Pogba, An Example Of What Is Crippling Man Utd
At least no one will have to ask Jesse Lingard and Marcus Rashford where they went on their holidays when Manchester
United’s players return for pre-season training. No need to waste time on pleasantries. The only catching up they need to do is
with Manchester City and Liverpool and we all know that is going to take a while.
But one image of the sojourn Lingard and Rashford enjoyed in Miami Beach may still linger with United fans — and the rest of us
— for a while. When Lingard decided to give us a video tour of the apartment the players had shared on their trip, he wandered
into one room and captured his friend, Jamal Branker, face down and gyrating with a pillow.
Branker’s name may at some point pass into United legend as rhyming slang but the sight of him attempting to have sex with an
empty bed seemed like the perfect analogy for a club wallowing in its impotence while the conquests are being made elsewhere.
At United, the good times have gone away. All that’s left are some crumpled sheets and an urgent need to get the cleaners in.
It has been six seasons since Manchester United won the Premier League but even with the signing of Daniel James and the
imminent arrival of Aaron Wan-Bissaka, it has been another summer of drift, procrastination and discontent at a club that was
once so dominant in English football.
The club have become the Premier League equivalent of a giant wood-chipper, chewing up the reputations of players and
managers, devouring mountains of bank notes and leaving a few piles of sawdust to show for it. The failure of executive vice-
chairman Ed Woodward to appoint a director of football in the summer is yet another sign of a club gripped by stasis and
incompetence.
The hard truth is that United are further away now from reclaiming the hegemony they enjoyed under Sir Alex Ferguson than they
ever have been. In their quest to rediscover the glories of the past, they have gone right back to square one. This is England’s
biggest club, stuck in one Year Zero after another.
It has got to the point where it is difficult to see them breaking free of the cycle of despair that they have fallen into. Once, their
dominance seemed so free and effortless but now the club have become a soap opera for actors who seem to believe they
belong in a better show.
The cycle runs like this: United fail to qualify for the Champions League and so find it hard to attract the best players in the world.
The only elite players who consider them are the ones who are coming for the money. Those aren’t the kind of characters you
build a title-winning team around, as United are finding out. So they leave and the cycle keeps on spinning.
This summer, it’s Paul Pogba who wants to leave. Pogba is a brilliant midfielder, a player with vision and drive and grace, a star
who played a vital role in France winning the World Cup in Russia last year. And yet at United, he has only shown fleeting
glimpses of his talent. And now he appears to have grown tired of trying to lift himself out of the bog of mediocrity around him.
‘After this season and everything that happened this season with my season being my best season as well… I think for me it could
be a good time to have a new challenge somewhere else. I am thinking of this: to have a new challenge somewhere else,’ he said
on a personal tour of Japan recently.
So instead of United being able to focus on trying to bridge the yawning chasm that exists between them and City, Liverpool and
Spurs, it seems as if Pogba’s desire to free himself from Old Trafford will be the transfer saga that dominates the summer. Real
Madrid want him. Maybe Juventus do, too. Both, of course, can offer Champions League football.
United say Pogba is not for sale, but they should get a premium price for him and let him go. They need a reboot. Not more of the
same. The formula they’re using isn’t working. It’s not as if they were close to City or Liverpool last season: they were 32 points
behind City. They finished as close to the relegation zone as they did to winning the title.
Pogba was part of that problem. If he wants to leave, it is obvious he is not going to be part of the solution. He is just the latest
example of the difference between perception and reality that is crippling United. They might still possess commercial might but
on the pitch their reputation is tumbling. Why would any of the world’s leading young players want to make a move to Old Trafford
now?
They keep being linked with Matthijs de Ligt, the 19-year-old Ajax prodigy. Maybe one should applaud their ambition but is it
ambition or self-delusion? Why would a player like De Ligt choose United ahead of Real Madrid or Juventus? Why would a kid
with the world at his feet go to a club who look like they are running in quicksand?
Mats Hummels has just knocked them back in favour of a move to Borussia Dortmund even though United offered him more
money. So even the cash has stopped talking. Wan-Bissaka and James are at least a step in the right direction, talented, hungry
young players who will be desperate to prove themselves at Old Trafford.
Gary Neville said last week that it would not be possible for United to be champions in the next two years. After that? There are
so many changes that need to happen at United, from the top of the club to the bottom, that it may take considerably longer
before they are in a position to challenge for the league title again.
The inventory is daunting: owners who appear to be asset-stripping the club; an executive vice-chairman who is out of his depth;
a philosophy that prioritises making money over glory; a stadium that looks moribund and weary compared to the new
developments at Spurs and Anfield; a squad stocked with deadwood and ordinariness; players who don’t want to be there; other
players who are awfully pleased with themselves for men who have never won major honours.
Manchester United, the club pretending to have sex in an empty bed, have a long way to travel before the good times are back.
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