Good luck Ruben Amorim; Man Utd are ‘a fat, lazy, bloated corpse of a club’

After Ruben Amorim‘s arrival, simperingly welcomed by the stab-you-in-the-back-at-the-first-chance media plus their typically we-don’t-know-how-to-beat-Ipswich performance which was typically inept, as opposed to ‘utopian’, Peter (talk about over-vaunting) it’d be easy to think: new manager, new system, new success. But it looked more like: new manager, new system, same old shite.

Though sometimes a new manager leads to an uptick in form, the facts suggest any new manager bounce is temporary and a return to the mean usually occurs. Which, since United are mid-table, doesn’t bode well for those looking for immediate success. Their mediocrity is well-established and has decade-long roots. Amorim doesn’t have immediate solutions, nor should he be expected to until he’s got rid of the majority of these basket cases.

But this is Manchester United, the worst big club in the world with an expensively assembled bunch of second-rate talent who don’t even work hard and seem to think running is beneath them. Their stats in that regard are terrible.

Of course, many will lie to themselves and claim to be those responsible fans who are not interested in immediate success, but the rate which clubs get through managers – every 784 days in May 2024 – suggests otherwise. But a football club is much more than the manager and players, which are usually all that the manager can affect.

READ: Amorim Watch: New Man Utd manager rubs his nose a lot and we get bored

And Manchester United, this money-generating behemoth, is unlike any other club, meaning it is a much bigger animal to turn around or put on a different trajectory and thus it’s going to take a lot more than a new system to install a consistently successful era.

Is there any sign this is likely to happen? There is money to be made working for Manchester United and it will always attract people who talk a good game, wearing those blue suits with long, pointy tan shoes who speak in jargon designed to suggest they know what they’re talking about without committing themselves to any action that proves they don’t. And, as I’m sure you know from your own experience at work, bullshit merchants are everywhere. United needs to identify them and get rid; they’re dragging the club down.

In the 90s and early 2000s United were still a ‘normal’ club, connected to the real world and real people, but now, they’ve benefited from huge money for so long that such a grasp on reality has been lost. The years of exploiting the brand so successfully so that there is always plenty of money to waste has obviously and nakedly led to an ill-considered transfer strategy and that’s probably to over-rate it. A lot of it looks like when you meet a rich person desperately trying and failing to buy themselves taste, completely unaware that a gold toilet not only doesn’t earn you respect, but that people are openly laughing at you.

They have spent over 10 years disproving the mantra that you can buy success; the net spend table over the last five years is proof of that. While largely true, United are here to prove that it’s harder than that. The football has to come first, not the rice noodle partner contracts, but who can say that has been the case? The rotting stadium itself is a physical manifestation of the state of the club and it will take a long time and substantial further investment to bring it up to standard. It illustrates how disrespected the fans have been and how taken for granted, even as their environment is falling apart. They stand guilty of quite literally failing to fix the roof when the sun is shining.

Rarely has a club needed to get relegated in order to reboot itself and come back leaner and meaner because they look like a fat, lazy, bloated corpse of a club right now. The team is everything that’s wrong with modern football; an embodiment of entitlement.

For so long they’ve been obsessed with being ‘elite’ while they played leaden, unfocused style-free football. Buying who they think are ‘elite’ players and managers, with almost zero return for their multi-million pound investment, making players and managers worse than they have been elsewhere in the process, seemingly no humiliation embarrassing enough for them to realise that they’ve been pursuing the entirely wrong policy for many years and are clueless and more useless than is typical. The problem has usually not wholly been the manager’s fault.

Endlessly trying to buy in the finished article rather than develop something is the rich shitkicker’s attitude. All surface and no roots. Looking to build a big castle on the finest sand with a team that is self-evidently not very good. If they were, they’ve had plenty of time to show it. They are not in a false position. 12th is as 12th does. Only three clubs have scored less. The team is stuffed with entitled half-assed players who are clearly not good enough but are paid like world-beaters and in front of goal they’re showing relegation form. Dreadful. Clueless.

This is what happens when you’re driven by image, status and assumption and not by informative data and intelligence. Get with the programme daddio. At times it has seemed like they’ve been running parts of the club like it’s still 1991.The new system won’t fix that.

This might not be a new start, it might be more of the same. Without profound change behind the scenes and a complete revolution in how they do business as well as how they play, success on the pitch seems unlikely to be long term or profound and their sparkling new manager could, like many before him, find himself running up against the same old problems. Then what?

They’ve got a large mountain to climb to get back into the top four, made all the tougher by their self-image as a big club, which impacts on the manager if results don’t suddenly become consistently stellar. Financially and culturally they are, but sportingly they are nothing more than mid-table mediocrity and the club, its hierarchy, fans and players, would do well to realise it.

The first step to redemption is to recognise your sins. That should keep Ruben Amorim busy for a while because right now, they’re not anywhere near good enough.