United Thread - 2023/24

When Ferguson left he should have been more involved in the transition. Not so much on the pitch but more as a director of football who was ensuring that their style evolved.

They sleep walked those first few years if not the whole decade.

His tentacles are still all over that club and that’s part of the problem. He suggested Moyes, he got involved with signing Ronaldo. I would imagine many more of their signings quietly had his paw prints all over them.

They need a clean break from him and a new reality check in their mentality that they don’t have a right to be successful because they were in the 90s.
 
Seagulls Stuff Scum Swamp , 4 words for their next game please.
Sadly I can only see a united win - due to an exceptional display by VAR and PGMOL.
It will be many controversial decisions ( 2 Brighton goals brought back for a minor infringement 30 seconds before, swift soft yellows for Brighton in 1st half followed by at least one Brighton player getting a soft 2nd yellow, waved away handball blocking a Brighton goal, blatant Brighton penalty denied for simulation, 13 minutes of 2nd half extra time to allow the usual dubious united penalty to win it), and all the UK media will again ignore all the above and go with ‘united beat high flying seagulls’
 
When Ferguson left he should have been more involved in the transition. Not so much on the pitch but more as a director of football who was ensuring that their style evolved.

They sleep walked those first few years if not the whole decade.
I think the GPC was too one-dimensional to ever evolve. His success rested on bullying and bluster. Any new manager was always gonna be in a cleft stick - trying to maintain the 'Fergie Legacy' and welding on new ideas. Only one manager could have done that and they didn't get him - we did!
 
I don’t think that last point is right, save that the rot can ultimately be dated to the Rock of Gibraltar fiasco.

in his last season GPC won the title by a distance with more or less the same team that would struggle to make seventh a year later. That in itself is evidence that he was the glue that held everything together. I would argue that the rags post Ferguson haven’t under achieved, but they massively over achieved with GPC at the helm.

Since he has gone, that which he held together has started to unravel. We lose count of the number of good players who have gone there, turned to shit, left and then rediscovered their ability elsewhere. Sancho is probably just the latest in a long line. Even with VAR they do not get the protection from referees they once did.

The ultimate problem it seems to me is the extent to which the current board is in complete thrall to United’s reputation. They sneered at us for buying success, now they are buying failure. They sneered at Chelsea for the rate they went through managers but they are now on their fifth since the GPC (not including the times they gave it Giggsy till the end of the season) and many are calling for him to go. They sneered at Liverpool for clinging to their history, now it is all they have left.

United have pandered to what their fans have wanted. They wanted a new manager? They got one. They wanted a superstar striker? They got one. They wanted to get one over on City in the transfer market? They got one.

They have done none of the things that club needs. Have they invested in the ground or the training facilities? No. Have they invested in their youth section or their academy? No. Anything that requires major capital investment for long term reward they have steered away from in favour of short term revenue gains. The Glazers are complicit in appeasing their supporter base, because keeping their support sweet is what keeps them spending money, which leaves the Glazers able to keep milking the cash cow, rather than doing what the club needs, and that is what is ultimately responsible for their decline.

On that, the buck stops with them.
This is what I don’t get about what @SebastianBlue (who is a fucking brilliant poster btw) is saying. How can the people at the top of an organisation, with executive control, and huge resources at their disposal, not be ultimately be responsible for the direction of that organisation over a twenty year period? To say they had no power to address these things simply cannot be right given the enduring revenue of that organisation, which would have given them the means and the time to make those difficult choices.

Or putting it this way, I reckon there are sales managers on £60k who could genuinely do a better job at running that club (as would any competent person of reasonable insight and intelligence) such is their ineptitude. They really are that bad.

Second generations of self-made men are often ineffectual and decadent. They don’t have the hunger, desire or street-smart of the parent that gave them that leg up in the first place. That is what we are dealing with here.

One only has to look at the state of that stadium, in actual and relative terms to when they took over the club, to realise how much they are completely out of their depth.

On that basis, and on the basis that any competent person could do a better job, the argument they were powerless to substantively tackle the issues at the club holds no water.

It’s akin to saying Peter Swales was powerless to stop our decline over the course of his tenure.

The buck, as you say, stopped with him.
 
His tentacles are still all over that club and that’s part of the problem. He suggested Moyes, he got involved with signing Ronaldo. I would imagine many more of their signings quietly had his paw prints all over them.

They need a clean break from him and a new reality check in their mentality that they don’t have a right to be successful because they were in the 90s.
This.

You still get the impression that there are an awful lot of people still at the rat infested shit hole who constantly chip in with:

"Well, we've always done it this way." Whenever any semblance of common sense raises it's head. Long may it continue.

SCUM.
 

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