New Man United manager ‘agreement reached’ as past Solskjaer sympathises with present Amorim

No great surprise to see Man United’s far-reaching and widespread search for a former Fergie player to be interim manager and take over from a former Fergie player as caretaker manager dominating proceedings today.

Even less surprise to see an awful lot of nonsense about it, and even less surprise to still see a few bits of nonsense about other things as well.

For all our p*ssing and moaning, let Mediawatch not deny its gratitude for this unexpected and delightfully rich seam of early January content.

Craptic clue

There are lots of words that used to serve a perfectly good and useful purpose. Words that had meanings that were understood and widely agreed upon. Now a great many of those words have had their specific meaning diluted and stretched and twisted beyond any lingering hints of usefulness, and that seems a shame.

One such word is ‘cryptic’. We partly blame Karl Pilkington, but mainly blame – as Mediawatch generally does – the British tabloid media.

Two entirely predictable and normal things happened during Oliver Glasner’s most recent press conference at Crystal Palace.

First, journalists asked Glasner about him being linked with the Man United job. Absolutely fine, be weird if they didn’t.

Second, Glasner batted those questions away. Absolutely fine, be weird if he didn’t.

What he absolutely did not do, the Mirror, is offer ‘a cryptic response to Man Utd job links’.

The intro is odd as well.

Oliver Glasner claimed he is “not allowed to bet” when quizzed on the Manchester United vacancy as he smiled when questioned on the prospect of eventually landing the job.

He didn’t ‘claim’ anything of the sort. Again, we’ve got a word in danger of losing all meaning. ‘Claim’ here is used to imply doubt where none exists. He simply stated that his contract doesn’t allow him to bet on football, something that is obviously and provably going to be true.

Anyway. Those ‘cryptic’ responses in full.

Glasner was asked how he feels to be favourite for the United job and said: “I am not allowed to bet. My contract has one paragraph that I am not allowed to bet. And I don’t look at it.”

Pressed further on whether we should bet on him to eventually land in the Old Trafford dugout he smiled and added: “I also cannot give insider information. That would also be breaking my contract. I am Crystal Palace manager and it makes no sense for you to ask more questions about it.”

There you have it. You can say those answers are ‘non-committal’ if you must. You can say he refused to rule anything out, you might even argue he was a touch spiky about it all. But there is nothing cryptic here. These are clear and straightforward answers of just about the only sort he could possibly provide.

It’s bigger than that, Chris, it’s large

Meanwhile, The Sun’s live transfer blog promises a ‘HUGE Semenyo to Man City update’.

Which is? Antoine Semenyo is probably going to join Man City quite soon.

Thanks. For. That.

Omission: Impossible

With pretty much every other major news outlet – and the bookies – in unanimous agreement that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is in line for a return to Man United as interim manager until the end of the season, replacing caretaker manager Darren Fletcher, this headline from the Daily Express website stands out.

Man Utd new manager agreement reached as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer snubbed

Alas, issues of space must have left them with no choice but to omit the key words ‘by Daily Express journalists’ that really do belong somewhere in the above.

Now we’re all familiar by now with this particular use of ‘agreement reached’ (see Mediawatches passim) whereby the agreement is in fact between a group of journalists – normally but not exclusively Reach journalists – rather than any club or clubs or persons actually relevant to the story.

But this is a particularly good one because there isn’t even really a ‘Man Utd new manager agreement reached’ beyond it not being Solskjaer. Four journalists have contributed, each putting forward four different names for who it should actually be: Zinedine Zidane, Roberto De Zerbi, Oliver Glasner and Enzo Maresca.

That’s the opposite of agreement reached, if anything. You can’t have an agreement on who a new manager should be by all agreeing on one person who it shouldn’t be, surely. That way madness lies. We can all agree the new Man United manager shouldn’t be Donald Trump, for instance, but that doesn’t really get us any closer to agreeing on who it should be.

Yesterday’s news, tomorrow

This is another one of those where Mediawatch wonders if we’re being a bit precious, but that to us really does still feel like something important worth fighting.

In this case it’s the batty old notion that quotes in quote marks ought to accurately reflect the words contained in the quote they’re quoting.

Here’s what the Mirror have come up with to leave us feeling a bit queasy:

‘I was sacked by Man Utd like Ruben Amorim – I knew I was done midway through final game’

Now the issue we have here is that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer – for it is he – never mentions Ruben Amorim at all.

There were many lows. I’m one of them who looks back at the lows more than the highs.

The end at Watford, well you can’t get lower than that. I more or less knew at half-time, so my team talk was about enjoying the last 45 minutes together and giving their all.

Some of them had stopped running, caring. But then in the second half we played well.

Donny [Van de Beek] came on and scored. We should have scored more. Then we got a sending off. 2-1 until the 94th minute. It sounds really bad that it was a 4-1 defeat. It was bad to lose against Watford but it wasn’t a 4-1 game.

And there’s a very good reason why he never mentions Amorim at all. And that’s because these quotes have come from an interview Solskjaer gave to The National in February 2024.

That is, several months before Ruben Amorim was appointed Man United manager, never mind sacked. If he had said what that headline says he did, there would be far graver concerns than the tish and fipsy of the undeniable travails of being Man United boss. The very fabric of space and time would be under threat.

Now. Does it really matter? In this specific case, maybe not. It’s a low-level mischief, really, a way to give a topical hook to some harmless old quotes – albeit that unbeknownst to the journalist tasked with reheating that old interview an even better hook would arrive before the day was done.

But it will never not make us uncomfortable. And the fact it’s all for something as small and twatty as this is worse, in a way, because it just seems even less worthwhile opening up the dangers that lurk in a world where we entirely give up the idea of having to accurately quote the actual words people actually said when they actually said them.

I wish I was special

Lovely little example here from the Mirror of two perennial Mediawatch favourites: journalists massively overestimating how important the rest of the world considers the minutiae of their job, and deeply misleading headlines.

Man Utd given special exemption to Premier League rule after Darren Fletcher appointment

They’ve let him do the pre-match press conference a bit later than usual. Yet here we are, with the world still turning.

They Know What They’re Doing headline of the day

Look, it’s always headline news in the British tabloids when a middling Dutch club announce who will be their technical director next season. It’s definitely not only of interest to the Mirror because they can put this headline on it:

Ex-Man Utd boss Erik ten Hag returns to former club four months after brutal sacking

Let’s hear no more cheap, snarky suggestions otherwise. FC Twente, by the way, if you are remotely bothered.