Don’t Ruin Us - The mismanagement at United

24 May 2024

24 May 2024

Written by Kwaku Gyamfi-Sade

Written by Kwaku Gyamfi-Sade

Manchester United has become a graveyard for world-class players. A-class athletes turning into Sunday league footballers who only seem to play football on an ad-hoc basis. In the last ten years, this football club has become a self-indulgent club where players feel entitled to long-term contracts and more playing minutes. The club has been run by graduates who did not even graduate from a first-tier university and their idea of running a major football club was to pay players’ agents a huge signing bonus and give mediocre players huge contracts which then becomes difficult to sell to other clubs when the contracts finish. 

Manchester United has become a joke club in Manchester and across the globe, and new and existing clubs are laughing at them. The roof leaks at Old Trafford and an aged football stadium and training grounds are some of the problems at the club even though the club has spent more than a billion on average players. The infrastructure has been poor and the first team has got four managers sacked which shows what this crop of players are willing to do to get any manager sacked if they do not believe in their philosophy or style of play. 

Since Sir Alex, the club has not undergone any significant changes besides changing managers and buying rubbish players. Sir Alex’s identity and DNA have been missing for years as there has not been any player development from the academy like the Class of 92. The odd talent that comes from the academy has not brought new excitement as they come in the first team witness the entitlement and then play on it to get a big contract.

The likes of Rashford and Greenwood are examples of the ruined culture at Manchester United as both players have had issues under the regime of Glazernomics and under the mismanagement of Woodward and his protégés. Rashford is not a Manchester United star and he is a squad player at best. The pandemic in 2020 made him a star not on the pitch but off the pitch when he helped with the Feed the Kids at school initiative and this elevated his stardom. 

This gave the club  an opportunity to profit from him because he was a commercial property of the club and the free school meal initiatives propelled the club to use the publicity of this campaign to make him a star for the club. Rashford is a good player like how Danny Welbeck and Javier Hernandez used to be for the club - they scored goals and provided assists but these two players were not stars at the club. 

The club has mismanaged Rashford. The lack of structure within the club has instilled this false belief in him that he is undroppable and he should play every game. Rashford is a Premier League player but not for the top 10 Premier League teams. 

Mason Greenwood's mismanagement epitomises the club's culture where he felt that he had the power to do whatever he wanted on and off the pitch and nothing would happen to him. 

The recent poor performance from the team is all on the manager but the players have to take the blame as well as most of these players have got three managers sacked. The young crops coming to this team have seen the bad culture unravel and player power at its highest level. 

The likes of Kobbie Mainoo, Rasmus Holjund and Alejandro Garnacho are the players for the future, and they can replicate what the Class of 92 did. However, these three players need coaching and guidance and they need to be under the umbrella of a well-orchestrated culture. Maybe, INEOS taking over football operations at the club might create a robust culture which is needed at this club. The inquest is that don’t ruin the young players that are coming up and put a manager in charge that can coach these players.

 INEOS seems to be making good decisions with the structure of football operations by appointing footballing people who are likely to make good decisions for the club. These are some of the solutions  that will help restore this club back to its roots of winning trophies: stop giving mediocre players lucrative contracts, find the next young talented players (the next gems) and get rid of players that are here for large salaries. The future looks bright for the young stars at Manchester United so don’t ruin them. 



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Indigenous Materials, 2024 . All Rights Reserved

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Re-engineering how content is delivered