The good thing about football (when your team is SHITE! and causes mental health issues and induces vomiting) is that when it all goes wrong, you can spend your days just slagging off other people’s teams. And its called ‘constructive criticism’ and its not only allowed but they let the ‘professional pundits’ do it, professionally, and… errrr…punditly, and no-one gets pissed off.

And the whipping boys of the week are Manchester United. The team we all love a bit and love to hate another bit. A bigger bit. Because of their horrible sense of entitlement. Of their unrealistic expectations. Their horrible owners and, let’s be frank; their useless manager.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as a player. He was the first ‘supersub’ worthy of the name and remains the best there’s ever been. He came on and scored the winning goal in a Champions League final, FFS, you can’t more ‘super’ than that. Yet, as virtually always (Glenn Hoddle the noted exception) ‘fans’ favourites’ make useless managers. Like when Shearer went to manage Newcastle. Like a returning hero, like the God he is in those parts. Yet found that the unarguable gift he had for scoring goals was not part of the skill set required to manage a club. Which he couldn’t, didn’t and failed miserably.

Ole has done ok. At times. Then loaded up this summer with a few extra superstars. Like Ronaldo. The super-est superstar of them all. Like Jaydon Sancho, the up-and-coming superstar. And Donny Van der Beek. A Dutchman. Well with those names added to the already star-studded list, what could possibly go wrong?

To lose at home hurts. To lose at home to your bitterest rivals really hurts. To basically not even turn up for the match, get totally demolished, lose by an embarrassing score line and have last year’s superstar sent off after 14 minutes on the pitch, well that’s just… just…

Just awful. At which point the fans, as well as the owners, have to think: ‘what the f….??’

And logically, it can only really come down to the manager. He has an orchestra of prodigious talent but failed to conduct it. I don’t think the players are without blame, they were terrible on Sunday, lazy, careless and negligent. But they would never have played like that under Alex Ferguson. They wouldn’t have dared.

I’m quite amazed that Ole is still (at the time of writing) in his job. Although part of me hopes he retains it. At least until Saturday, when United play Spurs. And we need all the help we can get.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx