Manchester United: something rotten in the state of Denmark
The sending off was harsh, but when the rot this deep and the club is this big, it doesn't really wash as an excuse.
Okay, okay, okay. The decision to send Marcus Rashford off after 40 minutes of the Champions League match between FC Copenhagen and Manchester United was a little on the tough side. But it sure did suit the narrative. Rashford’s arm looked more careless than vindictive, but the outswinging arm was careless and the positioning of his feet didn’t help. But this isn’t a matter that should be viewed through an electron microscope, because the only reasonable analysis that can be made of Manchester United at the moment has the draw the lens back a little.
At the point of this incident, United were 2-0 up and, if not quite ‘cruising’ (this is a team which has been ‘cruising’ this season in the manner of a Dalek trying to negotiate a staircase), then at least comfortable. A clear narrative was being written. The new prodigal son striker Rasmus Hojlund, following a stuttering start to his time at Old Trafford, returning to the city of his birth to score twice in the first half hour.
But with the Rashford sending off, that story changed with such speed as to give anyone watching something approaching whiplash. Mohamed Elyounoussi pulled a goal back for Copenhagen within seconds of the restart, and a penalty kick for handball by Raphael Varane and Harry Maguire allowed Diego Gonçalves to level from the penalty spot before half-time.
Had Manchester United been Spurs, they’d have got another player sent off and ended up on the wrong end of a can of whoopass, but Manchester United err towards a slightly different combination of false hope and meltdown. Another penalty, this time converted by Bruno Fernandes put another narrative in the starting traps; a gritty 3-2 away win with ten players. But yet again, fate turned up late in proceedings and pulled their trousers down.
On 87 minutes, a goal with an eerie reminiscence to the second goal conceded to Manchester City a couple of weeks earlier, a cross to the far post, where Lukas Lerager headed the home team level while under what looked from a distance like a challenge from Diogo Dalot which upon closer inspection turned out not much of one at all.
As though all this wasn’t enough, four minutes into stoppage-time Roony Bardghji found himself inside the penalty area and his shot scuffed into the ground and past Andre Onana to leave United needing to win their last two matches against Bayern Munich at home and Galatasaray away to have much chance of getting through the group stages. They’ve lost three out of four Champions League group matches, and have conceded eleven goals in the process.
When the gap is this big, there are no excuses. The Premier League’s television deal is worth £1.632bn per season. Denmark’s TV contact is worth £37m per season. Manchester United’s record transfer fee paid is £105m. Copenhagen’s is £5.4m. And while the Rashford sending off was on the ‘arguably tough’ side, chucking away two goals in that little gap between half-time that incident is precisely nothing to do with losing a forward. It’s that lack of gumption. That very familiar lackadaisicality. That feeling they sometimes give off that they could be quite a decent team if only they ever got round to it.
Perhaps the Glazers own all the reaction channels. Perhaps they’re making so much money from people dropping in to watch them for the lulz that it pays them handsomely to keep United doing this sort of thing. This sounds absurd—it is absurd—but when you look at things like Jonny Evans and Harry Maguire starting as their central defensive partnership or spending more than £80m on that tattooed petulance machine Antony, you can’t help but wonder. How can you take one of the three or four biggest football brands on this entire goddam planet and turn it into… this?
When I say that, I mean it with a sense of something approaching admiration. In an age during which the professional game is more stratified by money than ever before, Manchester United are breaking stereotypes, bustin’ taboos and making people reconsider what they believe the richest clubs to be capable of. By having such a vast global following and all the financial benefits that come with this they should be too big to fail, yet somehow have been managing to do so on a fairly regular basis for more than a decade.
Is Erik ten Hag a bald man walking yet? Not quite, on the basis of what we’ve seen from the owners before. The Glazers aren’t particularly trigger-happy, and getting rid of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer part way through the 2021/22 season didn’t turn out well for the club, with Ralf Rangnick dropping a growing number of truth bombs about the absolute state of the place as his interim period wore down and it became increasingly obvious that he was not going to be taking up the consultancy he’d been offered by the club from the end of that season.
All that time spent chasing their man. All the players that he wanted brought in, for better or for worse. This was supposed to be the time they got it right, the time the club dotted its Is and crossed its Ts before bringing in the manager who would definitively be the best fit for this particular football club and the unique challenges that come with running its playing side. Yet one season and three months in here we all are again, the vultures circling and with identity of who might come in and actually fix this club looking as clear as it has at just about any period over the previous decade.
Manchester United remain caught in the same trap as ever. The work needed to be done on the playing operation seems to require two separate strands. The arrival of Jim Ratcliffe may or may not be a stepping stone towards a change of ownership. The one thing that seems just about certain is that there won’t be vast amounts of Qatari money flowing into the club. But a change at the very top of the club could aid with the other required job, to rip out all of the structures within the club that have been failing it in recent years and replace them. A completely gutting and rebuilding from the inside out.
This would be unlikely to be a quick job, but it should be abundantly clear by now that there are no quick fixes for Manchester United. Whatever happens next will require patience and time if it is to be successful, but the paradox of modern football is that patience and time are the two things that the game doesn’t allow for any more, and certainly not at a club this size. From the perma-restlessness of the fans to the capitulations on the pitch, very little change ever seems to occur at Old Trafford. Not the good type, anyway.