for most of last season, the sleek new Casemiro was so hopelessly exposed against the first elite team United faced in this league campaign that he had to be replaced by a whey-faced debutant at the break. For all his talk about only appointing people who are “world class” to positions of power at the club, Sir Big Jim Ratcliffe will have been wondering why his new team of suited and booted geniuses weren’t sufficiently world class enough to sign an unwanted PSG player they have been actively pursuing for months before the season actually started. Only managing to secure Ugarte’s scrawl on deadline day smacks of the kind of shambolic organisation and ham-fisted amateurism Big Sir Jim professes to despise.
While losing to Liverpool will have rankled Ten Hag quite enough, seeing his players have their pants pulled down by a team managed by a Dutch rival will have been particularly galling, not least if he’s seen the post-match interview in which Arne Slot eloquently explained United’s various on-field shortcomings and how he set about exposing them. Of course, a less self-congratulatory analyst might conclude that Liverpool are simply a much better team than United and beating any side who repeatedly cough up possession under a minimal amount of pressure isn’t actually that difficult. “Liverpool are a better team than Manchester United at this moment in time, of course they are but I’m going to back my team,” said Gary Neville, predicting a top-four finish for United during an at-times funereal post-match debrief on Sky Sports. He may well be right, but only if they get a new manager. Going on the evidence of what we’ve seen so far, if Ten Hag stays til season’s end, Football Daily thinks it might have been over-optimistic with its at-the-time derided pre-season prediction of 10th.
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