Who's to blame for the current crisis?

[sugar_kane]

The Glazers - there's no point even getting into this one in too much detail, we all know they are ultimately the ones to blame for everything happening due to their negligent approach to ownership, and lack of investment and leadership.

Richard Arnold - I actually think Arnold is doing the right thing on one hand by leaving sporting matters to the DoF, but he is to blame for putting an inadequate team together in the first place, which brings me onto...

John Murtough - inexplicably gets no focus whatsoever in the press, even from those who should know better. I suspect partly because he's always happy to provide them with a scoop. I'd say he is hugely at fault for what's happening right now, and the one I'd aportion most blame to. If you think Ten Hag has made bad signings then it raises two scenarios - either Murtough has signed off on them as DoF, which makes him a bad DoF, or he isn't getting involved at all which means he isn't doing his job and he's setting us up for failure now but also further down the line when Ten Hag is no longer our manager.

Ten Hag - I have sympathy with him on the signings front as per the above, he doesn't have a great eye for players always but that shouldn't be his job. Where he is to blame is a lack of leadership when it comes to dealing with the press, heaping all the pressure onto the players who can't handle it. It made sense at first why he might be doing this, but it clearly isn't having the desired impact.

Secondly the Bruno captaincy choice while well supported at the time now looks like a bad choice, and despite not being shy of making big decisions I suspect he feels he is wedded to this one given how bold a move it was to strip Maguire of it.

His in game management also leaves a lot to be desired, and the fact we only seem to either win or lose games and never draw shows how averse to necessary pragmatism he is.

The Coaching Team - honestly, no-one knows enough about what happens on the training pitch but clearly they must take a good portion of the blame for what is happening on the pitch.

The Players - there's a lot to get into here obviously, but senior players like Rashford, Bruno and Casemiro have all let us down massively this season. Onana has been terrible but I do sympathise with his situation and the position he's been thrust into which carries an insane degree of scrutiny.

 

[Solius]

I blame you.

 

[sugar_kane]

I blame you.

To be fair I should have included the fans as an option because we're fecking awful.

 

[MancunianAngels]

Some railwaymen from Newton Heath in 1878.

It all started going wrong from day 1.

 

[Jeffthered]

The Boogie. Have to blame it on the boogie.

 

[DRJosh]

Why did we not have a proper succession plan after Sir Alex? I blame the person responsible for that

 

[Offside]

Not sure how many managers we need to go through and shite signings and yet another boom bust cycle to realise that it is the leadership at the very top that is to blame. We are rotten to the core.

 

[Lee565]

I'm going to take the Tory route and blame the bloody immigrants, stop the boats, stop the losses

 

[Scandi Red]

Blame Canada!

 

[AndySmith1990]

Glazers. Woodward. Matt Judge. Moyes. Jimmy Lumsden. Mourinho. LVG. Solskjaer. Murtough. Arnold. Fletcher. Erik Ten Hag. All the players

Bunch of muppets

 

[Roboc7]

It all stems from the owners, they’d still have Woodward in charge if he hadn’t chosen to leave. Fact they replaced him with Arnold and Murtough only underlines that.

There is no intention or ambition to run a succession football club, the downward spiral will only co tongue until the owners and all the leadership are removed.

 

[RuudTom83]

No department is particularly excelling currently! so best thing to do is do nothing.

Just leave it to the manager and players sort themselves out.

 

[fergiewherearethou]

Current crisis is on the manager, staff and players.

 

[gaffs]

Ten Hag right now.

There are obvious issues with some of his man management, signings, tactics, decisions and in 18 months he has still not developed a coherent and consistent style of play. We are all over the place at times last season and it is even worse this year. We still rely on individual moments of brilliance for goals, like the Bruno goal V Burnley.

He talks about control, but we very rarely control a game. Outside of convincingly beating Crystal Palaces B team, we have not controled a game this season. We look like the worst drilled team in the Premier League. Even the teams at the bottom of the table can pull together and defend as a unit. Shit, even Burnley were stroking it around and dominated possession.

It doesn't feel from what we are hearing in interviews that he knows how to fix it. Beating the players with the proverbial stick isn't working.

 

[BootsyCollins]

VAR

 

[Red Dreams]

It is 100% the Glazers fault.
They have the perfect out when fans blame the manager. It diverts the attention from what the Glazers are really doing.
Maurinho and van Gaal both said the Glazers are running the club as a business.
What they did not elaborate was that they were running the business of hollowing out the club.
The only investment they made was the bribe they paid the FA to approve the leveraged buyout.
Once this was done the FA reversed such an acquisition for future.

The manager's job is to identify areas that need to be filled.
He can suggest names of players. But it is the DoF and GM that have the final say about who comes in.
In a normal club this would be how things are done.
But Murtough and Arnold are Glazer lackeys. Nothing more.

It should not be the responsibility of the manager to buy and sell players.

When Rangnick came he said we needed 10 players.
If he had been retained he would have been such a big help to Erik.
But the Glazers did not want two guys shouting at them in stereo about what needed to be done with the squad.
Rangnick would have been able to identify areas that needed attention and players.

If Sir Jim ends up buying the club, we would be back on the right path.

The only people who can really save our club are us the supporters.
We must not play into the hands of the Galzers.

They need to be eliminated from the equation.

 

[KiD MoYeS]

Galatasaray
Crystal Palace
Brighton
Arsenal
Tottenham
Bayern Munich

They've all played their part.

 

[Red Star One]

Luck, Gods, universe, you choose it. I’m reading we’re losing to Galatasaray at OT after losing to Palace at the weekend, and that’s an improvement, we were just unfortunate.

 

[Sarni]

Why did we not have a proper succession plan after Sir Alex? I blame the person responsible for that

We did. Our plan was to hire the best Scot available and allow him enough time to learn on the job. We just did not give him enough time.

 

[Revan]

Don’t know much about Arnold cause he has chosen to abdicate his sporting duties, but the Glazers, Murtough and ETH should all go.

 

[gaffs]

It is 100% the Glazers fault.
They have the perfect out when fans blame the manager. It diverts the attention from what the Glazers are really doing.
Maurinho and van Gaal both said the Glazers are running the club as a business.
What they did not elaborate was that they were running the business of hollowing out the club.
The only investment they made was the bribe they paid the FA to approve the leveraged buyout.
Once this was done the FA reversed such an acquisition for future.

The manager's job is to identify areas that need to be filled.
He can suggest names of players. But it is the DoF and GM that have the final say about who comes in.
In a normal club this would be how things are done.
But Murtough and Arnold are Glazer lackeys. Nothing more.

It should not be the responsibility of the manager to buy and sell players.

When Rangnick came he said we needed 10 players.
If he had been retained he would have been such a big help to Erik.
But the Glazers did not want two guys shouting at them in stereo about what needed to be done with the squad.
Rangnick would have been able to identify areas that needed attention and players.

If Sir Jim ends up buying the club, we would be back on the right path.

The only people who can really save our club are us the supporters.
We must not play into the hands of the Galzers.

They need to be eliminated from the equation.

100% ? Really?

Maybe this is the issue. If fans think the issues are 100% down to The Glazers, then it gives the players and manager a readymade excuse.

Sorry, but right now, we have a team of very experienced players who are not playing as a coherent unit and making awful individual mistakes. That has nothing to do with The Glazers.

The Glazers are bad owners, but they are not like Mike Ashley at Newcastle, who wasn't investing the money back into the squad. The manager is getting hundreds of millions each window.

As it stands, the DOF, his team and Manager are collaborating in player recruitment. Are you saying that is wrong? Because um sure people would be up in arms if the manager had no say.

 

[Hughie77]

If you would have said at the end of last season. The new one would begin like this you would have laughed... look back at the pre season which was a disaster players all over the place 1 game 1 day then another with different 11 sounds good,,aye if you want Inconsistency, travelling all over the place, players getting Injured in same Tour, pre season was not constructive at all.

Then you get 2 CBs injured Same time 1 comes back then you get 3 left backs injured same time 1 of them on loan to cover the injured ones, only 2 Right backs 1 injured, a CM player that hasn't settled yet, A keeper that wasn't needed imo . Then you have The Sancho nonsense, Antony one on top of the complete cock up the way the M Greenwood situation was handled, on top of this Owners who don't know if there selling or not?
ETH has altered the way he wanted to play in first few games which ended up a shambles, then it got worse game by game.. .. this will only change if players return from injury and play a settled side, also the inability to sell Maguire to get a CB in ETH trusts, ad Varane is not staying fit all season and is starting to look suspect along side Lindelof.. so it's a combination of things.. main thing is We should have scored a few against Spurs and may well have sewn that game up didn't same at Arsenal never a lose but it happened.. Then its got worse and worse.. in terms of not getting the rub ..

 

[peacefulwarlord]

Capitalism.

 

[Houdini]

ETH.
He brought the players he wanted and his game management is awful. Outcoached by most of EPL managers. His system is good but he can not adapt and is rigid and stuborn.

 

[Ballache]

The Glazers but after them it's the fans. Football fans are fickle but United fans are by far the worst...The club is being ran into the ground by the Glazers and we've done absolutely nothing. No boycotting, arriving late...So yeah.

 

[Chip]

Rock of Gibraltar.

 

[klsv]

Everyone above ETH. We're past the point where a proper DOF would fix anything. The entire structure is a failure.

 

[tomaldinho1]

Glazers are undoubtedly No1 but I genuinely think fans are Number 2.

We fuel the media to constantly hammer and undermine the club. Every mistake is a howler, other teams all feck up but no one cares, Liverpool only generate news now because if VAR, I honestly think the media’s favourite two topics for making money are United and VAR.

 

[Westerkerk]

The manager and players are responsible for some of the on field problems but that is now just a microcosm. This crisis, if you want to call it that, is indicative of all the problems we've had post SAF and arguably the rot set in well before that.

Problem is the owners. The club is mismanaged and mediocrity is accepted. Manchester United is not representative of a modern football club anymore.

 

[cpresc]

If this team had Kane and Kim, we’d likely have had a few better results including vs Bayern.

Blocked by:
- dependencies on clearing out deadwood first
- lack of club ambition and attractiveness to lure them
- lack of desire to convince them they’re wanted

These factors are either the Glazers directly or Murtough via the Glazers

 

[Chumpsbechumps]

Why did we not have a proper succession plan after Sir Alex? I blame the person responsible for that

I honestly think the reason there wasnt a proper succession plan was becasue Ferguson (and Gill) made things so easy for the Glazers, they thought it would be a piece of piss running the club their own way. There were strong rumours that the Glazers were happy that he retired so they could start blending their marketing interests into the team and basically so they could run it whatever way they wanted to. This idea that United is doing poorly 10 years on, because Fergson left , is bollox. The issue is that they havent implemented any significant infrastructure changes and just limp from manager to manager.

If people think the only influence the Glazers have is on how much is spent on transfers/wages, they really dont understand how much of a role they play in the first team on so many levels. Its not just that the write the cheques and decide who will be actually running the football side.

I have always wondered how much a blending of the commercial and football side has affected signings. The obvious two that come to mind are Ronaldo and Pogba. I would also be dubious of any players who hail from lets say middle east or south america or africa in terms of the club signing players for the commercial benefits. I cant prove it per say, but when your owners only quality is whoring the club to anybody who will listen, having players from all corners of the world or ones with loads of online following is a very nice way to compensate for your abject failure at harnessing success within the club.

For those who say "well this manager said they wanted that player", I would argue that Man United managers most likely sign some sort of disclosures that doenst allow them to tell us everything publically. Not just that, managers have to make compromises. LVG said we generally got players lower down on the list of targets at his time. Theres plenty of examples of players not wanted by managers but not just being kept, but contracts extended to pad out the squad and probably some sort of accounting practise that makes the squad value higher on paper.

Then theres the club training facilities, the stadium and all the other infrastructure deficiencies that get ignored when we make a nice big shiny signing......

Managers are effectively human shields for the Glazers. Its not that they arent blameless entirely, its just that they are setup to fail because they are working in a consistently failed operation. There is no debating required at this stage, United is a failed super club that for some reason can still generate massive marketing income by clown owners whose only competency is finding business people to throw a few quid our way.

The reason Uniteds managers are failing miserably, not just failing, but miserably, is because they are setup to fail. I dont care what people think, there is no other super club or even mediocre valued club that has done so poorly for so long , as United. Even at stage , the amount of money spent, United should of even fluked a league or CL win somewhere, but the rot is so bad we cant even do that.

I support ETH because sacking him does not improve our chances of anything other then another cycle of sh*t. Thats not good enough for me and even if I cant control or influence what happens, no new manager makes any difference to me, it just another body thrown on the bombfire of Old Trafford.

 

[Andycoleno9]

Owners because they hired wrong CEO.
CEO because he hired wrong Dof.
Dof because he is doing awful job as a Dof.
Manager because results are bad and his signings look awful.
Players because they are playing bellow their abilities.

So....everybody from top to bottom.

 

[Chumpsbechumps]

Owners because they hired wrong CEO.
CEO because he hired wrong Dof.
Dof because he is doing awful job as a Dof.
Manager because results are bad and his signings look awful.
Players because they are playing bellow their abilities.

So....everybody from top to bottom.

At proper clubs managers dont just ala carte choose who they want, there is structures in place to make sure there is a plan and that the players joining fit that plan regardless of new manager. Why dont we see other clubs doing massive rebuilds every 2-3 years ?

ETH picking who he wanted isnt his fault, its the fault of the club for not having anything remotely resembling a cohesive long term football plan.

 

[noodlehair]

Much like everything else in life it is everyone's fault except mine.

 

[steffyr2]

The Glazers - there's no point even getting into this one in too much detail, we all know they are ultimately the ones to blame for everything happening due to their negligent approach to ownership, and lack of investment and leadership.

Richard Arnold - I actually think Arnold is doing the right thing on one hand by leaving sporting matters to the DoF, but he is to blame for putting an inadequate team together in the first place, which brings me onto...

John Murtough - inexplicably gets no focus whatsoever in the press, even from those who should know better. I suspect partly because he's always happy to provide them with a scoop. I'd say he is hugely at fault for what's happening right now, and the one I'd aportion most blame to. If you think Ten Hag has made bad signings then it raises two scenarios - either Murtough has signed off on them as DoF, which makes him a bad DoF, or he isn't getting involved at all which means he isn't doing his job and he's setting us up for failure now but also further down the line when Ten Hag is no longer our manager.

Ten Hag - I have sympathy with him on the signings front as per the above, he doesn't have a great eye for players always but that shouldn't be his job. Where he is to blame is a lack of leadership when it comes to dealing with the press, heaping all the pressure onto the players who can't handle it. It made sense at first why he might be doing this, but it clearly isn't having the desired impact.

Secondly the Bruno captaincy choice while well supported at the time now looks like a bad choice, and despite not being shy of making big decisions I suspect he feels he is wedded to this one given how bold a move it was to strip Maguire of it.

His in game management also leaves a lot to be desired, and the fact we only seem to either win or lose games and never draw shows how averse to necessary pragmatism he is.

The Coaching Team - honestly, no-one knows enough about what happens on the training pitch but clearly they must take a good portion of the blame for what is happening on the pitch.

The Players - there's a lot to get into here obviously, but senior players like Rashford, Bruno and Casemiro have all let us down massively this season. Onana has been terrible but I do sympathise with his situation and the position he's been thrust into which carries an insane degree of scrutiny.

Shouldn't Ten Hag be able to stand up like a big boy and say he doesn't know how to pick players?

Maybe the fans are the problem....

 

[Yagami]

Whoever is responsible for our transfers. Whether that be the Glazers by not hiring the best people or Murtough and ten Hag for prioritising the wrong players.

Thing is, with the right players, I think ten Hag could do well, but we as a club just won't prioritise press resistant players. That needs to change first and foremost for ANY manager to succeed here.

 

[Andycoleno9]

At proper clubs managers dont just ala carte choose who they want, there is structures in place to make sure there is a plan and that the players joining fit that plan regardless of new manager. Why dont we see other clubs doing massive rebuilds every 2-3 years ?

ETH picking who he wanted isnt his fault, its the fault of the club for not having anything remotely resembling a cohesive long term football plan.

That is what i was saying. People are above the manager are the ones who are doing their job wrong. But manager also is far from being blameless.

 

[Roboc7]

At proper clubs managers dont just ala carte choose who they want, there is structures in place to make sure there is a plan and that the players joining fit that plan regardless of new manager. Why dont we see other clubs doing massive rebuilds every 2-3 years ?

ETH picking who he wanted isnt his fault, its the fault of the club for not having anything remotely resembling a cohesive long term football plan.

We’re not a proper club and never will be under this ownership. It’s not even a difficult concept to put a structure and plan in place but club has no desire to and just went for Woodward 2.0 even when a chance to change was forced upon them.

When you appoint someone like ETH you are not only asking him to make step up to the league but also you expand his job description far beyond what it was at Ajax. He simply isn’t qualified to lead the recruitment and it would be hard to find any manager that is now.

Same would apply for someone like De Zerbi you would be asking him to replicate his success and expecting him to take on responsibilities he doesn’t have at Brighton.

 

[marktan]

Maguire

At proper clubs managers dont just ala carte choose who they want, there is structures in place to make sure there is a plan and that the players joining fit that plan regardless of new manager. Why dont we see other clubs doing massive rebuilds every 2-3 years ?

ETH picking who he wanted isnt his fault, its the fault of the club for not having anything remotely resembling a cohesive long term football plan.

And this. ETH has been either 1) Hung out to dry by the club not scouting proper players for him or 2) Has been too stubborn and overruled the club when they had better targets. Either way not great by the higher ups.

 

[FerociousCorgis]

the only correct answer is everyone. Literally everyone.