We are talking about a team that has spent in the last three years almost half a billion dollars in players and coaches acquisition and currently the most successful club in the history of English football.
This latest defeat at the hands of Fenerbahçe SK at the Europa league group stage has sent Man United to third on the table and at a risk of being knocked out of Europe’s “Economy class” championship (Europa League) before Christmas.
The most troubling aspect of this defeat is not just the failure to win, but the manner the defeat was absorbed. Man United never had a grip on the game, nor looked hungry enough to win and looked lost at times.
Ten games into the Premier league, Man Utd have accumulated 15 points, are eighth positioned, eight points behind bitter local rivals Man City, and, most importantly, seven points behind the all-important fourth position (now occupied by Chelsea) that guarantees champions league participation next season.
The self-acclaimed Special One, José Mourinho, is now at the helm of affairs at Man Utd and, at his best, one thing his teams always were great at was defending. In fact all his successes have been built around effective defending to exploit weaknesses of the opposition.
However at Man utd this is missing, as in 10 premiership encounters they have conceded 12 goals, most notably the painful 4-0 drubbing at the hands of his former club Chelsea, and they have lost two of their four Uefa League encounters due to poor defending. Is the supposed savior, the “special one”, no longer special enough to bring United back to the top? If not, who then, and at what cost?
The season is too early to give a definitive evaluation of Man Utd’s future fortunes, but we must admit it is not looking bright. Mourinho needs some more time to get this team into English domination mode, the question is will he get the time and the possibility if the negative results continue?
I personally believe Man Utd need to improve on the personnel and that is not going to be cheap if they want to get the best, not forgetting that they have to find suitors for the ones that need offloading and they also need to agree to leave willingly. We are all aware how badly the Schweinsteiger attempt to be offloaded by Mourinho is going. That could mean more unhappy players on the bench, and in the dressing room. These are nightmare situations for any success-seeking club.
One thing I learned playing for some of the world’s biggest teams against lower ranked clubs, is that we won many games before we even stepped on the pitch, thanks to the presence of fear in our opponents that immediately made them go into damage control mode even before we started showing our strength.
Let us hope that they recover from this humiliation, just yesterday a man with a pale face said "we will come out of it ,don't worry". Let us keep our fingers crossed.
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