Ron B

Called it at the time - he’s a promising player who won’t reach his potential at Old Trafford because, well, potential is all he is right now and that is one toxic place for a young player. Fast forward a few years, he won’t be first choice any more, but he’ll still be 22 or 23, and maybe they’ll make a profit on paper but not once his wages and the line are considered.

Some of the responses are just *chef’s kiss*. Yeah, the press and media - actually, why not just say “The media”? - are on a witch-hunt against a manager who has spent £400m+ to make an underperforming club even worse.

Solksjaer was the worst possible manager. There was literally no way anybody with his CV would have been looked at by any other top six club; a few decent years in Norway and a poor stint at Cardiff means he would have been lucky to get a Championship job. Yet he had a few decent months as a caretaker, he used to play for them, the board just wanted a quiet life, and none of his ex-teammates ever wanted to say a word against him in the media. Basically there was never going to be a greater gulf between a manager’s track record, and how long they were going to be given to get things right. Ten Haag? A wanker who has already been found out. How long he lasts probably just depends upon how long it is until the takeover happens. But he has 10 times the CV of the goblin.

How many ex-Ajax players and staff do they need before that excuse wears thin? It can’t be many more.

Haven’t thought about Henderson in a wee while. But happy for other people to post updates. Clearly all the reasons he claims (to himself?) that he went there are bullshit. The game isn’t growing there, it’s going backwards and is losing popularity. He isn’t engaging people about LGBTQ+ rights, instead he’s sold his silence. Every word of justification was a lie and the only question is whether he was lying to everyone or just to himself. Torres and Suarez both left to win trophies. There was never any secret about that. They both won more elsewhere than they did with us and we got worse once each of them left; some people will still feel betrayed but it was an honest betrayal.

12-point deduction, yet still stay up, only to get relegated 12 months later? I’ll take that.

Satire isn’t dead but it has turned a concerning shade of blue

Yup. They were flying high(-ish) before he arrived. Now? Not so much.

I’ve long thought it was ludicrous that Rooney was being talked about as their future manager, but Birmingham have been alright this season. An absolute joke of a club off the field, yet they were looking like play-off contenders until recently. Admittedly they have been dross for the last three games, and their fans have booed them off, but I’m sure they’ll pick up again soon.

Some class and dignity

Didn’t Bajectic played 19 games last season. Not sure how many minutes but he surely didn’t complete half of those matches. Not quite Owen-esque yet.

I agree. And that’s possibly part of why he’ll always talk up his Liverpool days. His club career, in broad terms, went: •Boy wonder •One of the best strikers in the world •Expensive benchwarmer for the Galacticos •Expensive injury-prone flop •Ageing bench warmer •Stoke. Obviously you can argue the toss about these - his goal ratio was decent at Newcastle but the team undoubtedly got worse during his time there and it all ended with relegation and acrimony. But the best parts of his club career were almost all with us. Even his England career went south shortly after he went to Real.

He’s such a wanker. How does he manage to spend so long saying so little before admitting that, on balance, Mbappe is probably better than he was? I’ve never heard him say a single sentence and come away more enlightened than I was before he opened his mouth.

The cliche about thick footballer and how “their brains are all in their feet”? Mamadou’s brains weren’t in his feet either.

Couldn’t they get both? If they lose 12 points and 777 pull out then surely it’s a possibility. They reached 21 points on February 4 last season - call me a pessimist but I wouldn’t like to still be on zero points when it’s barely a week until Valentine’s Day.

Honestly? He may have seen it as a last pay day for a career that was on the wane. He took over PSG when they were top of the league, only for them to ultimately finish second. They won the title in his second season. At Real he won the Champions League once, whilst finishing third and then second in the league. At Bayern he won the league but that was routine (it was their fifth on the bounce) and got the boot by September. And at Napoli he only managed 18 months before getting the boot. None of which is to say he was ever a bad manager, but he had probably failed to meet expectations in each of his last four jobs and his CV was so extensive that weirdly ruled out many jobs (eg He could never go to Barca having been at Real, PSG wouldn’t take him back after he ditched them). A massive pay day at Goodison, a big paycheque for his son to do some ill-defined job too, essentially zero expectations, and the ability to walk away if a decent team came knocking? Irresistible!

Every season the stay up just puts them in worse shape for when they do go down. They never use their extra time to sort themselves out, instead they fall deeper into debt whilst losing their best players.

Easy way to remember- Mirandinha replaced Beardsley at Newcastle, and Newcastle joined us at the same time as Barnes.

Steven Toast or Laszlo Cravensworth?

Best case scenario (for them) is that they get bought out and all their financial sins are wiped out, yet they remain shit. They’re in such a poor state that they’d need years of work to become a midtable club who sell their best players every summer.

That doesn’t seem to be a defence of Ratcliffe, it just seems to be a difference between the British legal system and laws compared to those of other countries. The rich and powerful can do nasty and immoral things with impunity - the only distinction is how nasty, how immoral, and how openly they can do them.

The sports press love a billionaire and hate asking difficult questions. How many times, over how many years, did we hear about Abramovich “falling in love with football” at a Champions League final? It was bullshit and everyone knew it, but it was a lot easier to regurgitate than to admit that whatever motivations he had must have been somewhere between disturbing and deeply disturbing. If you have any degree of power in football, and you choose to abuse it, you’re extremely unlikely to be called out on it - and still less face any real consequences. Ferguson chooses not to speak to the BBC for years after they (rightly) investigate his son? Nothing is done. Freddie Shepherd openly brags about ripping off fans and calls Geordie women “dogs”, and takes millions out of the club? He’s still remembered as a hero in the coverage after his death. Even the Owl got to throw his weight around when a journalist asks “Which refereeing decision was it you didn’t like?”

I remember my heart sinking when Houllier made his moves for Bowyer and whoever that thug Aussie left-back was who went to West Ham instead.

He would be a bad signing, even if he played well. Everton remain skint. Even on a free, and with United paying half of his salary, that’s an extra £100,000 a week added to their wage bill. They would need a transformative player to justify that, and he isn’t that player. 30 years old and already packing pace, it would be a signing to make fans hanker for the days of Ashley Williams.

Paper talk, I suspect. Given his price tag, and the bonkers salary on offer from whoever was their manager that week, he was never a realistic prospect.