One of football’s great lies is that success is cyclical and that if you are big enough and wait long enough you will sooner or later be back at the topEverywhere you turned, there were the memories. In the tunnel, there was Roy Keane telling Patrick Vieira he’d see him out there. By the touchline there was Gary Neville kicking José Antonio Reyes. Just outside the penalty area, there was Martin Keown jostling Ruud van Nistelrooy. Remember? Remember how every man knew when we reached out to claim the throne? Remember when we were kings?Those pre-Abramovich days when this was the biggest game in English football seem a long time ago now, two decades gone with atrocious haste. Manchester United...
By now the malaise at Old Trafford has deep roots – only equally deep systemic change can put it rightAll in all, it’s been an excellent week for Manchester United. There was progress in the Carabao Cup and the announcement of record revenues of £627.1m. What more could anybody want?Excellent, that is, as long as you don’t worry about details such as the limp 2-0 defeat at West Ham last Sunday. Or that the weekend kicked off with United eighth in the Premier League table. Or that a club with a proud cavalier tradition have scored just 18 goals in their last 20 games. Or that the one outfielder of undoubted outstanding quality spent the summer trying to leave. Or...
Winning everything for a couple of decades was fun but since Sir Alex Ferguson departed supporting United has become far more exasperating and yet arguably far more interesting“And Manchester United,” said Mark Chapman on Match of the Day 2, “are eighth.” To supporters of other clubs, this may be a case of how the mighty are fallen. And yes, it is a crashing come-down from Sir Alex Ferguson’s day, but some of us go back a bit further than that.This is my 50th season. I started off as a fairly typical United fan: born and bred in London, idolising George Best, no previous connection with Manchester. In that first season, 1969-70, the number eight loomed large. The first game I...
Solskjær’s diplomacy masks United problems, De Bruyne in the ascendancy and Xhaka’s poor form gives Emery a tough choiceThe Dozen: our pick of the weekend’s best picturesUnai Emery is yet to find the right balance for his midfield but the claim of his de facto captain, Granit Xhaka, to be part of it is looking decidedly tenuous. First things first: the Switzerland international is a good player who cares tremendously and does not deserve anything like the negative reception he received upon his substitution against Aston Villa after 72 minutes. But his replacements, Lucas Torreira and the outstanding youngster Joe Willock, helped turbo-charge Arsenal’s comeback while Matteo Guendouzi played the second half like a man possessed. Xhaka, by contrast, looked...
Buendía the architect of City’s bad day, Arsenal were woeful in defence and Maguire deserved better from Leicester fansThe Dozen: our pick of the weekend’s best picturesThe way in which Norwich turned a negative into a positive was quite something. With nigh-on a full team of players out injured, the odds of stopping Manchester City looked insurmountable. Instead Daniel Farke’s men gave their best performance of the season by far, not only cutting the champions open but looking solid at the back for the first time. There was kudos for the debutants in defence, Sam Byram and Ibrahim Amadou, but also for more seasoned Norwich players. Emi Buendía and Marco Stiepermann were central to a buccaneering style in the Championship...