Manchester United's relentless dash for cash once again undermines side's hopes long before season has started
08 Jul 2019, 04:09pm
Have a conversation with any long retired professional footballer about the rigours of pre-season training and they speak in hushed tones about the beasting they endured. Made to run up and down the stadium terracing, obliged to spend hours jogging across country, playing five-a-side sinew-deep in the sand: collapsing with physical exhaustion was a constant expectation. The tougher the pre-season, the old belief went, the better the season. And, if the legend is to be believed, the suffering was significant.
It is not quite like that for the modern Manchester United player. Now the biggest danger they face is from contracting deep vein thrombosis. Because barely a week after returning to training from their summer holidays, the United squad flew long haul to Australia for a tour.
Which seemed odd because when the team dramatically ran out of steam at the conclusion of last season, the new manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer suggested that the players weren’t fit enough. What he needed to put them into contention, he said, was a proper pre-season, to replenish the physical reserves for the challenge to come. He insisted, moreover, that were he to have a chance he needed a collection of new signings in place before the preparative period started, ready to be put through their paces on the training pitch.
And here he was, pictured getting off the plane in Perth with the same bunch of the old lags he had promised would no longer play for the club after their pitiful showing at the season’s demise. While all his immediate rivals were close to home, putting their players through the wringer to attain peak fitness, here he was with a squad he knows to be unsatisfactory taking a 20-hour flight down south.
We know why: money. It is a function of the ownership that at United the priority is commerce. And sending them on a lengthy tour Down Under, picking up appearance fees and enhancing the brand, is an important part of buffing up the owners favourite thing: their dividend payments.
Manchester United players look very happy and cosy in first-class on their way to Australia, but wouldn't more time performing lung-busting exercises on the training pitch be a better pre-season tactic than a long-haul flight right now?
Manchester United players look very happy and cosy in first-class on their way to Australia, but wouldn't more time performing lung-busting exercises on the training pitch be a better pre-season tactic than a long-haul flight right now?
Indeed, there was a clue in those pictures players instagrammed from their first class cabin of why United have lagged behind their rivals in the years since Sir Alex Ferguson retired. When the Glazer family took control of the club in 2005 they were blessed that the man in charge of the football side knew precisely what he was doing. But things have moved on since the days of the boss involved in every last aspect of business. Since then, clubs have become hugely sophisticated operations, requiring in charge those who understand the subtle dynamics of sport and money.
At Liverpool and Tottenham they are no less fond of a pound note. But the owners appreciate how best to provide an infrastructure that supports the playing side. At United the clueless owners and their hapless proxy Ed Woodward preside over an archaic backroom structure that understands one thing and one thing only: making money. And then people wonder why Jose Mourinho lost his way at Old Trafford last season: he had exhausted himself banging his head against a brick wall of directorial indifference.
Sure, United have long gone on faraway pre-season tours (the one to Australia after winning the treble in 1999 was notorious for Dwight Yorke’s bold effort to make the acquaintance of every woman in the country). But under Ferguson, they were done when he was ready to go; the timetable scheduled to his requirements. Solskjaer has neither the personal power nor the modern-day supportive football infrastructure to resist the board’s expectation that he will head off on tour so soon after convening. Make no mistake other clubs will be departing this summer to spin the cash in Asia or America; that is part of the modern football’s financial portfolio. But rest assured it will not before they have drawn breath in the pre-season.
United endured a torrid end to last season - losing four and drawing the other two of their last six matches in all competitions. Credit: Reuters
A pragmatic type, Solskjaer will do his best to fit around the remorseless economic requirements of his position. But how he could use some assistance from those above him. How he could have done with the old moved on and the new installed. How he could use some proper time on the training field. He is old school enough to believe that what happens in pre-season has a profound effect on what happens in the season itself. Which suggests he will be heading into the fray with his hands tied behind his back, the latest victim of his employers’ relentless dash for cash.
