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Following their disappointing 1-1 draw against an already-relegated Huddersfield Town on Sunday, Manchester United’s slim chances of making it into the top four ended, effectively meaning they would be playing Europa League football next season.
The campaign started rather horrendously for The Red Devils as under former manager Jose Mourinho, the club were plagued by bitter stories of players and manager wrangling, as well as fan discontent over what was perceived to be a dour unattractive style of play.
It came as no major surprise when the Portuguese manager was let go and former player Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was appointed in his stead on a caretaker basis.
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Results drastically improved under the Norwegian, as hitherto underperforming players saw an upturn in their playing performance, with many believing he had brought back the positivity to the club and as such, they were firm favorites to break into the top four.
Solskjaer was unbeaten in the Premier League for his first 13 matches in the dugout and it was this form, coupled with his side’s impressiveness in overturning a 2-0 first leg deficit against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League that convinced the United hierarchy to hand the 46-year-old the job on a permanent basis.
Despite the universal acclaim, there were some who expressed reservations about his permanent appointment and in hindsight, their fears have proved to be legitimate.
Results have gone rapidly downhill since then, with the club knocked out of both the FA Cup and Champions League at the quarter-final stage, while their league form also took a massive nosedive, with reports that Solskjaer is planning a major shakeup ahead of next season.
United were once indusputably the greatest club in the land, and this is the prime reason why their current malaise is more disheartening. There have been massive calls from the club’s fanbase to get the club to the heights it once was.
Getting back to the apex of domestic and continental football is not going to be an easy feat for United as it would require a couple of hard and far reaching decisions. In this piece, we shall be highlighting five steps that must be taken by Manchester United to get back to the top.
#5 Getting rid of uninterested players
While there might be no denying the importance of tactics and managerial acumen in getting desired results on the field, the bottomline is that for all the drills and formations practiced on the training ground, it requires the players’ wholehearted application for it to actually succeed on the field of play.
When players lack motivation or drive to give their all for a club, there is almost little to nothing a coach can achieve, and this is exactly the scenario United find themselves in as way too many of the players on their payroll have an uninterested body language.
Beyond the usual culprit Paul Pogba, there are also a number of other players who seemingly are not giving their all to the United cause.
They lack the drive, hunger and passion which are prerequisites to being a successful professional footballer and it is no surprise to see the club struggling to get positive results.
Solskjaer stated as much when he suggested that his players needed a ‘reality check’, while numerous former players and pundits have torn into the current crop of United players as having no class and bringing shame to the club.
Manchester United are one of the biggest clubs in the world and putting on the famous red jersey with the ‘devil and fork’ crest should be seen as a massive privilege of the highest honor and as such, all players donning it should give their utmost at all times, as anything other would be criminal seeing as they are paid to do their job.
For United to move ahead, they have to make a lot of drastic decisions and primary of those should be getting rid of any player who does not seem interested in playing for the club as anything else would be foolhardy.
#4 Get Ed Woodward to stick to the marketing side of things
Ed Woodward has been an integral part of the Manchester United family ever since the Glazers took over the club in 2005, having advised them in his role as an investment banker and in gratitude, United’s owner appointed him in a ‘financial planning’ role.
The 47-year-old is a trained accountant and his expertise came in very handy in boosting United’s commercial value from £47.5 million in 2005 to £117.6 million in 2012.
Woodward continued to climb the ranks and was announced as the executive vice-chairman of Manchester United which sees him oversee the operations of the club.
His very first transfer window in his new role was highly controversial as the club only completed the signing of Marouane Fellaini, with numerous fans calling for his resignation.
Woodward’s foray into football activities at United have been nothing short of disastrous as he has been at the forefront of most of the acrimonious decisions taken by the club in recent years, including the world record signing of Pogba and giving Alexis Sanchez the bumper contract.
Woodward might have a knack for commercial ventures and profitability, but sadly, he is not a football man and perhaps a clearer indication of where his true intentions lies would be the fact that he went on record in 2018 to state that United would 'make money' regardless of results on the field, as they were already more than profitable as it is.
So in essence, he sees the club not as a mega club with an illustrious history which should be competing for all the major honors, but as a commercial behemoth which should be making money for shareholders.
Don’t get me wrong, football is very much big business, with massive investments that require positive returns. However, there is a place for everything and since Woodward has proven himself adept at making profits, he should leave the football matters to those with the know-how, while he sticks to making money for the club.
#3 Appoint a director of football
While the concept of a director of football might be alien to the English game, it has very much gained a lot of traction on mainland Europe, with numerous clubs in Italy, the Netherlands and Germany having someone in this post.
A lot of people might be scratching their heads and wondering exactly what a director of football is and what his job description entails, but in essence, he/she is someone tasked with the duty of assisting the manager in all football related matters that don’t have to do with tactics.
It is the director of football’s job to join hands or heads with the manager and draw up an ideal profile of players who would fit into their playing system, going all out to get the best deals on such players, while the manager focuses on more mundane tasks like motivating the players and bringing up the tactical systems.
The club seem to be interested in towing this path as a number of names have been bandied about as potentially the next director of football at Old Trafford, with former players Rio Ferdinand and Edwin Van der Sar among the strongest links and if appointed, the director of football would undoubtedly make Solskjaer's life much easier as United manager.
#2 Sign a proven goalscorer
It comes as a major travesty that a club which once paraded world class goalscorers like Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Andy Cole, Robin Van Persie to name a few, now finds itself struggling to put the ball into the back of the net with any form of regularity.
To put this in context, Manchester United players have won the Premier League Golden Boot on six occasions in the past, but their highest goalscorer in the league this season is the inconsistent Pogba, who has scored 13 goals (of which nine were penalties).
This goes in contrast with their Premier League rivals Manchester City and Liverpool, who have a number of players boasting 20+ goals every season.
Goals win games and concordantly trophies, but United find themselves painfully short of attacking quality as none of the players in the current squad possesses the ability to put the ball in the back of the opposition net with any sort of consistency and this is an anomaly that Solskjaer and the club must address moving forward.
#1 Sort out the De Gea and defensive debacles
David de Gea has unarguably been the standout United performer for the past five years, pulling off a host of unbelievable saves to give the Red Devils a semblance of class during those gloomy years post-Sir Alex Ferguson.
The 28-year-old has put himself in the upper echelons of goalkeepers and he is arguably one of the two world class players in the current United team.
However, the Spanish international has been beneath his usual high standards in recent weeks, conceding cheap goals which would have hardly been believable had there not been camera evidence.
It is no hidden secret that De Gea had been a long-term target of Real Madrid with things coming to a head with the infamous 'fax machine gate' on deadline day in 2015 and even though those speculations have cooled off in recent years, the former Atletico Madrid youth product's future at Old Trafford remains shrouded in mystery as he enters the final year of his current deal.
His position is hardly helped by the performances of those in front of him as United's defence has been in shambles all season long which has seen them concede 52 goals which is the worst of the top nine clubs in the Premier League, while their seven clean sheets posted all season long is the third worst in the division behind the relegated duo of Fulham and Huddersfield.
These are hardly numbers to posit confidence and as the saying goes, great defenses and goalkeepers win titles and as such, United must do all within their power to resolve the De Gea contract stall, while also fixing their defensive frailty.
