Man Utd run by over-promoted dunderheeds; this is not on players or managers

We’ve all got used to Manchester United being sub-standard and being booed off the pitch as they were against Brighton.

If you’re 30, it’s been like this your entire adult life.

After watching their loss in the cup, you couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. Even Darren Fletcher wore a sorrowful, hollow-eyed look, looking less like a caretaker and more like an undertaker standing graveside. In his post-game interview he already looks broken by the experience.

Ironically, a new person taking this job has nothing left to lose, knowing that when the inevitable sack comes, the rest of football won’t hold failure at this headbanger club against them. The best have already failed.

Working on the basis that everyone looks better when they leave (Scott McTominay’s career seems to be a permanent case of ‘look at what you could have won’ with two more goals on Sunday), that must apply to the current iteration too. In other words, they can’t actually be that bad. But everyone tells them they are, all of the time. It has to be demoralising for a previously highly-rated player. Certainly every bit of skill, decent pass etc, seems immediately followed by a clumsy error.

Just when they got back into the Brighton game, they picked up a red card. It sometimes feels like self-sabotage. There are roars as they go on the attack, which immediately turn to groans as a pass goes astray or is intercepted. At the final whistle, they all looked bereft, their season already effectively over. Highly remunerated under-performers stealing a handsome living. It’s embarrassing.

But then they’ve had to tolerate possibly the worst ownership/management team in the league. A collection of over-promoted dunderheeds who are trying to pretend they’re professionals, who never answer for their poor choices. or have the first clue how to run a football club. But they can’t admit this, not even to themselves.

This results in a Mr Magoo management style, where they blindly careen from one disaster to another, unable to see how pathetic they look or realise that everyone is laughing at them. There are good examples of better ways to run a club but they seem impervious to them, doubtless arrogant enough to feel they’ll do it their own way. Arrogance and misplaced self-confidence are a particularly toxic mix.

Whatever financial acumen Sir Jim Ratcliffe has had, he clearly doesn’t possess anymore. We have chronicled 19 mistakes , some of which are so feeble, only a total fool would have even thought to do them. But with the arrogance of someone who’s made money, he can’t bring himself to believe he’s been wrong about anything ay all.

Look at the way they’ve treated Bruno Fernandes , who now seems set to leave in the summer. It may be a low bar to qualify as United’s best player but it’s not sensible to alienate him and treat him like a prime cut of beef to be sold at a premium. Only to compound their idiocy, they don’t actually sell him, leaving a man on the books who feels disrespected and the team’s confidence on the floor. Stupid at every turn.

It really is like literally every single thing they do is wrong and everything they think is wrong, though West Ham might have something to say about terrible ownership.

The task of running the club is patently beyond them. They got so big in the successful years that it was a wild dog; they thought if they just kept feeding it red meat, it would never turn on them and they would never need to have a plan B. Obviously they don’t know what they’re doing and are making fools of themselves. But they see themselves as competent execs being let down by the players. It must be galling for the staff.

As an example of some of the worst contemporary management styles, they can’t be beaten, frequently making terrible decisions that any of us could warn them against. Jason Wilcox has got a lot wrong and yet is kept in a job. What would he have to do to be dismissed? And what next? Install Tim Sherwood as club hairdresser?

The players have to perform with clown cars bursting into flames all over the place, all of the time. Is it any wonder things sank to a nadir and have barely recovered? It’s clear to everyone that the problems with everything stem from this idiotic ownership. You can’t expect a team to perform well in a toxic atmosphere which is telling them they’re rubbish. Admittedly, they are rubbish, but they said that about Rasmus Højlund and he’s transformed at Napoli, which is hardly a model of stability. United is a curse for players that cannot be lifted.

Every poor performance is another humiliation, not just a mid-table team losing. And the poor performances aren’t just narrow losses. Like against Brighton, they’re played off the park and look totally deflated.

Obviously, playing staff isn’t the problem. They can play well, but not for United. They’re not useless wasters, even if United seem to have turned them into exactly that. Until the entire ownership goes away, the problems will continue. But history suggests they’ll keep throwing money at it to ever-decreasing effect and the players will continue to be booed for the failures of amateur executives who’ll continue to say nothing. As an example of how not to run a club, they are in a league of their own.