Now both the worst people *and* the rest of us think Manchester United are fools
By going back on their original decision, they have proved just how ill-conceived their original plan to 'reintegrate' Mason Greenwood was in the first place.
Well, what the bloody hell were they expecting? Seriously, what did they think was going to happen? For a club who are apparently so obsessed with ‘controlling the narrative’, Manchester United didn’t just let this one slip. They dropped it completely and then chased it stark bollock naked through the bustling town square of British public opinion, baring their arse for the world to see, apparently under the influence of such a such a mind-bending combination of tunnel vision and hubris that they started to hallucinate a world in which Mason Greenwood would just return to the Premier League and that somehow everything would be okay.
It was clear from the moment that the story was revealed by The Athletic last week where public support was sitting. Even most of the media blowhards who would usually wax lyrical about woke mobs cancelling the innocent (or whatever jumble of key words falls from their gin-soaked fingertips) were somewhat muted.
The suspicion had been growing for a few weeks, but even so it seemed inconceivable that a football club would actually attempt anything so transparent wouldn’t surely be pushed away by some sort of reputation-protecting PR person. The club’s much-vaunted (by themselves) investigation was starting to feel like United believing that they had become the judge and jury in this particular case.
That a protest was planned for outside the stadium was absolutely no surprise whatsoever. For all the reputation that Old Trafford has of being little more than a tourist destination on match days, Manchester United have always had a socialist, egalitarian seam running through their support. It never felt in any way likely that the match-going United support were going to accept this, and they could have made the team’s next home match against Nottingham Forest very uncomfortable indeed.
As soon as you start giving this hare-brained scheme any seroius thought, it started to fall apart, the sequence of events reading more like something that an algorithm would spit out than something that a bunch of people who believe themselves very smart and run a multi-billion pound business might come up with after six months of alleged ‘investigation’.
Did they really think that sending out a video to the women’s team to explain the Important Men’s decision to the Poor Ickle Laydeez would wash? How were they going ever justify this to sponsors, advertisers, and their own supporters? Could—and it would be completely understandable if few have too many concerns over this in one sense, at least—anyone even guarantee Greenwood’s safety at away matches? If a fan did get on the pitch and did make a run at him, would their other players have to defend him? How would those photos look, flashing around the world within minutes? Had they actually given this any thought whatsoever?
And if there was a killer line, a point at which the full extent of all of this became so glaringly obvious that you had to look away for a moment, it was at the end of this section on The Athletic, summing up the rationale behind why United had reached the conclusion that they’d reached:
Preparations for Greenwood’s return also included an assessment of the expected sentiment of external figures, listing individual football pundits, journalists and politicians and stating whether they would be for or against Greenwood’s reintegration.
The planning divided these people into categories to the effect of “supportive”, “open-minded” or “hostile”, and the club’s document listed a series of domestic abuse charities assumed to be “hostile”.
Perhaps, just perhaps… if you have a measure that you’re thinking of putting through and as part of your research and words, “the club’s document listed a series of domestic abuse charities assumed to be ‘hostile’” appear, maybe it’s time to give this up as a bad job. The existence of this list has been the subject of considerable discussion, but their motives for creating it in the first place remain unclear. Were they just going to swerve national newspapers they thought might ask uncomfortable questions? Would Adam Crafton have been blackballed?
So, what was Richard Arnold thinking? The most generous possible interpretation—and there’s nothing to suggest that this is in any way true—was that they were cynically dipping their toes into the water to see if there was any way whatsoever that they could make this fly, but the fact that a crisis meeting had to be called for last Friday night, the evening after the story was forst reported, would indicate that this wasn’t the case.
And if there most generous possible interpretation is out of the window, that only leaves… less generous ones, that the bottom line is the only thing that matters at Manchester United, right down to somewhere close to the most basic of ethical actions, that they threw three of their women’s team players under the bus and subjected them to horrendous social media abuse in tacit support of somebody whose claim to ‘innocence’ is that the famously high bar required to bring about a criminal conviction which results in a rate of just 1.5% of offences reported to the police resulting in charges being pressed couldn’t be reached. Oh, and this all happened while those players were trying to prepare for a World Cup final. Manchester United retain his registration. They could yet profit from selling him. If they do, they should donate the money to refuges for abused women.
And Greenwood, who has been painted by his defenders as some poor innocent who will surely be plummeted into cruel poverty by this terrible injustice (despite the fact that he’s been broadly sitting around on his arse on £75,000 a week for the last eighteen months and will continue to do so for the remainder of his Manchester United contract, at the very least, regardless of where he’s playing).
The rumour mill is already spinning with gossip at which club has little enough of a moral barometer to sign him. While loaning him abroad is expedient for Manchester United, it should also be remembered that whichever club does take him on will have female supporters of its own. Somebody, somewhere is about to experience that punch to the gut feeling that Manchester United’s female supporters experienced at the end last week.
This should not be forgotten, and it will likely be extremely vocally be recalled should he start playing for someone else and scoring goals, which will doubtless cause at least a small number of articles questioning why he isn’t at Old Trafford. But it should also be added that how good Greenwood is at football has never been the point of this story in any way whatsoever, just as how badly Manchester United need a number 9 who scores regular goals isn’t either.
In many respects, it isn’t really about football at all. It’s about the moddycoddled and infinitely indulged wealthy and the ‘chances’ they’re given. It’s about the horrendous extent to which men are not called to account over extremely serious allegations of one of the most heinously demhumanising crimes that can be committed. And it’s about the waste of a young man gifted the talent to achieve actual dreams, but who tarnished his own reputation to such an extent that
It all comes back to those women. The three players hung out to dry by the owners of the club. The rest of that team. The staff who felt “guilt and shame” over their club’s wretched moral vaccuum. All women who support Manchester United. How could posssibly feel to be treated by such contempt by an organisation which expects their loyalty at other points? Ah yes, you matter, but do you not understand how much money we’d have to write off the balance sheet of our multi-billion pound football club if we did release him?
And let’s not forget that at present there’s nothing to prevent sending him abroad for a short period before attempting a go around on the shenanigans they tried pulling last week. Given how incompetently they’ve dealt with most of the last week, this wretched saga isn’t quite done yet.