Manchester United need Ten Hag and 14 new players

Manchester United simply need a new coach and a whole new team and then they can take on the world again.

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What Manchester United need next…
Last night couldn’t have been less surprising if it had been written. Atletico simply made art out of shithousery and United weren’t good enough to get past that. The team weren’t set up right and they played down to their potential. Ronaldo from 15,10, hell even five years ago would have produced something to get them past it anyway, but he’s not that guy anymore.

Sometimes you just watch a legendary boxer get old in the ring, very fast, it’s been like that this season with Ronaldo. All credit to him for playing at such an incredible level for so long, but the decline is irreversible from here. See also: Messi,L. The boxer in question keeps on going for years anyway, hoping to recapture past glories, but he never does. In the end it’s just sad to see him such a shadow of himself.

Neither Ronaldo or Messi will get hurt by playing too long and they won’t damage their legacies either – they’re two out of the best four players of all time. But after a while you have to ask, what’s the point? The World Cup aside, they’ve won everything there is – usually on multiple occasions – and the ultimate trophy is out of reach now. They don’t need the money and how much adulation does even Cristiano need? If Tom Brady’s skills had deteriorated to this extent, he would have *stayed* retired, no matter what Ronaldo said to him.

Rangnick didn’t have the skills to usher this side through either. The only difference is that he never had. There was a reason he never had any of the remotely big jobs before this and that is that he simply isn’t good enough. This is why United found him where they did rather than managing the likes of Milan or Barcelona.

If they let him have any influence on things after this year, they need their heads examining. Why would the new manager listen to a single thing he says? If he knew how to sort things at United, he’d have *done* it already. So he doesn’t. Pay him off and write the experience off. Not all German managers are created the same, I’m afraid.

Also – don’t hire Poch. He’s proved he couldn’t win anything at Spurs and even more so at PSG. It’s not an easy gig there admittedly and no-one else has won the Champions League for them either. But they looked a hundred million miles off it this year.

So give ten Hag the gig. Let him define the style he wants to play, buy players who actually fit the system and give him time to make it work. Jurgen took time to create this Liverpool, but we obviously and demonstrably improved every single season. Now it’s only Pep who stops us winning the league almost every year. Maybe this one too, City scarcely have a record of collapsing under pressure. But the point is, it took time to get here.

But Pep and even Jurgen (unfortunately) won’t be here forever, so the league won’t always be sewn up. And it won’t be bought by Russian warmongers anymore, so that’s nice. Get the right guy in now, show some patience in him and who knows where we’ll be in five years’ time?

Just let someone with actual working brains work out the plan going forward this time. There’s only so many times you can go back to the drawing board before you run out of the money to buy chalk.
James, Liverpool

Manchester United: A simple solution
United’s problems can be summarised quite simply: we only have four good players (DDG, Varane, Sancho and Bruno) and that’s not enough to win anything.

Every other player can/should be replaced, with the following 14 being first out of the door:

Matic
Mata
Martial
Pogba
Rashford
AWB
CR7
Cavani
Lingard
Jones
Bailly
Greenwood
Henderson
VDB

So in summary, everything will be OK if we can just clear out 14 players, bring in 14 new players, find a world-class manager, and build a state-of-the-art new stadium.

Until then we’re f*cked.
RQT (MUFC)

Shithouses?
A question for United fans complaining about Atletico players’ antics: Are you familiar with a guy named Bruno Fernandes?
David, LCFC

…I have no love whatsoever for Simeone and Atletico Madrid and the way they play the game. In fact, if all teams played like them, I would give up watching. But, if you are happy to have serial offenders like Fernandes, Rashford, Ronaldo and Elanga (yes, him as well) when it comes to diving and cheating in your team, then you can’t complain when the opposition beats you by cheating and feigning injury after every challenge. Either condemn it for everybody or don’t condemn it at all and accept the consequences.
G Thomas, Breda

On New Old Trafford
Just some thoughts on Ian King’s article re. Old Trafford:

– Wouldn’t the idea be to build the new stadium in the car park next to OT rather than move out while it’s being demolished (so more like what Arsenal did than Spurs)? So I doubt the relocation thing would be an issue – the logistics of faffing around and using the stadium while doing major refurbishment work (which would add meaningful cost to refurbishing for a comparatively modest improvement) is a major tick for building a new stadium.

– properly redeveloping the south stand to add meaningful additional capacity is probably a non-starter. It would mean building over a working railway line. If they could clear it with Network Rail (which they probably couldn’t) the cost would be astronomical – probably comparable to knocking OT down and starting again.

– As to cost, of course that will be the driver at the end of the day but saying “Tottenham spent £1bn for a 60k seat stadium, so a 90k seat stadium would cost £1.5bn” isn’t how it works. Tottenham Stadium is in a built up urban area in Central London and OT is in a semi-industrial one in the North with plenty of open space. The logistical issues (even things like traffic management plans and noise level restrictions) of building in Tottenham would’ve massively added to the cost, as will the London premium, etc. Also, that retractable pitch can’t have been cheap…

The real issue for United that may rule out a new stadium would be that materials costs are currently spiralling – but they’d be several years from putting a spade in the ground and may be banking on the supply chain stabilising before then.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the end result is a new coat of paint, but think a new stadium is a more likely outcome than Ian does. Particularly because United would probably just cover the cost by refinancing their borrowing rather than any investment by the Glazers – who in a few years would have comparable interest payments to what they’re paying now but able to take a share of substantially bigger annual profits from a 90k seater – plus they’d own a more valuable asset without having to dip a hand in their pockets.

Plus, if they build a new stadium, then it may have a pirate ship! (I assume that’s just a thing the Glazers do as standard).

Still disappointed about the result, so take this how you will, but more than any other team I loathe watching Atletico Madrid – four minutes of added time was a travesty – Koke alone used up that time doing history’s slowest substitution.
Andy (MUFC)

Man United is a gimme for Liverpool
When it comes to the title race, people love to discuss the forthcoming fixture list to try and assess whether it’ll be City or Liverpool who tend to have the upper hand. I was reading yesterday that Liverpool might have the slightly tougher final run-in which includes the likes of Arsenal (come on Mikel, we’re calling in those favours!), Spurs and Manchester United.

Well, can we all stop referring to Manchester United as a ‘tougher’ fixture, please? They’re going to get a good tw*tting at Anfield because they Really. Are. Shit.

So bad, it takes any sort of lustre off our Derby Double, this season.

Bah humbug.

Just trying to help.
Levenshulme Blue, Manchester 19
PS. We’ll get a tougher game at Turf Moor, this season, I expect.

Slip-sliding away
The absolute funniest way for Liverpool to blow it must have slipped your minds…
Paul, Gooner

Surely Chelsea didn’t…
I accidently read the comments of the mailbox yesterday. I saw a comment that Chelsea had asked for their FA cup tie at Middlesbrough to be played behind closed doors because they could only legally honour the 400 tickets they had already sold because they are frozen asset of a sanctioned person and are operating on a licence. I thought that that must be comments bollocks. There’s no way that the leadership at Chelsea would write to the FA to demand that if they can’t sell tickets then no one should. Especially for a second division team that doesn’t have access to Premier league, Champions League and an interest free £1.5bn soft loan from their corrupt owner. Even if they thought that it would somehow be sporting, to demand that the FA stop the sale of tickets for an FA cup tie where the FA gets a third of the gate and to think that that would be a good idea?

But no, they really did that.
Alex, South London

A Chelsea view
Wanted to finally write in to talk about the situation surrounding Chelsea and what the media (including F365) and fan reaction has been to that.

After assessing the initial set of reactions, I’ve for the large part avoided the cesspit of Reddit and Twitter with most media and opposition fans largely celebrating the sanctions imposed. That’s quite fair, I believe, it’s well deserved and had the Premier League or the British government actually cared about the source of Abramovich’s income, he would not have allowed to be the owner in the first place. What I want to comment on is the level of exaggeration of Chelsea fan reaction and how the media is portraying it – yes, there is a very narrow but strong base of deeply right-wing, self-serving, borderline racist fan base but let’s be clear here – that is a small minority. It’s unfortunate that this small group is the hardcore away fans but this is often true of most European fan ultras (especially in Italy) – they end up being the most narrow minded.

I would refer you to the first home game since the sanctions were imposed – any chants of Abramovich initiated by small sections were drowned out by the rest of the stadium, as reported by the Athletic correspondent at the game (yes I know, the Roman banner is still flying in the stadium which is really poor, but hopefully that will be gone by the next home game). Yet, no-one is talking about that – people want to group Chelsea fans as a racist, narrow minded set of people.

(We don’t – Ed)

This is not limited to the fans. The next thing worth mentioning is the bizarre request from the club to have the FA Cup QF to be played without fans. This such a strange request that most people would or should stop and think – what is going on here? And if you were to closely follow the situation you would understand that the purpose of this was to somehow push the government to allow ticket sales for future games (not sure how successful it was and whether it was worth the justified backlash it received but we’ll find out). The narrative from the club during communication of this request and any update has been ‘from our ongoing conversation with the FA and the govt.’ – this should signal a broader purpose to anyone required to report on it and an indication that it probably requires an ounce of research.

Yet, F365 decided to publish an article F*** off Chelsea which was just pure reaction with no research or thought involved – seriously? Is this the level of journalism we are amounting to? The article before this about whether Chelsea will survive as a football club – it was such an obvious one to actually do the research because the club publishes its annual financials on Companies House every year – yet the reporter decided to make it an opinion piece, based on little fact except that Fordstram has spent £1.5B in the last 19 years. Have you given a thought about what that was spent on and that likely a majority of it was on transfers? What is the cashflow that the club requires to push on till the end of the season? How much is it missing out on in terms of lost revenue and what will it need to make sure it survives till any potential deal is completed?

It’s bizarre how little actual ‘work’ is being done anymore and that everyone either pushes out the most clickbait article and the fans just read the title and form their opinions. I want to make it clear here – I think the club deserves everything that’s coming to it and while I do hope we survive this, even if it doesn’t, it will not be the end of the world for me (but it would really suck). Although I doubt little will change from a media standpoint I just wanted to write in to give a different Chelsea fan perspective from what most people are likely seeing right now. Maybe it’s tone-deaf, maybe right now is not the right time to do this, maybe there are factors that I have not considered that have led to my opinions being misguided. Either way, curious to hear other people’s perspectives.

In solidarity with Ukraine.
Foreign Chelsea fan, London

Why not just give tickets away?
A lot of the discussion in the comments following a mailbox about Chelsea lately centres on fans being unable to attend.

Maybe I’m wrong but Chelsea could have fans there, doesn’t the restriction simply say that they cannot sell tickets or profit from matchday revenue?

In theory it means Chelsea could just allow people in for free since that would satisfy the government’s desire for Chelsea not to profit (and by extension Roman). Has this idea been explored? Or will chelsea continue to pretend that their complaints about restrictions is based on representing fans and not what it really – whingeing about not making money.

If Chelsea really cared about fans being able to attend games they would petition the government to allow fans to attend for free. It would be good pr for the club and would help the team on the pitch but I’ll wager money they haven’t even asked the question.

There’s no reason for the government to turn down this request either since it won’t benefit Roman at all.
Lee