I share this view but it still doesn't explain why they're all top pros and star men for their countries. Unless they can just turn it on for a month when the Euros/WC is on.
Quality of Squad
Which of our players are actually star men for their country?
Pogba is at best for France when he’s a mere functioning tool within the midfield and even Deschamps doesn’t trust him to be his main man who the team revolves around - those players are Mbappe and Griezmann and Pogba is asked to play out of position to help the side and has World Cup final apart been a struggle to manage considering his talent.
De Gea has been a national disaster.
Lukaku is good for Belgium but gets chances put on a plate in such a talented side - any striker would thrive in that set up. Regardless he’s not the star man by any means.
Shaw isn’t in English side regularly.
None of our cbs are star men. Lindelof is decent for Sweden I guess.
Lingard and Rash are squad players for England and probably not for long if they keep producing more youngsters.
The quality generally is sorely lacking.
Lack of System
We are the worst organised team in the EPL let alone Europe and compared to a La Liga outfit. Our positioning to receive the ball is awful, we don’t collectively press, we don’t have a structured way to keep the ball and create chances consistently, we don’t pass the ball out from the back with regularity, our CB don’t split to receive the ball - it is all a shambles and we have signed 3 managers who are out of touch with the coaching demands of the modern game and the 4th guy we have in place doesn’t look like he seems to give a shit about structured play either - mentioned being flexible - so we probably will carry on with this stupid ad hoc English style of play.
Want to know why Liverpool finally got back to being competitive - they brought in Rodgers who is a good systems coach to revolutionise their approach to the game and modernise it and then they replaced him with the best systems coach in the world bar Pep when they realised he couldn’t take it any further. We are so far behind all the clubs in England in this regard it is unreal.
Lack of conditioning
We have a team made out of glass and that is a mixture of dinosaur approaches to fitness coaching through having negative passive managers such as Moyes and Mourinho who didn’t advocate high intensity fitness training to play a pressing game and having an outdated manager like LVG who also wasn’t as high press as his modern counterparts. Even outside of training if in matches you’re playing with a passive style then you’re not going to build up that match fitness to keep pressing week in week out and your conditioning is going to take a hit. Liverpool in early seasons would run out of steam but they’re getting tougher and tougher and lasting the distance more. Barca don’t press as much as collectively their fitness gets worse and worse towards end of season which explains their recent lack of success in CL.
We also seem to hold on to injury prone but players for far longer than we should and keep them on extended contracts thus building up a squad of constantly injured players. Look at the way Liverpool just pushed Sturridge out of first team due to unreliable fitness and City kept Kompany out of first team for ages and built side without them - we are far too reliant on injury prone centre backs for example.
Cultural Environment
The fans are not demanding enough and are too nice on the whole especially matchday fans. Compare to Real where yes they’re so spoilt but because they’re so demanding - it forces the boards hands and it leads to a self fulfilling prophecy that they need to keep rebuilding the side or refurbishing the side to stay competitive. Once Fergie left we have taken our foot of the gas and not making any noise to make changes happen on pitch or letting players know they’re not welcome here due to not having the right attitude to succeed here.
We have had Moyes who was such a bad cultural fit - way out of his depth. We had Van Gaal who was probably the best we had in terms of instilling a professional culture but had a weird obsession with Rooney who was a drunkard and not training well yet was captain and it undermined the culture big time. We then had Jose with his toxic attitude and picking and choosing favourites and playing people off against each other, constantly absolving himself of any blame etc and currently we have Ole licking the arses of players who are so out of form or out of their depth and yet seems to be making the right noises in front of the media.
Then there is the salary issue - United have a massive issue here. Players know they can get away with years of underperformance and get paid a kings ransom across the board. Youngsters don’t need to play well to get hyped and get paid big wages and old guys can come to United and use it as a pension. Completely fecked and yet we claim the Glazers are business savvy and spend thrift.
Lack of ruthlessness in general permeates the club. It is bloated, it has lost its competitive identity. It’s not even functioning as a well oiled business in footballing economic terms apart from sponsorships rolling in to disguise how inefficient it is being run.