As Manchester United continue to stumble through their season, the blame game is proving to be a popular one.
The Red Devils dropped points in the Premier League for the second successive match when they were held to a 1-1 draw by Southampton on Saturday, a result which followed on from identical scorelines at Burnley and at home to Middlesbrough in the FA Cup, after which they were knocked out on penalties.
Ralf Rangnick's spell in interim charge is threatening to unravel amid suggestions that the United players don't respect the German, his coaching methods or indeed the coaches he has brought to the club, and United are now in a real battle to secure a spot in next season's Champions League.
United currently sit fifth in the table, a point behind West Ham, but the three clubs below them all have games in hand on Rangnick's side.
Arsenal and Tottenham have two in fact, with seventh-place Wolves also holding one and now sitting just three points behind United after Sunday's impressive win at Spurs.
The walls seem to be closing in then, and that has led to a search for explanations, and for blame.
As far as Rangnick is concerned, comments he made after the Southampton draw suggested that he hasn't exactly been helped by the situation he walked into, which had seen Ole Gunnar Solskjaer sacked following high profile defeats which damaged the morale of the club.
“It has always been a concern since Ole left the club,” said Rangnick of the possibility of not finishing in the top four, via the Manchester Evening News.
“That was one of the reasons why he probably had to leave the club and of course, results like today’s don't make things any easier."
He did go on to intimate that the players hadn't been good enough when seeking to protect leads, having lost two points from winning positions in the draws with Aston Villa, Burnley and now Southampton since the turn of the year.
The implication that it was Solskjaer who sent the club down this road was very clear though, with criticism of the former manager something that many around the club sought to avoid in his latter days in charge.
Solskjaer's former United teammate and pundit Gary Neville was often accused of being too soft on the Norwegian, even if it was understandable that he didn't want to turn on his friend.
The man in the dugout may now be different, but Neville was still banging the same drum after the Southampton draw, pinning the blame on the players and pointing to dressing room leaks as an example of the bad atmosphere at Old Trafford.
Stories emerged on Friday that some of the United squad had nicknamed Rangnick's American No.2 Chris Armas 'Ted Lasso' after the comedy football coach character, and Neville thinks that some of the squad have taken things too far.
“I thought that was downright disrespectful on Friday – I did not find it funny at all," he said on his Sky Sports podcast.
“That they were describing Ralf Rangnick’s number two as Ted Lasso was not funny at all and not only was it disrespectful, but I found it disgusting.
“It sums up what I think of them: that they are disrespectful."
Neville went on to liken the situation to the last days of Andre Villas-Boas at Chelsea in 2012, not long after he had started working for Sky Sports. Some of the influential players in the Blues dressing room were accused of trying to get the Portuguese sacked, and Villas-Boas responded by dropping them from the team.
The former United defender thinks the same thing is happening at United now, and knows which players are responsible.
"They are at it, the PR teams, the agents and the marketing teams, as a self-preservation for their own player," he continued.
“But what they do not realise is that unfortunately, when they go to the media then those media people go to us – so we know who is briefing.
“The reality is that we do not like it, but we know who it is.
“We are not going to throw people under a bus here because we have that journalistic respect – but they are it in the same way that Chelsea were all those years ago.
“They need to stop it and work as hard as they can.”
United are next in action at home to Brighton on Tuesday night, when the blame game could be set to move on again.
