One candidate ruled out as tabloid obsession over Manchester United captaincy continues

Ralf Rangnick may as well stop talking as words are being put in his mouth regardless. The Manchester United captaincy obsession continues.

O Captain! My Captain!
The tabloid obsession with which Manchester United player should be entrusted to wear a piece of cloth around their arm continues apace in The Sun, who tasked Ken Lawrence to run the rule over any candidates on show against Chelsea.

He was not impressed.

‘HARRY MAGUIRE should hardly be that worried that he will lose the Manchester United captaincy once Erik Ten Hag shows up,’ he writes.

‘Interim manager Ralf Rangnick declared that a vote should be held amongst the players for who will wear the famous arm band next season.’

Nope. Rangnick specifically said “it doesn’t make sense” to discuss the captaincy situation “because we all don’t know what kind of players will be here, what the group will look like”.

He added: “I strongly believe that the captain should be elected by the team because he’s called the team manager and we always did that. The player with the highest amount of votes was the team captain at the end. That’s how I did it. I know that not a lot of head coaches do it that way. That’s what I would do if I was still the manager next season but in the end I’m not, so this is something that Erik will have to decide.”

At no stage did he ‘declare that a vote should be held’.

‘And that means Maguire, missing against Chelsea and who will also be out with knee trouble for the remaining three games of United’s miserable campaign, won’t get the German’s recommendation to carry on.’

Because no-one will ‘get the German’s recommendation to carry on’. Because “it doesn’t make sense” to even talk about it currently.

Lawrence proceeds to run down Bruno Fernandes, Scott McTominay and Cristiano Ronaldo, none of whom provided overwhelming evidence they should assume the captaincy. But this line on David de Gea stands out:

‘Yet as a goalkeeper he might be considered as being too far away from the action to influence his team mates.’

Pep Guardiola was in charge of a Champions League semi-final first leg earlier this week but even he would wince at this level of overthinking. It is a bit of fabric that goes around someone’s arm and let’s them call head or tails at the coin toss, not a sodding talking stick that only allows the person who holds it to speak.

Doss pot
Rangnick continues to be wilfully misrepresented by the media, with Etienne Fermie of The Sun website a particular offender with this:

‘The latter days of his temporary tenure have been dogged by poor performances and claims of dressing room unrest off the pitch.

‘But Rangnick, who will compile a dossier to hand over to successor Erik ten Hag, is still sure of Ronaldo’s reliability on the field.’

There is a link to their rehash of the original Sunday People story in which said ‘dossier’ was reported. There is no mention whatsoever of Rangnick’s categorical dismissal of the claim as “completely false, completely untrue”. Weird.

Leg work
Neil Custis of The Sun was at Old Trafford and seemed to have either Jack Grealish or Xherdan Shaqiri on his mind:

‘A golden opportunity presented itself on 27 minutes when Thomas Tuchel’s side calved through the Red Devils again.’

Must be his muscle memory kicking in.

Sol searching
Rangnick has obviously been a monumental disappointment at Manchester United but there is an element of revisionism creeping in surrounding his predecessor.

Ian Ladyman writes the following in the Daily Mail:

‘The United team bequeathed to Rangnick by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in November was bad. This one is worse.’

Yet this one has lost as many games – 7 – in 26 matches under Rangnick this season as it did under Solskjaer in 16.

Some of the results and many of the performances since December have been awful. But Manchester United were ‘worse’ in terms of league position and margins of defeat before. Watford 4-1 Manchester United – the most recent game in which the Hornets did not lose at home- was 160 days ago and had absolutely nothing to do with Rangnick.

Mad world
‘Maybe Gabriel Jesus leaves Manchester City because that is the club’s decision – but he would be mad to go of his own accord,’ writes Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail.

How ‘mad’ of a 25-year-old regular Brazil international to want to start more than 23 of a possible 52 games for Manchester City so far this season.

‘Jesus, 25, has spent much of his time at the club playing second fiddle to various false nines, and now Erling Haaland is coming in the summer.

‘But that means Pep Guardiola’s preferred shape will at last involve a striker – and Haaland is not going to play every game, or get the whole 90 minutes when he does. There will be cup ties, rotation, substitutions. It does not follow that Jesus would be unused and ignored.’

It does follow that he would play even less than he is now and runouts in the League Cup third round, dead-rubber matches in the Champions League, the odd Premier League game and a load of substitute cameos might not suffice.

The inevitable Divock Origi example is cited by Samuel and that is fine. Origi, of course, is expected to leave upon the expiration of his Liverpool contract this summer – a situation Jesus will be in when his Manchester City deal runs out in 2023.

‘If City want him, Jesus should stay,’ he concludes. ‘Haaland or not, where is going to be better than City?’

Nowhere. But there could be a handful of places deemed better than City’s bench. It does not take a rocket surgeon to figure out why a footballer might want to play more regular football.

Stuck in the middle
It might be the last time Mediawatch brings this up, but just for old time’s sake…

‘Matic, the most impressive at Goodison Park over seven months ago, was only withdrawn due to a caution and Van de Beek, in his first major start for his new club, made way for Bruno Fernandes, who found Rashford for the clincher. United’s midfield department has not been this imposing since they last hoisted the European Cup in 2008’ – Samuel Luckhurst, Manchester Evening News, October 28, 2020.

‘Manchester United need two midfield signings after problems vs Chelsea’ – Manchester Evening News, April 29, 2022.