I don’t care how much money Manchester United spend on new players in this transfer window, you are looking at five, six, seven years before that club is turned around.
Why? Because they have no foundations. None. And you can’t start building fancy roof turrets before you’ve put the concrete in for the ground floor.
Panicking and looking to spend, what, £150m or so on a midfielder who is over 30 and a kid with a season and a half in the Dutch league under his belt, is trying to put the attic in before any bricks have gone up.
I don’t doubt the signings of Casemiro and Antony suddenly dominating the news cycle is a reaction to the planned protests at Old Trafford, and yeah, I understand that.
But such a knee-jerk response highlights everything wrong with them at the moment. I look at their game with Liverpool, and I think the contrast is so stark, even if the clubs have had relatively similar starts to the season. Honestly, that is where the comparison starts and ends.
Liverpool make decisions based on the long-term needs of the club, and on what suits the manager and his coaching style the best. United seem to make decisions on the level of their desperation. So at the start of the window, it was all about ‘being sensible’, ‘building for the future’, ‘focusing on youth’ and ‘departing from the policies of the last few years’. Now after pressure from the fans, they’ve suddenly changed tack completely. Casemiro at 30, and with questions about his knee? C’mon. That’s hardly building for the future, and the fee is nonsense.
I know people will say my Liverpool connections are behind these comments, but I think anyone in football can see Erik ten Hag has inherited a team and a squad that is a long distance away from what United were in the past. They’ve always had elite players who were leaders. Keane, Scholes, Ferdinand, Stam, Van Nistelrooy, Cantona, played against them all and they were elite, pure and simple. Not this lot.
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Opponents know it. Brighton and Brentford knew it. Ten Hag knows it, presumably that’s why they’ve spent so much money on someone for the short term. But this crazy Casemiro deal is getting back to Manchester United’s fundamental problem. There is no consistency at the club in anything they do. Let me draw a comparison with Monday night’s opponents. When Jurgen Klopp arrived, he actually inherited a foundation, even if the team wasn’t that great in Brendan Rodgers' last year. They had a director of football and an analytics department in place, who set a consistent standard in recruitment, and a long term plan to back the manager.
Even then, it took Klopp four years to go from seventh into the Champions League, then the final. Because building a team takes that long. Hell, even Pep Guardiola took at least a year, and he inherited a team that had got to the semi final of the Champions League. Where are Manchester United’’s foundations? Where is that consistency? Both City and Liverpool have consistently waited for the right players, rather than panic in the transfer market. How? Because they are stable clubs, with clear philosophies and a world view that looks at the next five years, not the next five months.
Since Sir Alex Ferguson, United have sacked their managers every two years. Counting caretakers and interims, there have been EIGHT managers in eight years. That’s absolutely insane. There’s no quick fix. There is a stark reality for them now. The best players don’t want to go to United. You won’t get an Erling Haaland or a Darwin Nunez, or a Jude Bellingham. You get a Real Madrid cast off like Casemiro, or an overpriced kid like Anthony. You either keep blindly spending like that, hoping the desperate gamble pays off (and it didn’t with Falcao, Schweinsteiger, Mkhitaryan, Pogba, Lukaku, Sanchez and the rest of the cast of thousands). So the focus has to change - just as Liverpool’s did under Klopp, and even City to a certain extent.
Liverpool couldn’t match the biggest spenders, couldn’t attract the biggest players. So they used their analysis to unearth hidden gems…and Klopp took them to the elite level. Think Mohamed Salah. Think Sadio Mane. But think Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson too. Then the big stars start to come. Guardiola did it with the likes of Bernardo Silva too, and with Phil Foden. Even with Kevin De Bruyne, only when Guardiola arrive at City did he get into that world elite level. Ten Hag needs time of course, which seems to be in short supply at Old Trafford - the demonstrations planned for Monday night tell you that. And they probably tell you why they’re suddenly trashing their own policies and splashing cash they said they wouldn’t.
Buying a £70m midfielder, and suggesting you’ll spend £80m on Anthony - when they insisted that was too much - sure appeases supporters. But only for a few weeks. In the long term, it creates more headaches. It means the clearly defined parameters have been ripped up again. It means the foundations are as far away as ever from being laid. United are in a mess, and until they address the fundamental problem of leadership and direction at the club, of a clearly defined philosophy, they won’t get out of it.
