Most Frustrating Things About Being a Manchester United Fan Right Now
Manchester United landed an important victory against Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday at Old Trafford, which fans will be hoping will break them out of their recent funk. The draw at Liverpool and loss at Huddersfield rankled, bringing frustrations to the surface. We asked 10 United fans what most frustrated them about the club at the moment, seeking 10 different frustrations.
Even though the club is in a better position than it has been at any time in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era, there was still no difficulty in finding 10. Let's hear from the fans now.
Carl Anka
TOP NEWS
Madrid Fines Players $590K 😲
'Mbappé Out' Petition Gaining Steam 😳
Star-Studded World Cup Ad 🤩
Twitter: @Ankaman616
The Luke Shaw situation
How do you solve a problem like Luke Shaw? Last FIFA World Cup, he was on the crest of a wave, looking likely to be England's and Manchester United's left-back for the next decade. Then came the leg break. And Louis Van Gaal’s idiosyncratic approach to full-backs. And then current manager Jose Mourinho playing Ashley Young at left-back.
By all accounts, Luke Shaw is a lovely boy who has no interest in being the alpha-male-type character Jose Mourinho looks to do his dirty work. Shaw’s happiest period at United was taking outlandish Instagram snaps with Memphis Depay—another Van Gaal player who could have been a United hero for a decade had it panned out.
Shaw has the talent to make him the starting left-back. Talk about his mentality is beside the point. If you have a choice between a fledging full-back, a 32-year-old Ashley Young, or a limited Matteo Darmian out of position, then you play the full-back. Make a decision, Jose. Play Shaw or sell him to Tottenham Hotspur for Danny Rose in exchange.
Scott Patterson
Twitter: @R_o_M
The "People from Manchester support City" Myth
Having been born in Manchester and raised by a red Mancunian family, the thing that frustrates me is the presumption that United supporters are glory supporters or people from outside of Manchester. I became aware of this from a fairly early age when on family holidays and talking to the English kids and their parents.
It puzzled me.
My mates were red, all my family were red, and I only knew of one or two blues at school. Maybe because City fans had so little to cling on to for decades—while we were winning everything—the myth that Manchester was blue was something they were desperate to cling on to and perpetuate.
It’s so weird; they will all work with, drink with and marry into United supporting families, but whenever presented with the opportunity to claim our fans are all from Essex, they will. The fact that United have a huge number of fans from outside of Manchester doesn’t negate the fact we have a huge number of fans inside Manchester, too.
Every single season since the war, we’ve had higher attendances than City, even when we had to play at Maine Road because Old Trafford was bombed, which was long before people were travelling from around the country to watch us play. Even in the years when City finished higher in the table than us, more fans were going to watch United play. So what do they think happened to all those Mancunian United fans?
Did they swap United for City when we won the Treble?
Ed Barker
Twitter: @unitedrant
The Coming Jose Meltdown
Remember that League Cup win? Good, wasn’t it?! Enjoyed the Europa League final? It was a special moment! There may well be more highlights to come under Jose Mourinho; perhaps even a Premier League title win. Savour it while it lasts, for the meltdown is coming.
The growing frustration with Mourinho stems only partly from the negative approach against "top" teams, such as United’s conservative tactics at Anfield and to some extent vs. Tottenham Hotspur at Old Trafford. In truth, whatever the warm feeling supporters feel right now at United’s progress, it is darkened by the knowledge that Mourinho will douse it in petrol and burn it to the ground.
It's what he does.
Let’s check for evidence:
- Unnecessarily ostracising players ✅
- Singling popular 'ballers out for public criticism ✅
- Increasingly tetchy and incoherent press conferences ✅
- Having a go at the fans ✅
- Talking up other jobs ✅
And there’s nothing you, I or the club’s executives can do about what comes next. The pattern repeats.
At Chelsea, the first time around, Mourinho sought increasing control against the oligarch owner. There was only going to be one winner. In Madrid, Mourinho sought out Iker Casillas and then Sergio Ramos for direct conflict, losing both the dressing room and then his job. Back at Stamford Bridge, such was the poisonous atmosphere that he built, his players downed tools and the two-time European Cup winner was sacked by December.
The signs are there. You know it's coming. Get ready.
Lewis Amer
Twitter: @LoquaciousLew
People Being Too Quick to Blame the Manager
Now, this topic alone is something that could generate endless exasperation for various reasons.
However, my issue is with something that I believe has been getting more and more prevalent over the past five years or so, not just within the United ranks—as, to be fair, that’s often been justified—but within the general realm of football itself.
The issue of which I speak is the tendency of fans to instinctively place much of the blame with a manager after an unsatisfactory result. Of course, sometimes this is understandable. For instance, many United fans—myself included, to an extent—were not happy with the conservative way United approached the game at Anfield.
However, I also saw a similar amount of vitriol expressed towards Mourinho after the Huddersfield game. Now, I’m not saying he should be absolved of all blame for this result, but come on, really? Had some people deluded themselves into thinking that Mourinho had told the team to sit back and create little against a newly promoted team that had been struggling recently?
But, of course, the erudite analysts of Twitter know that an inherent feature of Mourinho’s coaching is to ensure his players miss headers allowing the opposition clean through on goal, or take inexplicably poor touches on the halfway line when they have almost no cover behind them, allowing the opposition to counter swiftly, or miss several clear-cut chances per game (see Zlatan Ibrahimovic circa Christmas period 2016/17).
Apparently, these are just some of Mourinho’s intrinsic flaws and absolutely CANNOT be attributed to the players themselves.
Perhaps I took that bit a touch too far there, but my point is, critics need to criticise the manager when he deserves it but equally so the players when they deserve it, rather than shifting the blame onto Mourinho every time to fit their narrative.
Tom Jenkins
Twitter: @Teejsound
Juan Mata Never Being Played at No. 10
All frustrated paths lead back to one man desperately out of his depth when asked to succeed Sir Alex Ferguson.
Since his sacking, a lot of things have changed for the better. The club seems to be getting its swagger back, but one thing remains unchanging and constant and every time I see it, I get a dull pain in the pit of my stomach, our Juan on the right wing.
I remember my excitement when we signed him. After having my heart broken by Shinji Kagawa, in Mata we had a No. 10 who could fill that role for us. Yes, he’s small, and I’m probably quicker than he is, but his style of play and his role in the team shouldn’t be inhibited by either of these. Yet despite this, he keeps getting shoved out into a position where these weaker attributes are accentuated and his strengths diminished.
He does drift inside, and he’s playing in a way that is markedly different to his role under David Moyes, but it is still hard to see a player with his qualities not get a chance at playing centrally. We’re a team with pace and power in abundance this season, we’re defensively as solid as we have been for years, we have some of the Premier League's most exciting wide forwards; everything is there to support this wonderful little man being that creative focus of the team.
Sadly it just feels like we’re never going to see it in a United shirt.
Cal Gildart
Twitter: @calgildart
Henrikh Mkhitaryan's Form
We need to talk about Henrikh Mkhitaryan. Since the September international break, he has been abysmal.
B/R's Alex Dunn was moved to write an excellent profile of "the quiet man who could have [a] big say in the [Premier League] title race" in response to Mkhitaryan's superb start to the season. But in that article, Dunn shrewdly noted of Mkhitaryan's full United debut, the 2-1 derby defeat in Sept. 2016, that the Armenian somehow managed to be anonymous despite losing the ball 12 times in 45 minutes before his overdue hooking.
Anonymity in the face of prodigious wastefulness pretty much sums up his form in September and October. Giving away the ball, either with appalling passes or being easily knocked off it, has been far too common a theme for someone entrusted with being United's creator-in-chief. We know what a dangerous player he can be. He's a threat around the box, but without Paul Pogba behind him, he's drifting too deep to be effective.
From his Players' Tribune article, you glean he's both a deep thinker and not the most confident person. As such, he likely knows he is not playing well and is overcompensating for that by not trusting his instincts. It's hard to envisage the post-August Mkhitaryan playing the pass to Romelu Lukaku that he did in the Swansea City game towards the start of the season.
It's clear Jose Mourinho doesn't like the idea of playing Juan Mata centrally, which is likely to do with pace. But given counter-attacks are regularly breaking down because of Mkhitaryan's hesitancy or poor distribution, that attribute is negated. It's not like he's contributing goals, as he did most notably in the UEFA Europa League last term, either.
The longer this run of poor form goes on, the more United fans will wistfully daydream about what could have been had Atletico Madrid's transfer ban been overturned and Antoine Griezmann were in his place. Perhaps most damning, when you're coming around to the idea that Mesut Ozil might be the answer to United's problem with a flaky attacking midfielder, you know Mkhitaryan needs to sort it out sharpish.
Musa Okwonga
Twitter: @Okwonga
The Over-Reliance on Paul Pogba
The most frustrating thing—and it might seem like a small point, given United’s league position—is the dependency upon Paul Pogba.
Of course, any team would miss a player of his quality, but it has been striking how fundamental he is. If Manchester City were to lose Kevin De Bruyne to suspension, then they would have Ilkay Gundogan, David Silva and/or Bernardo Silva to fill the playmaking breach. Juan Mata and Henrikh Mkhitaryan are fine players, but they do not seem the type to run an attack by themselves.
For all the brilliance of Pogba’s play, his presence has never been so keenly felt as in his absence. Balls into the opposition’s final third are less frequent, and—more importantly—less prompt. Without him, too, United’s long-range passing has been much more notable for its optimism than its precision. Fortunately for United, he is so good that even though he is a marked man, he is supremely elusive.
Mourinho will need to recruit more effective understudies for him in the creative department; in the meantime, though, he cannot return to fitness soon enough.
Craig English
Twitter: @CraigEnglish92
Missed Gems
There is a frustration in the obviousness that Jose’s next "missed" stars will be gems for their next clubs and be able to reach the levels United are aiming for. We are benefiting from it in a way, given we are where Romelu Lukaku has ended up, but there are plenty of players at the club who could end up being a Lukaku equivalent for someone else in the future. Shaw is an obvious example and Anthony Martial always a fear. Then further down the line, you have Timothy Fosu-Mensah and Andreas Pereira, who could have been kept around this season.
[This is also a concern which could extend into the youth ranks where there is a particularly talented crop of players coming through at the moment.]
Richard Cann
Twitter: @RichardCann76
Lack of Quality Delivery From Wide Areas
With United trailing 2-0 at Huddersfield just over a week ago, the players on the pitch were having little joy converting the massive possession and territorial advantages they were enjoying into clear-cut chances. Too often they tried to play through the contested central area of the pitch, while forays down the wings offered little quality delivery for Lukaku.
With 12 minutes remaining Lukaku drifted right and delivered a perfect cross for Marcus Rashford to head home and keep the game alive. This scenario, with the isolated Belgian running to the flanks to get involved in play and offering quality crosses, was not a one-off. Against Benfica, he drifted left and twice delivered dangerous, pinpoint-driven crosses which were barely defended.
That the most dangerous delivery in recent games has often come from the man whose physical attributes and intelligent positioning mean that he is also the ideal man to meet crosses of that quality highlights a key frustration with United this season.
Mourinho has commented that he wanted a left-wing-back/winger type player in the summer to feed Lukaku, and thus the pursuit of [Ivan] Perisic made sense. A failure to secure him has left this squad short of width. [Antonio] Valencia is a right-sided dynamo, but his delivery has long been his biggest weakness.
With no natural winger on either flank and the left-back position a case of making do and mending, variation in United’s attacking is missing, even with the club’s best crosser, Young, odd-jobbing at left-wing-back. As a fan, this is frustrating, as there is a sense that this squad could challenge City late into the season with that extra dimension. As it stands, regardless of other qualities, it seems that this side is too stodgy and predictable to challenge.
David Bridgeman
Twitter: @Bridgemanbear
The Difficulty of Letting Go of the Recent Past
The most frustrating thing about supporting Manchester United right now is that no matter which head coach we have or which players we sign, we will never be able to recreate the glory days of Sir Alex Ferguson. Hopefully, the memories are enough to keep us going.
Do you share some of these frustrations? Which ones resonate with you? Are there any you would add? Let us know in the comments and on our social media channels.
All quotations obtained firsthand.
.jpg?w=600 "Colts Release Kenny Moore")
