Manchester United

Well, I’m afraid that I need to rant about my beloved Manchester United, folks. There’s a lot going on that is confusing me at the moment, and this seems as good an avenue as any to vent about them.

When ten Haag took over, he was asked if his team was going to play like Ajax. He said that it wouldn’t because you can’t manage two different teams the same way due to contrasting strengths/weaknesses. Since then though, he’s been recruiting coaches/managers from the Dutch Eredivisie, and predominantly signing players from there, a lot of which either were at Ajax at the time, or had been in the past. The latest link on that front is that we’re now in for Mazraoui, which is beyond concerning but I’ll come to that later.

I just don’t get it. United have been atrocious to watch for a year now. There has been the odd superb display (most notably against City, weirdly enough) but in general it’s been seriously poor to watch. I can live with not winning games; that’s football. What I can’t accept is not playing well enough to deserve to win games, even when we have actually won them. I mean, Brentford at home last season, anyone? Luton? Teams that we beat purely because they sat off us toward the end of a game that they both controlled.

Unlike a lot of United fans, I am not impatient, per se. I want to see something happen sooner rather than later but I’m not in favour of this knee-jerk reaction trend that is going around. That’s why I have not been calling for ten Haag’s head. I don’t honestly know if he’s the right man for the club (some things he does I really like, and some absolutely bewilder me) but I do know that because of the years of shit we’ve poured into the club, we need to give a manager three or four years now to bottom things out, remove the deadwood, and bring in their own players. Therefore, I will reserve judgement on ten Haag for the present.

However, I cannot deny that I have some grave reservations about what we’re doing in the transfer market. For starters, why are we trying to move Wan-Bissaka on? I think I’m ready to hit anybody that says he’s “not good enough going forward” because he’s improved that aspect of his game enormously over the past few years. He’ll never have the dynamism of a Walker or Alexander-Arnold but is that really the yardstick here? Players that are quick enough to have a good chance of recovering from the mistakes that they make far too often? For me, Wan-Bissaka is the best right-back we’ve had since Gary Neville, and if we’re looking to push him out of the door for as little as 10 million only to go and sign Mazraoui, who can’t even get into a bang average Bayern Munich team, just because ten Haag has worked with him before, then I am mystified. Sure, Mazraoui will help us more going forward. You know what else he’ll bring though? More injuries, and more goals conceded from him getting forward.

Now, if the plan this season is to play on the front foot, and to make teams more afraid of our attack than we are of theirs, then I get it – Mazraoui would make more sense than Wan-Bissaka. I still think that the latter is a better option than Dalot but that’s another story. However, we’ve shown no signs that we want to play that way so signing Mazraoui would be incredibly bizarre to me. It’s like when we replaced De Gea with Onana, and everybody was raving about his passing. Sure, he’s a better passer, but he hasn’t got the opportunity to use it because of our tactics so essentially we’ve replaced the goalkeeper with arguably the best reflexes of all time with a bang average goalkeeper for nothing more than an idea of him using his feet better. I’d also argue that Onana has cost us a lot of points because he’s simply not good enough.

I think the only way to get my head around what is happening is to hope and pray that this is all just a blag, and that we’re trying to muddle along as best we can before ushering through a lot of talented youngsters – and we do have plenty of them. That’s one thing I tip my hat to ten Haag for – he does give youngsters a chance, and he knows which ones are ready, which ones aren’t, and which ones won’t be good enough, which is one specific area in which Mourinho let himself down. Maybe that’s what we’re doing now. If that’s not our path then I am very much confused because nothing we’re doing suggests we’re improving in any position in the team; we’re just adding more similar level players that won’t improve the team overall.

Please prove me wrong, United! I want to enjoy watching my team play football again.