After a summer that promised so much, Manchester United have arrived in an autumn of discontent. Just as it looked like they might be turning a corner, they’re back to square one.
Tuesday’s Champions League defeat to Atletico Madrid may well put Michael Carrick on the brink of losing his job. Several United players – notably captain Bruno Fernandes – looked totally dejected at full-time – and that was before Lisandro Martinez decided to launch an astonishing attack on the club’s ownership.
The result leaves United with just two wins from their opening nine games of the season, with those coming against newly promoted Ipswich and Champions League debutants Sabah. It is a far cry from the team that won 12 of their last 17 Premier League games on their way to finishing third last term.
“Sometimes it’s a reflection of the mirror of how is our club at the moment, you know?” Martinez said to Prime Video in Madrid. “We did a fantastic season last season and now we expect more from the top. I expect more, 100 per cent. I expect more from our technical director [Jason Wilcox].”
It was a surprising tirade from the Argentine, though one most United fans will agree with. And while it signals real discontent among the players, Carrick was quick to emphasise how together the squad is in terms of matters on the pitch. The players clearly back their manager too, with Martinez saying that United “can't keep changing, changing, changing the manager”.
While Carrick’s tactics and his role in United’s downturn in form will rightly face scrutiny, it’s clear that this is not an issue of a player revolt against the manager, but rather disillusionment over the actions of those at the top of the club.
This will hurt Ineos and the likes of Wilcox and director of recruitment Christopher Vivell, mostly because Martinez is undeniably correct. United spent a portion of the summer pursuing Elliot Anderson, only to see him move to rivals Manchester City, while they instead signed Youri Tielemans, Andrey Santos and Carlos Baleba for a combined total of around £150m for a different type of midfield rebuild.
A few weeks later, only Baleba looks up to the required standard. Spending £50m on Santos – a player who could not get regular starts for Chelsea – when other parts of the squad needed investment now looks staggeringly inept – especially if Luke Shaw and Benjamin Sesko are injured.
United did not invest in a forward despite plenty of evidence that Joshua Zirkzee is not good enough for their ambitions, and they failed in their pursuit of Lewis Hall, leaving themselves with only one recognised left-back in the squad.
The rest of the defence was an afterthought, with reports emerging that the hierarchy are planning a defensive rebuild next summer. It would appear a naive approach. You can’t expect every signing to work out, but this strategy simply suggests that some key people do not know how to run a football club.
That is the core complaint from Martinez, with others – notably Fernandes – also seemingly frustrated at the start of this season. You suspect Carrick and certain players were given assurances over investment into the squad, and yet United spent just £163m over the summer, which is less than all of their top six rivals, as well as newly-promoted clubs Hull and Ipswich.
To make matters worse, the atmosphere has soured off the pitch too, with the recent season ticketing fiasco causing a further rift between the hierarchy and fans, who feel that they’ve been treated unfairly. Bans are now extending to members. While some touts will be scuppered in this new drive, innocent fans are also getting caught out with limited time to appeal and a lack of clarity regarding what exactly has led to the accusations.
That a job advert for a “Supporter Escalations Executive” – to “support the Club's mission to tackle ticket touting” – was not filled before a huge number of investigations and bans highlights the confused, haphazard nature of work that has now characterised the club for at least the last 13 years, if not more.
Add to this the farce surrounding the hiring and firing of Dan Ashworth, as well as the cutting of 322 jobs, and Ineos are miles away from the best-in-class image they have tried to present to the outside world. It would be difficult to get away with this level of ineptitude in most other jobs.
There are mitigating factors, most notably the $1.1bn of debt lumped on the club by the Glazer family, but Ineos have not enamoured themselves with the fans, adding to the mess created by the Glazers over the last two decades or so. They are now in charge of much of the footballing side and they simply haven’t delivered – now it’s clear that the players are disillusioned too.
While Wayne Rooney was probably right in saying that Martinez’s interview “is not going to help the situation”, it might be a case where things have to get worse before they get better.
There needs to be a reckoning at United, and while the Glazers should undeniably be at the top of the list when that time comes, a number of figures associated with the minority ownership also have uncomfortable questions to answer.