Man Utd fans are allowed to see the bright side of Mainoo and co.

Man Utd fans are defending their right to be excited about Kobbie Mainoo and some new, young signings.

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Fans are crap; here’s a sensible Man Utd view
Urghhhh… there’s literally nothing worse than a football fan, and yes I’m aware of the irony here, being a horrible football fan myself.

We’ve got all the answers but zero responsibility and absolve ourselves of all blame when things go wrong. We shamelessly flit between gloating after the latest victory to calling for yet another manager’s head when things go sub-optimally.

Stathy’s email epitomises the dichotomy of the modern football fan, first saying the team would do better with another manager then saying all the players are rubbish and should be replaced. That United have just had their biggest clear out in years demonstrates that Stathy has the obligatory lack of awareness and advanced knee-jerk reaction time seen in your average football fan.

Currently it’s United fans that are completely unhinged but every other clubs is on the edge of this behaviour and at various points of the season we’ll see fans of each and everyone slide in to this kind of frenzied despair. Liverpool fans – we still remember the perennial “this year is our year” mantra, Arsenal fans are only a home defeat to West Ham from a nuclear meltdown and Barry Fox is only an email away from telling us Spurs are going to win the league. Even City fans have got a 115 reasons to write in with conspiracy theories about the “Red Cartel”.

The world would be much better if we all just adopted a simple perspective – football is just a game. Yeh it’s frustrating when our team doesn’t win and part of dealing with that is writing in to the mailbox and complaining. That doesn’t mean we should abandon reasoned thought and it certainly doesn’t mean we can perform tragedy chanting at Old Trafford (in 2024, imagine). If we adopted the “just a game” mantra, maybe we’d all stop falling for all the piss boiling click bait about signings that are never happening and managers who will definitely not be replacing our own. Maybe we’d get more work done and just be higher achievers generally?

To demonstrate the application of this, my take on United is this:

United lost some games of football where the opposition were clinical. One of those teams, despite changing their manager have a well developed, experienced squad which is pound for pound better than United’s. That they are our fiercest rivals makes it more painful but the defeat shouldn’t carry any additional weight in analysis.

In fact, I have often argued the opposite – United-Liverpool games are wild affairs where anything can happen. 7-0 at Anfield, 4-0, 4-3 and even 1-4 at Old Trafford. Conclusions are pointless. Defeat carries some embarrassment but it’s rarely season defining. United will play better and probably worse before the season is through.

The squad is weak, the first team would arguably not even be complete if all the signings were integrated and everyone was back from injury. This is a concern for the season ahead. The team is also making similar mistakes on a weekly basis, this is concerning from a coaching point of view. Ten Hag will need to address at least some of these issues if he is to remain in post beyond Christmas. I would advise figuring out how to concede fewer than ten shots per game in the first instance. It’s not clear, in any case, which manager would take over at United and do a better job.

But all this is tempered with excitement about the young players in the squad and at the club generally. Also, recruitment this summer looks more sensible and we’ve figured out how to sell players. Time will tell if the new players are any good but we will not find that out after three games in which only one of them has started all three (and was signed as a back-up in that position). All of the new players are relatively young as well, addressing the complaint about United signing old players for lots of money on long contracts.

Sensible United fans have adjusted their expectations for this season according to the squad’s current capabilities whilst maintaining the high standards of where United should be. And not because we want to give a free pass to mediocrity Jason, because this is the level of our football club right now. Spending billions doesn’t mean you deserve high standards, though you might expect it.

And on a related point, F365 are no better here. Having lambasted United for years for wasting money on players – rightly so – you’ve had a go at us not signing Toney or Osimhen. One of which is 28, never played at a big club or in Europe and just served a massive ban for gambling issues so represents something of a risk at the price he was sold for. The other who has fallen out with his present employers and finds himself frozen out to the point he’s now playing in Turkey. We’ve just got rid of Sancho lads, we can’t afford another problem player. Do better.

Anyway, just ever take a step back before talking guff yeh? I might even take a leaf out my own book.
Ash Metcalfe

MORE ON MAN UTD MESS FROM F365:
👉 16 Conclusions on Man Utd 0-3 Liverpool: Ten Hag sack, great Gravenberch, Casemiro done, ‘unprofessional’ Szob
👉 Five reasons for Manchester United fans to be cheerful features the Ten Hag sack
👉 Zirkzee 8th), Ugarte 5th): Ratcliffe-era Man Utd transfer decisions ranked from worst to best

Being a Man Utd fan is about looking for the positives
I always love the endless anguish of oppo fans struggling to comprehend United fans finding silver linings in a barrage of never-ending storm clouds.

We haven’t won the league since 2013, a Champions League since 2008, been a complete basket case of a club for over a decade, yet still we’re the team they constantly talk about, the team they still want to beat and, even though we are a poor team, celebrate a win like they’ve just beaten prime Madrid in their cup final.

Sir Alex hurt them so bad, the pain has shown absolutely no sign of dissipating over a decade later. A decade when the trophy cabinet has been mostly empty, yet we’re still one of the most successful teams in English football. A decade where our closest rival has had its most successful period since the 80’s yet failed to capitalise on that success. A decade where we threw money around like it was confetti, from a clown car driven by incompetent, unqualified fools while our disinterested owners couldn’t care less as long as they got their dividends.

Oppos can cling to the pain of the past, but United fans know where their club has been, and where it’s at. We’ll take our silver linings where we can, and try to see the positives in a constant sea of negativity. That’s what supporting your club is all about.
JR (we don’t all talk like Liam Gallagher, either)

Those damned Man Utd stats
Two things regarding Daniel’s mail on Tuesday:

1) I’d forgotten that the Copa America and Euros only included United players this year. The poor buggers, they must be knackered. Thanks for the refresher

2) The stats showed one team won three nil. Your stats can say what they like in terms of performance, but no team who gets beat 0-3 at home played well.
Neill, Ireland

…I am confident that Daniel (not taking crazy pills) Cambridge will no doubt get numerous responses to his email and mine no doubt will come too late to make the morning Inbox.

To his credit, he does raise interesting points and stats to support his argument but then loses his chance at a credible email pretty quickly.

Is it really a surprise that, off the back of a Euros and Copa America, the Man Utd squad needs more time to train together and come together?

Good thing Liverpool didn’t have any players coming back from either the Euros or Copa America else that would have really ruined that part of the argument…

Is it really a surprise that Casemiro, now a year older, is not more sprightly and fit than he was last year and the year before?

No, it isn’t. Which ultimately makes it weird the club failed to bring in a direct replacement for him until the final day of the window – for what seems like, the exact value PSG wanted much earlier in the window. Why didn’t the club act sooner?

But it’s not a disaster and I’m sick of people peddling this narrative.

There are proof points across the last 2 and a bit seasons of ETH that he isn’t up to the job and truthfully, there probably isn’t a manager alive who could come in and get United back to anything close to the Fergie era. The club is broken at a fundamental level and the road back is much longer than any rational United fan will want to admit.

This isn’t a narrative, this is reality and one that everyone can see with their own eyes can see.
Barry (Perth) Marelli

MORE ON MAN UTD MESS FROM F365:
👉 16 Conclusions on Man Utd 0-3 Liverpool: Ten Hag sack, great Gravenberch, Casemiro done, ‘unprofessional’ Szob
👉 Five reasons for Manchester United fans to be cheerful features the Ten Hag sack
👉 Zirkzee 8th), Ugarte 5th): Ratcliffe-era Man Utd transfer decisions ranked from worst to best

Odysseus’s travels
NUFC fan here. Noticed the presence of our mystery keeper as a cult figure in your pages lately. (Yes he’s our most expensive summer signing).

When we announced him I thought it made no sense whatsoever, and that he must just be a makeweight in the Anderson deal – and we loved Anderson (even if he was maybe 6th choice CM). So not a great start.

But then I thought about it for 5 more minutes. He’s not our first choice, sure, well behind Pope. But he’s actually our youngest senior keeper – 5 years younger than Dubravka (who was frankly not great as replacement last year). He’s played more than 200 times in 5 years at Benfica, right up till 2023, including more than 50 appearances in Europe where we recently critically lacked experience abd some Portuguese league and cup titles. He won the golden glove in Portugal in 2023 and he’s seemingly always first choice for Greece. You could see him as a hipster signing suggestion from some transfer podcast.

Dubs allegedly wanted to leave so I was thinking – fine, it’s opportunistic and he didn’t break through at Forest, but he’s going to be a arguably much more suitable second choice (especially given Pope had a long injury last year) and he’ll add a bit of know how as/when we get back into Europe. All good.

Then it turns out he’s not making benches ahead of John Ruddy. And maybe off to Anderlecht.

So yeah. Weird one.

Anyway, not playing well but 7 points in 3. HWTL.
Roger, Newcastle in London

READ: The top 10 most pointless signings of the summer

Sympathy for Rice
So Declan Rice gave most of his summer over to play for England and is clearly still feeling the after effects.

He’s then sent off for an offence most players, including one in the very same game, get away with – week in, week out.

He now misses our most important away match of the season.

But he does get to turn out for England again and get roundly abused by Irish fans.

Poor sod.
Graham Simons, Gooner, Norf London

No sympathy for Rice
On the subject of Arsenal getting all of the dodgy referee decision, was it last year in the Champions League when they should have given away a penalty but the referee thought it was too mentally inept so didn’t give it?

Was it Arsenal who:

Conceded a goal via a beach ball
Coined the phrase armpit offside
Had VAR confirm the wrong decision and then covered it up
Had a player sent off for “persistent dissent” when on the same pitch as Wayne Rooney
Had three overturned red cards in the first half a dozen games last season

If you are going to delay the restart do it subtlety. All Rice had to do was walk back to position in front of the ball. Don’t kick the ball away as he’s swinging, fall on the deck, fake injury and then demand that the ref take action. Some more time in with your Cheating Coach, sorry Set Piece Coach me thinks.
Alex, South London

Incredible thoughts
There’s a bit near the end of the brilliant film Popstar, Never Stop Ever Stopping, where they play a song comprised of just random thoughts which the characters think are incredible (FYI – none of them are)

And it got me thinking, how do we fix what is obviously broken? The Premier League has the richest, most watched sporting league in the world. That it is incapable of having correct refereeing decisions and allow teams to break rules, suggests that they do not take their responsibility as stewards seriously.

So what are my incredible thoughts?

1) Get rid of the ref and have 3 VAR refs officiate all games.
2) Form a superleague – if those in charge of the sport are incapable of even the most basic of decisions, they aren’t fit for purpose
3) Retroactive point giving and removing. If the ref has been proven to make a mistake, points are given to the club impacted.
4) Ban international matches during the season – have a pre-qualifying mini tournament in the summer before, big event the next

As I said at the beginning, these incredible thoughts are awful ideas, but something has to change.
John Matrix AFC

Osimhen to Spurs?
Moving aside the fact I had thought he’d joined at least three clubs this summer, Osimhen is a player Spurs absolutely should be looking to buy, despite Spurs being 8th, and therefore least likely to be in for him, in your article.

It has long been a major issue at Spurs that we simply have no depth, and to suggest that Solanke is the answer to our problems is fine but flawed. He could very well have a 15 – 20 goal season, but imagine if those goals are complimented by a January arrival of Osimhen’s talents?

I’m a bit fed up of a faction of Spurs fans who seem to think that we can’t/won’t buy players because we already have someone in that position. Five subs in every match, European football and, who knows, maybe a punt at a cup competition, we need the levels of talent that those above us we aim to replace.

That said, we definitely ain’t buying him.
Dan Mallerman