United’s ongoing problem is that everyone always has someone else to blame

Just as Christmas seems to come earlier every year, so does the descent of a Manchester United managerial reign into rancour, recrimination and public apologies to supporters.

Winless in seven matches and with his captain in open revolt about his tactics, Michael Carrick is already doomed. The only surprise is the speed at which everything has plunged into crisis.

We are now at the point in the Manchester United life cycle where the demand is for the well-meaning but overwhelmed former player to be replaced by some glamorous tyrant who will show these abject players what real work looks like. (Antonio Conte.)

Conte will add extra running sessions and ban ketchup from the club canteen, after which he will win the Carabao Cup/Europa League while gradually losing the dressingroom. He will be followed in 18 months by the salve of a giddy interim spell by a genial and earnest former player (Johnny Evans), who will beat Manchester City and either Liverpool or Arsenal with an adrenal display of counter-attacking football. This will be followed by a modern coach supposedly capable of playing dominant football, and so they’ll hire an Ineos-coded ideologue with good hair. (Eddie Howe – though we note Fabian Hurzeler’s recent hair transplant.)

And when this fails, because United players are incapable of pressing, José Mourinho might be ready to come out of retirement for one last job to show these abject players what real work looks like. Luke Shaw and Diogo Dalot will still be the full-backs.

The sense of purgatory at United was accentuated this week by the publication of The Athletic’s two-part interview with Erik ten Hag, who reflects on his time at United with an exquisite lack of introspection. “I think I’m always quite self-critical and reflective,” says ten Hag, during an interview in which he blames everyone but himself. In a jarring echo of David Moyes’ complaints that he was unable to sign Gareth Bale, Cesc Fàbregas, Cristiano Ronaldo and Toni Kroos, Ten Hag laments that the club didn’t sign Harry Kane and Declan Rice. (He neglects to mention that the club did sign expensive flops like Antony and Andre Onana for him.)

Otherwise, says Ten Hag, the preseason travel was too long and exhausting; Ineos’ hierarchy broke promises about keeping Scott McTominay; the club’s indulgence of the players created a “toxic culture”; and Antony had to be signed at a king’s ransom because Jadon Sancho refused to play on the right wing.

This is not to say Ten Hag is necessarily wrong about any of this. The hopelessness of Ineos’ offering was summed up after Ten Hag left the club: Dan Ashworth spent as long at the club as he had on gardening leave waiting to join, leaving apparently because he warned against hiring the tactically inflexible Ruben Amorim, whose formation didn’t suit the squad. Amorim was fired just over a year later for being too tactically inflexible. The same people who disregarded Cassandra Ashworth are still calling the shots.

This is the ongoing problem at United: everyone always has someone else to blame. The players blame the manager’s tactics or, in Lisandro Martinez’ case, the transfer acumen of the technical director; the manager blames the players or the hierarchy; the hierarchy blames the players, the managers or each other.

Alex Ferguson’s success was built on the fact he was the only person at the club allowed to throw around blame, and every decision he made was primarily to assert his authority. Ferguson infamously bristled at Channel 4 journalist Jon Snow’s description of his methods as “Stalinist” after he retired from United in 2013, but his was a better charter for success at United than this subsequent democracy of ass-covering.

Ineos’ Corporate Camelot precludes any coach building up the same level of authority at United nowadays, but even if they did want to cede control, the noise around United means it’s impossible for any manager to stick around long enough to build any control.

One of the reasons United remains cursed to repeat this cycle is that their travails make such a successful media business plan. Gary Neville’s Overlap has expanded to become a daily podcast, and their core offering remains angry and bleakly comic inquisitions about how This Is Manchester United We Are Talking About. One of the new Overlap hosts is Mark Goldbridge, who made his name with hysterical, Partridgean reactions to United defeats in front of a green screen in his bedroom.

This was once Liverpool’s plight, where a suite of legendary players joined the punditry ranks to scorn the diminished standards at their once-great club. United’s institutional collapse has been greatly exacerbated by its coinciding with social media and a scale and brutality of criticism that no human being is built to endure. When you hear Harry Maguire’s performances mocked in the Ghanaian parliament, you realise it is impossible for anyone to succeed under this level of scrutiny.

Everyone at United has calculated that the best means of not being smothered by this avalanche of criticism is by shovelling it in someone else’s direction.

Michael Carrick will be the latest fall guy because Manchester United has become too big not to fail.