Manchester United Relegation Battle Is Real

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Over the last weekend Manchester United managed to salvage a point drawing with Aston Villa after they were dead and buried. Two goals in the last 9 minutes of injury time salvaged a valuable point, but at no time did they look like winning this match.

One win out of 10 matches with 5 draws and 4 losses is relegation form and to be quite honest they are lucky to not be further down the table. The team is that bad and we have been saying this for years why do they not rebuild?

Alex Ferguson was the best and worst thing that happened to Manchester United because he was that good but when he left there was no apparent successor and why the team has struggled ever since. His 27 years at the helm of the team was great whilst it lasted and one can now see the void left behind that has been a struggle.

12 managers in 12 years tells a sad story of failure by the entire club from the board room down to the players. The rinse and repeat of replacing a manger with another manager giving the team a boost in the honeymoon period before it all crashes back to earth in not the answer.

Each manager is given a budget to buy new players and is seen as the new messiah to take the club to the promised land when in reality the cracks are only being covered up temporarily.

The once renown club that every player was envious to join has long gone and is now seen aa a dead end with regard to a footballers career. Some players are fooled into thinking they are the best because Manchester United wants to sign them yet the truth is the top players give the Manchester United club a wide berth.

No one can blame the current crop of players as they are there to earn money and at some point in their head thought they were good enough to turn the club around which was never going to happen. A good player to be exceptional needs a team of other good players to provide the service to make them excel. Think of the likes of Allan Shearer who was only as good as the service he got from those players around him and he on his own could not carry the team.

When Alex Fergusson left back in 2013 the club had a choice and that was to slowly rebuild and replace a mediocre ageing squad. The answer was never to replace as that would be too costly so they opted for changing the manager avoiding the obvious which was the quality of the team.

Keeping the fans happy with a new manager and some key signings whilst the back bone of the team was weak was never going to end with trophies and a rinse and repeat 12 times has ended up with a club so far away it is scary. Over the years we hear it takes 5 years to turn a club around and why expectations by fans are generally fairly low yet the Manchester United fans expect results due to the past. That was 13 years ago and that era is long gone and this is not a quick fix.

Arsenal won the Premier League last season after a 22 year wait so nothing is ever guaranteed and the stars have to align to even have a sniff. Over the years one could say that Manchester United have over achieved and has actually compounded the problems as the real issues have not been addressed.

Manchester United's problems are big starting with the board room and the choices they have made employing managers who were not given a chance to succeed. The mangers they took on were not bad managers and the bord made them bad by tying their hands behind their backs. A manager should be given a good 5 years to create their team and to prove their value.

Giving the managers 12 or 18 months will only muddy the water each time as you end up with a mish mash of players confusing the clubs playing style and then they have no identity. What the club needs is someone who is given carte blanche to address the problems head on and has the power to replace the entire squad over 3 seasons and to build from the ground up.

Relegation may actually be what the club needs to fix their problems and to clear out all the sub standard decision makers from the board room to the management team down to every player. The problem with the players is they are all scarred and the club needs to build using their youth and why it will take 5 years or longer to get to a winning team with their own playing style. This would take a unique manager who could take this task on and preferably it would not be a big name, but someone who can build from the ground up.

A team like Brighton sitting second in the Premier League uses Jamestown Analytics which is a data driven secret system. This system is a mathematical system that highlights undervalued players before other clubs notice them and why the club has been riding a wave of success. This reminds me a little of Moneyball (baseball) and how data drove what players were bought and sold. One would love to know what system Manchester United use as clearly there is no system and they are throwing money around with no clue whether the player is right or wrong.