Here's the thing.
I genuinely think that United are entering into a phase that could last for years, and even decades. Oh, they'll pick up the odd League Cup here and there (but not this season, haha…), maybe even an F.A. Cup, but they won't get near being PL champions, I believe, and we won't even talk about the CL.
When a cartload of money flowed into the game — that was the whole point of the PL — and when the concept of worldwide marketing of a football club “brand” got going, in the early nineties, they were the chief beneficiaries. They also had, exceptionally, a good crop of youth players come through at the same time — let's admit that, although they were probably made to look better than they were — and an authoritarian manager (tough love father-figure type in the mould of a much earlier model, going back to the fifties and sixties, Nicholson, Shankly et al.) who suited that crop of youngsters perfectly, and who was, I believe, the last of that kind that we'll see, because the game is very different now. They didn't actually have a lot of competition. Yes, Arsenal emerged from 1996 onwards when Wenger arrived, and then in 2003 when Abramovich bought Chelsea, and above all brought in Mourinho the following year, Chelsea sort of took over Arsenal's role.
Arsenal and Chelsea are still around as big guns, there's us — we're not going anywhere, whatever blips there may be on the way, and yes that will continue after Pep, I believe, the structure is just too solidly in place, and it's been exceptionally well planned — Liverpool's fortunes have revived in a big way, and there's a bunch of clubs just behind, knocking on the door of top six, maybe even top four.
As for Manchester and Greater Manchester, which includes Trafford Park, the power structure has been reversed, and I believe for a long, long time to come. Sure, they'll beat us at their gaff from time to time, even at the Etihad. As we did from time to time — people forget that — even in our darkest years. It was occasionally our “consolation match”, as it is now theirs.
There is a new order in football, and there has been these last twelve years or so. The media can yack its mantra on and on (and the people yacking are very often former United players, of course). They are not part of it.