Sport

Starting Again, Again: Manchester United and the Cost of Living in the Past

Once again, Manchester United are starting again. Ruben Amorim left the club this week after appearing to criticise the board for stifling him, and the search is on for his replacement. It is yet another wasted era where the Premier League’s most successful club spent heavily and backed a coach with a specific system without making up ground on the clubs sat on what they see as their perch.

It is almost certainly the toughest job in football. With such a vast fanbase, expectation is inevitable, but by almost every other metric, the club is lagging behind their rivals considerably. Manchester City, Real Madrid and Liverpool are more attractive to the best players and, due to Profit and Sustainability, perhaps even offer better wages.

But it is in their respective structures and identities where the true difference between them and United lies; they simply cannot compete without major surgery on every aspect of the club. While this belief is rarely contested, bad results often mean each coach who attempts to change their fortunes is often sacked before they can really make any sort of deep impact.

Amorim always felt like a jarring choice, in truth. His favoured system, one which he often stuck to religiously, was 3-4-3. Playing with wingbacks, rather than traditional fullbacks and wingers, needs a squad with a very specific skillset. It takes more than 14 months to cultivate the sort of style and a lot more money that was spent. That doesn’t mean Amorim was blameless; the best coaches don’t rely on systems, but rather principles of play, which are moulded with formations to suit the players available. There was simply no adaptability on show during his reign.

While the club itself needs to work out a better way forward, external noise is almost as much to blame for the club’s difficulties. Because Manchester United are so big, they are always a story and everyone has an opinion. The football punditry landscape, particularly in the United Kingdom, is heavily populated by former players who were part of their glory years under Sir Alex Ferguson, and they are all too happy to offer their opinion on what is going wrong.

The likes of Gary Neville, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt have been very vocal about the need for somebody who fits the ‘Manchester United DNA’. Amorim’s system meant he faces criticism from a lot of those former players, who reference the standards and style of Ferguson regularly when articulating that something is wrong.

But nobody was criticising Amorim’s appointment at the time; in fact, it was lauded by many who claimed United had beaten rivals Manchester City to the punch ahead of Pep Guardiola’s anticipated exit from the Etihad. City sporting director Hugo Viana had huge success with Sporting Club in Portugal alongside Amorim.

There is a clip going around of Gary Neville suggesting Amorim’s predecessor Erik ten Hag should play a back three on his podcast ‘The Overlap’. If understanding the club was the easy fix, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer wouldn’t have been sacked in 2021. But the culture of those ex-players constantly giving strongly-worded, basic and unhelpful opinions is actively hindering the club. Ferguson’s presence at matches has also been raised as an issue; it isn’t in itself but the constant need to refer back to his era without any meaningful context certainly is.

Ferguson was certainly the main driver between a raise in standards which yielded 13 league titles between 1986 and 2013. His leadership skills, drive, mentality and ability to make timely decisions created a dynasty, which he knocked down and rebuilt several times. But the past is the past for a reason; every coach should be afforded the opportunity to do things their way while respecting the past. Darren Fletcher, the caretaker manager and a former player under Ferguson, said he asked for his blessing before taking the job.

Butt and Scholes both suggested they weren’t fully behind appointing Zinedine Zidane, who won the Champions League twice with Real Madrid, but suggested they’d like to see Roy Keane given a go. Keane was Ferguson’s most successful captain and their former team-mate. He hasn’t held a managerial position since leaving Ipswich 16 years ago, and has no true credentials beyond being a hard taskmaster as a player and loved by the supporters. Undoubtedly, he will have a strong relationship with Butt and Scholes, but that in itself suggests the opinion isn’t necessarily subjective.

Ironically, though, Keane is the one former player who would not bow to Ferguson’s judgement and opinion. The pair fell out over 20 years ago and have never reconciled, and Keane accused Ferguson of “hanging around like a bad smell” on Sky Sports this week.

Manchester United’s success under Ferguson is becoming more of a curse on the club the more it is consigned to the past. It is far too easy for those who played in his teams to suggest vague fixes based on how he did things. Liverpool were in a very similar situation at the turn of the century during a spell when they were nowhere near the title; the TV screens were filled with players from the successful teams under Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley who would constantly suggest ways the club had fallen off the standards set back then. It was only when Jurgen Klopp arrived with his own approach that the Reds began to be successful again.

That is the big lesson for United. While they are in talks with Solskjaer (again) and Michael Carrick over an interim role, the truth is they need to stop viewing Ferguson’s reign as the method, but simply the standard. Success will only come with a new identity forged over time; the hoards of pundits and podcasters ready with an opinion would do well to remember that.