Liverpool's dominant, historic, almost superhuman season continued on its unstoppable path with a 2-0 victory over arch-rivals Manchester United. Virgil van Dijk and Mo Salah made their way onto the scoresheet for a team that is now surely one of the greatest football teams of all time.
The way Liverpool are run at all levels, from front office and upper management to scouting to coaching and everything else, stands in stark contrast to what has been happening at United. Manchester United right now are being run in an absolutely disgraceful manner. They have become a textbook example of how not to run a football club.
The first point to note is that of signings. During the past off-season, Manchester United massively overpaid to sign Aaron Wan-Bissaka from Crystal Palace for £50 million, then made perhaps the absolute worst value-for-money signing of the off-season by picking up Harry Maguire from Leicester City for the exorbitant fee of £80 million. These ill-advised signings were then compounded by the sale of Romelu Lukaku to Inter Milan; the Belgian has lit up Serie A with 14 league goals in 20 matches to fuel the Nerazzurri's title push. The Red Devils also let central midfielder Ander Herrera leave for nothing; the Spaniard joined Paris Saint-Germain soon after.
Recently, Maguire was also made United captain following the departure of Ashley Young to Inter. Once again, there was absolutely no thought placed into this decision. The England centre-back has little experience captaining a team, just joined United months ago, and only has 124 Premier League matches over four-and-a-half seasons under his belt. In contrast, David de Gea has been at United since 2011, has captained Spain's under-21 team and has even stepped in as United captain from time to time in past matches, and has played 298 league matches for United. While I normally oppose the idea of a goalkeeper as captain, this is an exception because de Gea should so obviously have been the next United captain; there is no rational reason at all as to why Maguire received the armband instead of de Gea.
In hindsight, the selection of Ole Gunnar Solskjær to coach the team in the wake of the firing of José Mourinho has also proven to be a poor one. It is now evident that the Norwegian's hot start in the Old Trafford dugout has proven to be an outlier; he clearly does not have what it takes to coach at the level required of one in charge of Manchester United. However, it should have been obvious that Solskjær was never going to work out as United head coach; during his only half-season in charge of a club in a major football league, he presided over the relegation of Cardiff City in 2014 and only lasted eight months in total before being fired. Despite this fact, the club owners chose to value sentimentality and "good feelings" over facts and track record, and United are now paying the price because of this poorly-considered decision.
The largest share of the blame clearly has to be placed on the shoulders of owners Joel and Avram Glazer. The brothers have no coherent plan, no vision, and no understanding of what it takes to restore United to its former glory. They are obviously making things up as they go along. For that matter, Mourinho's struggles while he had been in charge at United can largely be blamed on ownership as well. Before choosing to hire the Portuguese coach, the Glazer brothers ought to have considered the fact that all of Mourinho's most successful teams followed a particular archetype with which Mourinho would have been most comfortable. Of course, they did not grant Mourinho the freedom to pursue signing such players and instead saddled him with players who were ill-suited to his team concept and tactics.
When considering how Manchester United are being run as well as the fact that there seems to be no end in sight to the club's woes, I feel fairly confident in saying this: if United continue to be run as they are right now, I believe that in 10 to 20 years, Manchester United will be regarded as an irrelevant club and will have permanently fallen away from European football's top table.
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