Tommy Martin: Man United has become a machine for making footballers worse

It seems as if every human being fed into this great, soul-sapping contraption, whether established star or callow youth, has emerged beaten down,

Wed, 16 Mar, 2022 - 17:45

Tommy Martin

"Manchester United considering Old Trafford demolition" went the headline and you thought: jeez, bit much, no?

I mean, I know things aren’t great but surely there’s no need for wanton destruction. Okay, Harry Maguire is struggling, the signing of Cristiano Ronaldo hasn’t turned out as well as hoped and Marcus Rashford is disappearing into the ether like one of Marty McFly’s siblings in that photo from Back to the Future.

But let’s not get carried away and do something we might regret here. Seriously, Fergie, put down the lump hammer.

Ah, it turns out that United are merely considering levelling their beloved home as a precursor to building a new and improved Theatre of Dreams. Something, perhaps, that might resemble the ‘Disneyland for Adults’ of Ed Woodward’s fever dreams, which famously scared off Jurgen Klopp back in 2014.

Still, there is something that chimes with current on-field events in this nihilistic talk. The mood at Old Trafford was frustrated and febrile on Tuesday night as United’s beleaguered players endured their latest walk of shame. Scattergun boos landed indiscriminately after the defeat to Atletico Madrid: on the referee, on the grandmasters of shithouse as they celebrated their victory and, of course, on the hangdog United players, who bore that now-familiar expression of pain and confusion, not entirely unlike a man who is into his sixth hour assembling an IKEA wardrobe.

Meanwhile, actual missiles rained down on Atletico’s coach, Diego Simeone, as he ran from the scene like a thief in the night, black puffy manager’s coat flowing vampirically. Irate fans hurled drinks containers at Simeone, who was a handy avatar for all the humiliation, hurt and slapstick comedy to which United fans have been subjected for most of the last decade. Though his attempts to dodge the incoming projectiles were nimble for a 51-year-old, Simeone was struck several times, meaning the angry Old Trafford faithful registered more shots on target on the night than Ronaldo.

Surveying the latest incoherent fiasco, it was possible to think that a fleet of bulldozers might make a rapid improvement. Going behind to Atletico Madrid is like falling in debt to the mafia: it always ends in anger, violence and the sadistic grin of a sharply dressed man with a crotch obsession. But in the mess of United’s failed attempts to haul themselves level, the cracks and defects of the club’s improvised, shanty construction were laid bare.

Players ran hither and thither in arbitrary, frenetic patterns. Ronaldo smashed his schnozz into the back of Maguire’s head, seemingly trying to resolve the captaincy question using classic Three Stooges diplomacy. Interim manager Ralf Rangnick, who has adopted an air of wry, good humour to the task of imposing Gegenpressing on a squad with the work ethic of a grape-munching Roman senator, threw on five subs as if he were emptying random objects out of his coat pocket.

One of them was Nemanja Matic, at 33 still rumbling up and down the Old Trafford sward like a rusty combine harvester. Typical of the night, it fell to Matic to heave tired crosses into the mixer deep into injury time. And why not? At one point the referee strutted over to give Darren Fletcher a yellow card, the United technical director’s current job description presumably including the task of loitering on the sideline abusing officials.

And what’s this? Juan Mata? Could it really be you, Juanito? Mata is a remnant of the David Moyes era, brought in to add spice to the Scotsman’s meat and potatoes fare in January 2014. He has borne witness to these years of decline and disappointment with a sort of dignified detachment, fading into the brickwork at moments of crisis, resembling an accountant in prison who befriends screws and gangs alike by offering to do their tax returns. He completed his ten minutes on the field without incident and shuffled back from whence he came, neat as a pin.

Watching all this and the calendar turn on another trophyless season, you could be forgiven for wondering whether knocking it all down and starting again might not be the worst idea. The words of the poet John Betjeman sprang to mind:

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!

It isn't fit for humans now, There isn't grass to graze a cow.

Swarm over, Death!

Yes, swarm over, death, said Paul Scholes in the BT Sport studio afterwards, or words to that effect. It is another feature of United’s decline that every subsiding wall is overseen by a disapproving chorus of former players, whose pronouncements carry historical weight no matter how wild and wacky. Keane, Neville, Ferdinand, Scholes…er… Hargreaves: like giant, gabbing Mount Rushmore heads, their chiselled legend grows as the modern club crumbles. So it is that the only United players who are improving these days are the former ones.

This last point might be worth bearing in mind if those friendly bulldozers do eventually come, even if only metaphorically. Put simply, over the last decade Manchester United has become a machine for making footballers worse. It seems as if every human being fed into this great, soul-sapping contraption, whether established star or callow youth, has emerged beaten down, hollowed out and blank-eyed, footballing manifestations of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

Some clamber to safety and try to piece their lives back together, stricken figures like Alexis Sanchez, Chris Smalling, Anthony Martial and Daniel James, prone to night terrors still, but doing okay. Others, like Rashford and Maguire, once so confident and hopeful, appear stuck in the same hellish cycle that belched out its latest indignities on Tuesday night. The heart sinks at what might happen to Anthony Elanga.

It is this Old Trafford that should be levelled, the one that has long forgotten that it is the simple job of a football club to make young players better and their supporters happier and not wonder whether the mercy of the wrecking ball might be no bad thing.