Manchester Utd Terrace Talk: deadwood excised, decent signings, purposeful mood

"Here we are again, our bright shiny faces upturned hopefully to face another new season’s dawn. Tell your wife summer is officially dead to you, and let’s get our boots on.

For the best part of two decades under Fergie, the questions we would ask ourselves every August were so simple in their self-confidence. Would we win the League ("probably"), or narrowly miss out; would we reach the endgame in the European Cup ("possibly"); and how many other Finals would we reach  en passant ("almost enough").

Now, for the third season in a row, our sights have been somewhat recalibrated, after a post-Fergie era riddled by doubt and outright traumas. Not that we aren’t feeling generally upbeat, I hasten to add. A slew of seemingly decent signings, with a hefty wedge spent, and a pile of deadwood neatly excised, have all combined to put us in a purposeful mood.

But there is no  expectation of supremacy, such as we had become so accustomed to experiencing in the Good Old Days. We fell six league places under Moyes, half of which LVG regained last term, yet few would go so far as to say we  expect to recoup the other half this time around.

We look at the squads assembled by Chelsea, and to a lesser extent by Arsenal and Manchester City, and understand that the giddy anticipatory days of, say, August 2001 are long gone.

That summer, some of us seriously thought that we would walk the next league even with heavy player rotation, and also be favourites to reach Glasgow’s European Cup Final, so dominant did we feel ourselves to be over all others whilst stood upon three successive titles. (Eventual failure to achieve either end taught us something valuable about the dangers of hubris, of course.)

Now, even seemingly minor obstacles, such as the Bruges European qualifying matches in a fortnight, still give us pause for cautious thought, where once we’d have barely considered any possibility but easy progress.

So, hand on heart, what would you settle for this time? Would a top three ’Champions League’ finish, a decent European run, and a crack at a Cup Final satisfy you, assuming all that were to be achieved with a modicum of flair and excitement? I’d take that deal now, frankly, and I don’t think that’s being defeatist either.

For United kick off today far from the finished ’philosophical’ product, as should be obvious to anyone paying attention. Even the very basics are not yet in place, in that we have an embarrassingly unresolved goalkeeping situation, a deficiency in the centre of defence, and a shortage of strikers - and less than a month to plug the gaps.

The much heralded and long-promised ’classic’ 4-3-3 is yet to be properly launched, and questions remain - if you believe some O.T. whisperers - about the relationship between the manager and some of his charges, especially the hispanophones.

The doomlords will also pile in to quibble about just how good some of the newbies are likely to be. For example: having finally signed a first-team German a mere 70 years after the war ended - "they bombed our chippy", and our ground, y’know - can United really rely on Schweinsteiger to stay fit for long enough to make the required difference? And is he, as some in Munich mutter, two years past his peak anyway?

Depay seems to be quite an exciting prospect, but what of his infamous alleged ’attitude’? How will that go down with a martinet like Van Gaal and some of his more old school teammates? Schneiderlin has already proved to be a perfectly decent PL player as well as a solid if unspectacular French international, but is he really ’all that’, as the kids say?

As for Darmian, I wonder how many Reds had even heard of him before he signed for us from lowly Torino - although it should be conceded that there’s no defensive kitemark quite as confidence-inspiring as ’Made In Italy’.

So much for the merchants of gloom, though: all the aforementioned start with a clean slate and 100% support here, and we must keep reminding ourselves that there’s surely more personnel to come yet. As I write, the talk is all about Pedro, John Stones and - if you cup your ear, close your eyes and squeeze your unmentionables - even the faintest murmurations about a possible late surprise superstar come September 1st.

Certainly, we are told Ed Woodward has not allowed himself to become totally poisoned by his grisly experience of ’marquee signings’ with Falcao and Di Maria, in that he can still be reduced to moonfaced wonder by interlocutors asking him what he thinks of one day seeing, say, Ronaldo or Bale in United’s groovy new Adidas kit.

Still, that kind of deal is far more likely to be in fashion in summer 2016: after ten months under ’Fat Waiter’ Benitez and his factual listicles, some players are surely likely to be tunnelling out of the Bernabeu dressing room with spoons if necessary. Or so we prejudiced Reds (plus José Mourinho) would like to think, anyway.

Ah, predictions, predictions...is there anything more pointless, though? As you set off to the ground or pub tomorrow for the Spurs match, perhaps wondering whether the opposition’s star striker may yet end up at Old Trafford as a ’September Surprise’, you will surely be feeling that opening day buzz, roughly translatable as "anything can happen now, fella!"

Example: this time a year ago, we were all in ecstasy over the Di Maria signing, and had all but forgotten that the then-unpopular Ashley Young was still a Red. Yet yesterday morning, marvel at the role reversal literally no-one predicted: universal Red delight over the confirmation of Young’s new O.T. deal, at the very moment the now-despised Di Maria was being unveiled in Paris.

It’s a reminder that every season preview should really end with Goldman’s famous showbiz caveat about predicting what will work when transmuted from theory into reality: "Nobody knows anything."

Some are just better than others at pretending otherwise...