Tommy Martin: Lippy Lisandro keeping United on top in the blame game

The Argentinian defender framed this week's criticism as a plaintive cry on behalf of Carrick and a dressing room who he reckoned deserved backing after the phenomenal success of last season, when they finished third in the Premier League, got their manager sacked and got knocked out of both cup competitions in the first round.

Manchester United's Lisandro Martinez.

It’s mad, when you think about it, that with all the crazy things going on in the world of professional football now, the biggest story of the week was a man grumbling about his bosses.

I mean, who hasn’t been in Lisandro Martinez’s shoes? Bad day at work, no job satisfaction, little prospect of future success, struggling to get by on £6m a year. Maybe not the last bit. But we’ve all been there, muttering to colleagues in the canteen about how them upstairs haven’t got a clue.

Bloody Wilcox, Lisandro spat into his tea mug. Absolute spoofer. How’s he getting away with it? And the rest of them. Shower of chancers. And it’s us here on the floor dealing with all the grief. I’m that close to calling in sick tomorrow, either that or engineering a January loan move to Benfica.

Again, not all entirely relatable. Of course, Lisandro’s problem was that he wasn’t letting off steam about management over a cup of Rosie with colleagues, but in the – once again – not exactly normal workplace setting of a Champions League post-match interview with Amazon Prime.

Martinez’s thesis in the aftermath of defeat to Atletico Madrid was that technical director Jason Wilcox had let down the gallant head coach Michael Carrick by failing to bring in better players in the summer transfer window, meaning they had to line out in the furnace of a Champions League away game at the Metropolitano with the likes of, well, Lisandro Martinez.

The Argentinian defender framed his criticism as a plaintive cry on behalf of Carrick and a dressing room who he reckoned deserved backing after the phenomenal success of last season, when they finished third in the Premier League, got their manager sacked and got knocked out of both cup competitions in the first round.

While some felt Martinez was engaging in a classic bit of blame deflection, others reckoned he had hit the target with an accuracy that Marcus Rashford could only gape at in wonder. Still, the Argentinian had to apologise the next day for embarrassing the top brass and breaking the code of dressing room omerta, which at Manchester United means you are strictly forbidden to criticise the club’s affairs until you have reached the safety of a designated podcast zone.

"Our club is at its best when we are all united,” went Martinez’s hostage video – I mean, heartfelt apology – “and I recognise that my words in that moment did not help with that... I know that every single person at Manchester United is doing everything possible to achieve our shared ambition: making sure I get the hell out of here as soon as Diego Simeone has a space in his Argentinian rottweiler kennel for me.” Again, last bit was from an earlier draft.

All too late to save face for Martinez’s corporate overlords, however, as another hapless attempt at an Old Trafford reboot circles the plughole. As a member of the current Manchester United rearguard, the Argentinian’s decision to push himself forward as shop steward for the factory floor of flops only serves to further underline the recruitment failures of the men upstairs.

Martinez, after all, is a member of United’s most frequently used defensive combination in this Premier League season, a fallible foursome that also includes Diogo Dalot, Harry Maguire and Luke Shaw. This quartet have racked up an aggregate total of 31 seasons of service to the Red Devils’ cause; they have been the wobbly rock upon which this United era of mediocrity has been built.

That we are here, in 2026, in a world where AI drone robots can deliver a pumpkin latte to your back door, and United are still rocking into Premier League matches with Dalot-Maguire-Martinez-Shaw as a back four says more about the failings of the United suits than any bout of post-match interview finger-pointing.

None of which is likely to make any difference in the short term, as anyone who has had a Martinez-style rant about their bosses’ shortcomings knows only too well. United will soon enter the familiar managerial dance of death with Carrick and the same big brain trust upstairs will cook up another brilliant plan to turn things around. David May/Ronnie Johnsen dream team anyone?

In the meantime, perhaps United bosses will do what any floundering corporate management team does at this point: bring in the consultants. Arsenal recently deployed Boston Consulting Group to come in and check the books, presumably to find out what was going wrong at a club which last year recorded almost £700m in revenues and had just won the Premier League.

BCG had a look and said, you’re doing fine guys, keep it up! Just kidding, like most faceless management consultancy firms, they told their clients exactly what they wanted to hear: you need to sack some of the little people.

The news that Arsenal have announced plans for 60 redundancies at a time when the club is in rude health and has just given manager Mikel Arteta a new contract worth £80m has been greeted with incredulity by many. But it only serves to illustrate the parallel universe in which football clubs operate, one in which a small army of people must lose their jobs so you can sign Illan Meslier as your third-choice goalkeeper.

The Boston Consulting Groups of this world understand that, just like Lisandro Martinez, everyone is looking for someone else to blame. The problem for United is that they have already gotten rid of lots of the little people during the notorious bout of cost-cutting that heralded the beginning of the Sir Jim Ratcliffe era: ditching tea ladies and ticket office staff, cutting out the Christmas parties and slashing Fergie’s ambassadorial stipend.

Whatever all that achieved, as this week reminded us, it changed nothing about the twin sources of the Old Trafford’s modern era of failure: incompetence in the boardroom and toxicity in the dressing room. Martinez and his bosses don’t need to bring in the consultants to know that at Manchester United there is no one else left to blame.