Another painful loss, another effort that trumps all other bad efforts in recent memory. At home. Against a Tottenham that looked neither good nor bad. On Tuesday, my dear LuleÃ¥ Hockey lost the derby against SkellefteÃ¥ with 2-5, during the final minutes the home crowd chose to go “are you going home now?” chanted the away heel. In the same way, I chose with the crowd at Old Trafford to turn off the TV broadcast with ten minutes left.Â
I agree with Bojan Djordjic when he rants in the studio about Manchester United. Partly because I and probably several others have become apathetic when it comes to this club. The feelings are like completely dead. I should be furious when van de Ven runs through a whole defense of cones. I should be furious when Bruno gets a red card that isn’t even a red card. I should be furious when Tottenham make it 2-0 at the top too easily. But I am nothing. Happy, sad, angry? No, absolutely not. If anything, I am forgetful and have far too poor a long-term memory. I forget eighth place in the league, I forget efforts against Liverpool where they score seven goals, I forget negative goal difference and how the game looked over two seasons , I forget that we finished last in the group in the Champions League which consisted of Copenhagen, Galatasaray and Bayern Munich. I probably selectively choose to remember the win in the FA Cup final against Manchester City or other performances that were positive. But that’s completely the wrong way to think. It should be the other way around, you should remember the particularly bad performances. It’s Manchester United – it’s my team, where continuity linked to good performances over a long period of time is in the backbone. We shouldn’t be that team where we always think “now it turns around” when you manage to win a match. That is no longer sustainable.
Even I as a supporter am starting to give up
There must also be room to fail, but not to the extent that the demands and pressure on the players disappear. Who wants to go to work and feel, it doesn’t matter what I do or how bad I do it I will get to stay. It’s so anti-performance enhancing. You can absolutely have bad days, but every day shouldn’t be a bad day, then maybe you’ll think about something else. In what other big club in the world would that have been accepted. Is it possible to name any players who have developed under ten Hag? It is the eternal feeling that players who come to Manchester United get worse. We bring in player after player and throw billions of kroner everywhere, but is there really a plan? It feels like we have five hundred different types of players playing a game of football that none of them understand. And that’s simply not good enough. As Bojan put it in the studio, “the players are a reflection of their coach”. I buy it – the players are responsible but the coach has the ultimate responsibility. Even I as a supporter am starting to give up.
So why drag out the torment?
George Harrison wrote a song that also became the title of an album in the early 70s, “all things must pass”. A song about hope and in his case letting go of The Beatles who had recently broken up. That there will be a light after all the gray. That’s where we’ve ended up now – maybe it’s time for this band we call Manchester United to split from its frontman ten Hag. Although one’s hope is not strengthened by it, it is a form of change that is necessary. Now ten Hag, according to the media, will have the week out to show change. I may not understand the purpose of that, if now the plan is to fire him why wait until the end of the week – we hardly have any candidate apart from interim Ruud van Nistelrooy who can take over for the time being and I don’t think there are any suitable candidates available at all right now. So why drag out the torment? ten Hag himself seems incomprehensible to the question and not the least bit worried strangely enough, I would have been if I were ten Hag. But maybe it’s so simple that he has stopped caring, what do I know.
It is mentioned that it will be a heavy financial blow for Manchester United to fire him, maybe it is such things that make the management want to. Or it is simply because we need to find the right man for this job.
And it can take time, a very long time.
(This column was written before the match against Porto was played).
Travel with us to Manchester!
