I have kept quiet for some weeks now. But recent developments have only served to underline the fact the club is on a downward spiral and changing the manager alone is not going to solve it. In a way as a diehard fan going back to the days when we were actually relegated from the top flight, it is easy just to try not to think about it. That 'denial' mode where you know things are bad, and have been since Ferguson left, but you just don't want to face it.
But I never imagined even under David Moyes that we would get to a state where players that should not be here, if we had any aspirations to be a top Prem side, let alone a top European side, are turning their backs on us.
Ashley Young. The club captain. Rejects an extra year contract at the age of 34. Which came too late, as his contract, as with young players such as Gomes and Chong have been allowed to run down so they can talk to other clubs now. Add to that Bailly, Matic, Fosu-Mensah and Borthwick-Jackson who are in the final six months and while we may say we won't miss them, we will if we do not replace, and we haven't replace Lukaku, Sanchez, Herrera, Fellaini...
Lingard, signs up with notorious superagent Mino Raola, who vowed that none of his players would be joining the club soon, claiming Man Utd would ruin Diego Maradona, Pele and Paolo Maldini. The same superagent who is trying to get Paul Pogba out of our club... quite transparently, with the French World Cup winner's full backing. Lingard, a player who has 18 appearances in the Prem as an attacking player and has zero goals and zero assists to his name, seems to wants out...but who would have him?
And the travesty is, we cannot afford to let these players go, even without our line of 'injuries'.
Meanwhile in the transfer market it is the same old same old. Lots of players we let it be known on a daily basis that we are interested in who are never going to come. Haaland the more concerning of the throng, as he actually has a relationship with our manager. He would rather go to Dortmund than United. Dortmund! How far we have fallen.
Any fan who has followed our progress in recent years will not hold out hope of signing anyone in January, and yet we desperately need reinforcements, especially a creative midfielders, and, belatedly, a striker to replace Lukaku, who we didn't want. And we appear to be interested in Raul Jimanez of Wolves, a player who is not as good as Lukaku as a replacement. So why did we get rid of the Belgian? Surely it cannot be that the 26-year-old was reaching an age where his resale value would begin to decline, and they had to cash in? It would not surprise me.
Why even discuss Maddison. Leicester were never going to let him go. It just makes us look like amateurs to be pretending to be after players who are not going to come. Just to have the excuse that "oh we tried".
This is Manchester United Football Club. The club of Best, Law, Charlton, Bryan Robson, Cantona, Beckham, Scholes, Keane et al. And we are embarrassingly scrambling around for players like a pig to an empty trough. And it is empty of our own making. Due to the mismanagement at the top of our football club, we are just not an attraction anymore, even for the deadwood that we should have been moving on to be replaced with players that would have us challenging for titles again. But the truth is that is all pie in the sky under this regime.
The only way we are going to challenge again for titles is a change of ownership and a revolution in the boardroom. People say we are being run as a business. Not very well. You don't asset strip your club. You don't leave it in a state where sponsors (eventually) won't want to back you, or if they do, will cut the money they give because we don't have Champions League. It reminds me of Mike Ashley. An owner that sees players as a commodity to make money out of FIRST, rather than players that can achieve on-field success for the club.
The reason we want young up-and-coming players is that they become assets that will increase in value and earn money. But relying on young players will not win us titles. That 'Class of 92' was a one off. We need a mix of youth and experience. We cannot rely on the likes of Greenwood, and we are being forced to, because we quite simply have nobody else. He is a young lad who at Chelsea, would have been out on loan learning his trade. Instead he is pushed into the toxic environment of Old Trafford. A club where you have players, and not just good ones, wanting out, with nobody of note wanting to come in.
The whole ethos of our club has to and must change. How that change happens? Well Newcastle fans tried voting with their feet. It hasn't worked. Ashley pretends to want to sell. But never does.
Yes it is another depressing post. But we have to face the reality of United in a new decade. We are going nowhere fast under Woodward and the Glazers.