Steve Bruce return request is why ex-Man Utd players are helping to keep the club trapped in purgatory

On Monday, news channels across the globe led with the ongoing story of FIFA Peace Prize winner Donald Trump’s operation to kidnap the leader of a sovereign country and put him on trial. Meanwhile, Ruben Amorim was being sacked as Manchester United manager.

Even almost 13 years since their last league title, United remain the biggest club in the country, up there with the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid in terms of global attention. Add up the column inches, TV segments and YouTube videos this past decade and the club demanding more attention than anyone else is Manchester United .

They are the sun in which a lot of English football orbits, which is why it can be so hard to get a decision right.

This is not a defence of the Glazers or Ratcliffe for hiring a manager head coach wedded to a back three and then being shocked he does not deviate from it; that is a stupid decision regardless of which club you are running. But any time so much as a tap at an Old Trafford toilet gets changed, a familiar pattern occurs.

The success of Ferguson’s United has resulted in a huge number of their ex-players moving into the media. Gary Neville is Sky Sports’ lead co-commentator and pundit. He has a podcast with Roy Keane; sometimes Wayne Rooney will join in. Rio Ferdinand is never too far away from a microphone.

And just recently, former midfielders Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt launched their own podcast alongside United-supporting TV host Paddy McGuinness.

And that podcast is where Butt made one of the more ludicrous suggestions as to who should be in the Old Trafford dugout.

“Darren [Fletcher] with either Michael [Carrick] and [Steve] Bruce, and if Michael wouldn’t do it, then Darren and Bruce until the end of the season.

“Bruce has got unbelievable experience. Unbelievable. He is a great bloke, really. He knows the club.

“He’s got no aspirations of going back into football for [himself] so he’s not gonna go, ‘I’m in charge here, it’s my club’… He’s gonna help.”

Surely that last sentence alone is enough for Bruce to be ruled out? But if we put that to one side and say the 65-year-old can be tempted with the job he always wanted, what on earth qualifies him for it?

Bruce’s last gig was with League One Blackpool, where he picked up 1.39 points per game, a tally only slightly better than his last Premier League job at Newcastle, where he registered 1.15 points per game. Perhaps the only thing that qualifies him for the job is he knows how to get United winning – he has managed against them 27 times and lost 21 times.

That Newcastle stint ended in 2021 and as scary as it may all be for us to accept the movement of time, that was five years ago.

Butt’s claim is that Bruce ‘knows the club’, but which club does he know? Bruce played for United from 1987 to 1996. Only five of United’s players were even born then.

Butt is not alone in his suggestion. Ferdinand wanted, nay expected, himself to be Fletcher’s second call behind 13-time Premier League winner Ferguson . Keane has been suggested as someone who can get the good ship United sailing in the right direction once again.

The mad ideas are not unique to United but the sheer number of them is. Enzo Maresca, a manager who achieved more than Amorim and whose club is above United, also left his job and yet someone like Hernan Crespo was not telling the Chelsea board to get Michael Ballack in because he ‘knows the club’. The closest example was the inevitable linking of Frank Lampard to the job, but that suggestion at least comes with the caveat that he is currently managing the side at the top of the Championship.

With United, there is a burning desire to return to the glory years of the club. Perhaps it is the cold turkey approach of going from consistent title challengers to struggling to make the top four that has left such a yearning. The pundits we see on our screens, hear on podcasts and read in articles are from the ‘90s and ‘00s because frankly, who is there from more recently?

When a TV company is deciding which pundit has more credibility and will attract more viewers, title winners are going to have more sway than a player who was at United when they finished sixth in 2019. It’s also why Paul Merson, Lee Dixon, Ian Wright and Thierry Henry are the only Arsenal pundits you ever seem to see.

The problem is that it creates an unrealistic standard that will never be reached and an environment where every decision is analysed under the microscope. Go and look at pictures of Amorim when he first arrived compared to when he left and it’s a similar vibe to Barack Obama’s first day as President compared to his last.

The Portuguese boss was astonished in his very first week just how many interviews he had to do but that is because everyone wants a slice of the Manchester United pie. It is a club always in the news even as the 15th-best team in the league last year.

The comparison of Ferguson and his long wait for a trophy is not a new one but is worth keeping in mind. Could the Scotsman have survived if every day there was a former player questioning his position? When Ferguson dropped David Beckham, could he have dealt with the resulting backlash in a social media world? Back then, Ferguson simply had to avoid reading the newspapers and go about his day.

Football has changed so much in the 13 years since Ferguson walked away and harking back to that United is pining after something that is just not possible anymore.

Ratcliffe and INEOS have made some questionable and at times just morally wrong decisions since taking over football operations but when every decision they make feels like the biggest decision in the world, no wonder they make some errors.

Fletcher, Xavi, Zidane, whoever’s next, it won’t change. Manchester United sells more than any other club in the world and while that remains the case, expect to continue to see anyone who ever even looked at a red shirt tell the club who they should be appointing and why that will finally bring them back to the good old days.