After Manchester United had been humbled 3-0 by Newcastle United in the Carabao Cup, Pete Boyle, a kind of United superfan and Old Trafford’s resident ‘singer in chief’ (he makes up many of the songs for the terraces), wrote a thread on Twitter/X pointing out the ups and downs of being a United fan over time. Boyle pointed to the wreckage of Old Trafford after being bombed in the Second World War, the horror of Munich in 1958, the great period of success in the 1960s under Matt Busby, and the unthinkable relegation in the mid-1970s.
Boyle’s point was multi-pronged. It was an arm around the shoulder for some fans, letting them know that things could be worse. And it was a reminder that football both gives and takes away. It was also a riposte to a generation of fans who only understand success in terms of Champions League and Premier League trophies. Yes, United have not been the same since Sir Alex Ferguson retired ten years ago, but it’s not been completely barren. United have won four major trophies since Ferguson left; Newcastle, boasting a buoyant fanbase right now, last won a major trophy over 50 years ago. Many football league clubs will never achieve a quarter of what United have already in the post-Ferguson years. As Boyle said, fans need to get some perspective.
United struggling in new season
Of course, there is another side to the coin. The club is not Maidstone United to Accrington Stanley, it is Manchester United, a multi-billion-pound enterprise that is in constant need of success. If the club spends over £1 billion on transfers, as it has done post-Ferguson, fans have expectations, and they have not been met. They are right to grumble. Most football betting sites put them as longshots to make the Top 4, never mind win the Premier League, and it looks like Erik Ten Hag’s job could be on the line if they don’t progress in the Champions League, which they probably won’t.
But we won’t dwell too much on what’s going on this season except to talk of the sense of exasperation among fans. That exasperation stems from the fact that there is no agreed-upon solution on how to fix Manchester United or what needs to be fixed. Is it the manager? The owners? The players? The stadium with a leaky roof? Some fans have gone as far as stating their hopes for the club to be relegated, reasoning that only by being completely recalibrated can the club come back.
There is, perhaps, a sense of malaise at the club that is only apparent in hindsight after each action has taken place. For example, the returns of Cristiano Ronaldo and Paul Pogba, the signing of Casemiro and Raphael Varane, and the arrival of Jadon Sancho all seemed positive forward-thinking moves at the time, and most bore some fruit initially. But later, they have been looked at as a symptom of the malaise, not a cure for it.
Players don’t improve at United
And that’s what we see today on the United social media channels and the mainstream media. Gary Neville points to the buck stopping with the Glazer family, whereas Jamie Carragher argues that the players and management are using the turmoil at the executive level as cover. Who’s right? Probably both of them, and that’s why the fans are so exasperated. A common topic of discussion among fans at the moment is that the club missed the opportunity to sign Jude Bellingham before he moved to Borussia Dortmund. But there is a consensus that Bellingham would not have flowered at Old Trafford as he did at Dortmund.
It is this sense of unquantifiable wrongness that hits the fans the most. The club has tried experienced managers, hard-nosed managers, young managers, club legends as managers, and they have all failed. They have signed experienced players and youngsters, and it never seems to work. That is the problem that fans and pundits can’t quantify. They don’t know how to fix United because they don’t know what to fix. The assumption that the departure of the Glazers, if it happens, will allow everything to fall into place is a dangerous one, because it assumes United have just one major problem, when they have many.
