Pogba? Woodward is Man United’s mistake

Sarah Winterburn

You know how it goes. Paul Pogba should be brilliant by now. Paul Pogba isn’t – as long as you discount the moments where, surprise surprise, he does wonderful stuff, especially with the outside of his boot, that reminds you why you love football – and thus, altogether now, Paul Pogba is a failure.

This is a question of models, and models that dictate – to whatever degree you let it into your head – how we see the world around us. The model in the 21st century that began with 24-hour news in the latter 20th is content now, content in five minutes, content five minutes after that and ideally a bit more content before you knock off work for the day. It’s a model that prizes ‘being viewed’ a long, long way ahead of ‘accurately depicting how reality actually works’. I should take the opportunity to say that one of the ways that Football365 keeps its dignity amongst a sports media that has essentially decided en masse that clicks>dignity is by avoiding this model as best it can.

The bad thing about this model, or perhaps the worst thing about this model, is obviously that IT ISN’T BLOODY REAL.

That might sound obvious, but it’s pretty sickening how insidiously its artificial timeframe has seeped into the way people talk and think about football. I’ve seen a bunch of stuff in the F365 mailbox from people who think there is an achievement, beyond coming off like a grumpy goon, in making an authoritative judgement on Paul Pogba at this point. Whether he’d been stellar, dogs**t or anything in between, it doesn’t make a difference – you can’t tell yet. What he will be for Manchester United is as immediately apparent now as it was when Didier Drogba was shanking shots and running into people in his early Chelsea career.

Pogba had a very particular kind of role – everything, all the time – in Turin during what are very formative years for anyone, and has now been thrust into a situation where no-one knows quite what to do with him yet, and presumably he doesn’t quite know what to do with it either. So be smart, ask yourself away from the noise of the 21st century how long any human being would take to adapt to that change and show the best of themselves – and yes, that answer you came up with is probably about the minimum they’d need.

Around him is an even greater casualty of the desire to make everything fit into short-term boxes – Manchester United itself. The club is, and will be for who knows how long, in a uniquely difficult position – it has no footballing identity whatsoever, whilst having to live inside a borrowed reputation of having one of the strongest footballing identities of all. I’m sure any decent therapist would tell you – if you want to grow as a person, you have to let go of the image of yourself, how ‘you have to be’.

It would take a brave Ed Woodward to say it, but right now, Manchester United are nothing. Beyond a lot of sales presentations and signs for official noodle partners and a lot of players thrown at whatever price into a training ground together to attempt to create what Manchester United ‘should’ be. Which is, when you really get down to it, the past.

The short-termism which has infected everything the club currently does, including paying any transfer price, hiring a manager who you know plenty upstairs dislike, and all the stuff with the noodle partners, is pretty desperate. It’s worth noticing that the last time (before Fergie) that United had a colossally influential manager, it took not one season or three seasons or five at a push but more than 20 years before the club unwound itself from that weight and forged itself anew. Clearly there isn’t a rule of how long this has to take – although you sense that the managerial decisions the club have made post-Fergie will ensure the unwinding takes ever longer – but one thing’s for sure: we’re still, by an absolute mile, in the unwinding period.

Louis Van Gaal and Jose Mourinho were and are both, in a funny way, suited for this – their relentlessly cautious, micromanaging styles of football are exactly what you’d do to just try to keep a steady hand on the ship now that the big boss has left. Maybe nick a few trophies to convince the noodle partners there’s nothing but glory, glory Man United to see here.

Which is completely understandable – but unfortunately, there is no 21st century media model to reflect this reality. Instead it’s compressed into a content-bubble of the next five minutes, of whether Jose Mourinho being charged or not charged for kicking a bottle means the club either is or isn’t in crisis. Ed Woodward’s mind, I’m sure, if he was really honest, goes no further than the next quarter’s figures, and if you were to remove everyone who a) wasn’t drafted in as a mercenary and b) is actually good and seems genuinely committed, Manchester United are left with one goalkeeper and one striker. And probably Juan Mata because frankly he’s just too nice to want to say anything mean about. Which is – not that this should be relevant, but unfortunately it definitely is – not exactly the model Fergie was working from.

On that basis, the worst signing United have made in the past five years is Woodward himself. It’s him who’d have to, with a combination of guile, football instinct and the desire to take a risk, begin the unwinding process by finding a rough diamond of a manager who could create the direction for whatever Manchester United will be next.

But Ed Woodward has, you sense, none of those things, and as long as the club keeps picking managers on the basis of reassuring reputation, they’re basically just putting lots of very expensive plasters on the outside of a marooned, creaking ship haunted by the ghost of glories past.

Toby Sprigings – follow him on Twitter