Manchester United stinks. And while this is not really a hot take or anything, I feel it needs to be talked about. I mean even their mascot has given up.
So in the Premier League, there are historically six teams that are ‘the best’. Tottenham Hotspurs, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Manchester United. These are the six teams with the most Premier League wins, and the most appearances in Champions League football, at least in recent history.
However, Manchester United recently has taken a nose dive. Last season they set the lowest points total that the club has ever had with 58 total points. The winners of the League, to put that in perspective, Manchester City, secured themselves 93 points. This disparity in points also goes along with the fact that in the past few years Manchester United has been spending more money than every other premier league team barring two: Manchester City and Chelsea. So not only is Manchester United getting worse, but they’re losing more and more money as they do it. Not a great business plan.
But the big question is why? And there are few answers to that, the biggest ones to me are a lack of players buying in and a lack of strong management.
Last season Manchester United had two different managers. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, an ex-player for the club, and Ralf Ragnick. Going into the 2021-2022 campaign Ole was already on thin ice, he had failed to bring Manchester United really any silverware in the past few years, and they had even dropped into the Europa League from the Champions League while under his guide. It only took a few months into the season for the higher-ups at Manchester United to realize that players were no longer buying into Solskjaer, and he was sacked before December. After a brief period of searching Manchester United then landed on Ralf Ragnick as Interim Manager. But at that point, the damage had been done and none of the players wanted to play, and they ended the season in arguably worse form than they even started it.
However, a new season was approaching for Manchester United and they finally got themselves a manager that everyone agreed was going to right the ship. Erik Ten Hag. He was Ajax’s manager and had led that team to success multiple times during his tenure as Manager there.
So, the stage was set, Manchester United was going to finally come into the season and regain their former glory. During the pre-season games, they looked pretty good too. They only lost one preseason game and it was to an elite spanish team Atletico Madrid. So everyone’s hopes were…not quite high, but by no means low. And their first game was against Brighton, an alright side but by no means a great one.
And what does Manchester United do? They lose 2-1. And the score should not have been anywhere near that close. At this point, I don’t know what they should do. They can’t even get players on financially ruined teams to play for them. Hopefully, Ten Hag can begin to get his players in check but right now it is a mess in Manchester.