I'm ashamed of ever supporting Lingard as an individual player. It pains me to see how little he seems to care about the club or the fans after such a disastrous season, bearing in mind that we are also having the worst period ever for our club since almost 30 years. We are not only stagnating, we are going down the hill and we seem to not have a clue about how to plan for the future. Lingard was supposed to be becoming the senior player, the local lad that was entrusted by Sir Alex Ferguson and given all the chances possible to succeed.
Yet years have passed, Jesse Lingard is now 26, about to become 27 years old and it almost seems like his attitude is getting more and more immature, instead of settling down with more experience and understanding his role as being someone the players look up to, whether very young kids or the much more older generations. I would say the club is at fault in some way about this whole situation, because they not only have consistently allowed player power and undisciplined behaviour, I think they have been encouraging it. Are we a football club first, or are we a corporate brand circus, ready to do anything necessary to sell out as much as possible and spit on our great history, on the legends like Sir Alex Ferguson, who have dedicated their life for Manchester United?
People say times are changing. No, we are allowing the culture at our club to deteriorate and we even have some fans defending this (which just does my head in, it makes no sense). We constantly talk about the lack of ambition in our players and their lack of self-awareness, always coming out with excuses and promises after each new low that we reach as a club. How can we as fans allow this to become acceptable and the norm, considering the state of the whole team and Manchester United as an institution? We have become a laughing stock in world football, not just in the eyes of rival supporters, but it's obvious other clubs see right through our incompetence, fleecing us for every single deal - the same goes for agents and their players.
Some will point out that similar or even worse things have happened before. First of all, these things were never glorified or publicised for some sort of egotistical self-gain. Secondly, we had all the means to deal with these issues internally. The dressing room was full of strong-willed characters, most of whom literally were bleeding for the club and sacrificing their life to dedicate everything in their focus to succeeding. And we had the best manager in the world, arguably the best of all-time - Sir Alex Ferguson. Now? What can we lay back on, who can we rely on to steady the ship and keep the players in check? In my opinion, there isn't a single player in the squad that is a true leader, not even one. I like Pogba, but he is very self-obsessed, even though he has good human qualities, he just likes to be the centre of attention, to show his incredible skills for his own glory at the end of the day. The rest are weak or not good enough.
I love Solskjaer, there is no point in even explaining why. Even though I was a very little kid in 1999 and didn't get into football some years later, I have done my part in learning what Manchester United is all about and appreciate the people who created the incredible legacy that our greedy owners have been leeching from and that our spoiled players don't seem to understand at all in reality. But I don't think Ole has the character to be a totally ruthless manager when even the club owners and directors have given the player power even more significance than ever. It really worries me how OGS will handle this group of players in the coming season and I hope the fans don't disgrace themselves even further by blaming him for everything bad that might happen, because the levels of toxicity have definitely gone over anything we have ever seen - or at least I haven't seen it like this in my lifetime as a United fan.
There is no way that we as a fanbase should be accepting this supposed "lad culture" as something normal and something that should be showed off to the whole world, especially when it comes from our own players. It is a bad example for the future generations of our youth players as they take it all in as a sponge, thanks to social media and no parent control seeing all this sh*t on a daily basis and believing this is what life is about. And if that's not bad enough, Lingard knowingly does all this public clowning to further expand his image and brand, whilst enabling himself to even do this by using Manchester United's history, badge and legacy.
I've seen his Instagram posts and the comments bellow them. Almost all positive ones in the past season are from very little kids, a lot of little girls which was really a surprise to me and it goes as far as Lingard having numerous "fan pages", where if you look at the content posted, you'd be thinking this player is some sort of cult hero who is worshiped for every action taken, which most of the time happens to be outside of the football pitch. All this has gone to Lingard's head, people can't deny his consistent change of personality since LVG gave him a chance to be part of the first team. It's like he is undergoing the opposite process of maturing, whilst I have not seen anything spectacular in terms of his actual football skills.
The whole thing is much worse because of the situation our club is in. Sir Alex would have swiftly dealt with this. Nowadays we let players lead us by the nose, even our supposed beloved homegrown youth local lads, who should be getting the club and what it takes to be a Manchester United player, what a huge privilege it should be. For me personally, it's even more disheartening to see Rashford becoming apart of this circus. He became my absolute favourite player when he broke into the squad as the unknown teenage sensation. Humble, hardworking, you would never see him complaining on the pitch and was the perfect team player.
Compare him to then and see what he is becoming now. To me he has a world class talent, but is losing the mentality, the understanding of what responsibilities he has and what sacrifices must be made to be a leading player for United. And it's all because his mentor is Jesse fecking Lingard. I really hope he proves me wrong, he is still only 21 and as I said, in my opinion he is a world class talent. Remembered watching recently the interview that Gary Neville did with Paddy Evra. What struck me the most was when Evra was talking about what it takes to be a Manchester United player. Here are the actual quotes so you can all get the full picture:
It was a very powerful moment of the interview for me because Evra was so serious and you could feel the emotion through his words. I don't think many people in the club, apart from Ole, understand how much it really takes to get to the top and maintain such high standards.
I know there will be loads of people saying this is an overreaction, but I've been having these thoughts for a long time now, since the second season with Mourinho. Went on to despise Jose by the end of his tenure here but now I think how even one of the hardest bastards in the game could not handle this group of players, who barely consist of any sort of superstars or anything similar like for example Real Madrid. There is still chance for at least a little salvation this summer, but the signs are yet again not good at all and the attitude of players like Lingard is coming in the worst possible time. Maybe this rant should have gone to a whole new thread, but I'm just a newbie so it's the best I could do. (foreign fan as well, so more ammo to shoot me with)