Another week, another defeat, another contender for Manchester United’s worst performance in living memory. There have been a lot of those this year.
The fact that United’s latest hammering, a 4-0 defeat to Brentford on Saturday evening, wasn’t even a total shock explains just how big the problem is and just how far standards have steadily dropped under the Glazer ownership of the club.
There can be no ignoring that they are the biggest problem at the club, either. Everything stems from disinterested owners who don’t invest their own money, profit despite the club’s failure on the pitch and have seen the club debt rise to almost £500million on the back of their worst ever Premier League campaign.
READ NEXT: De Gea makes honest and worrying admission about Ten Hag rebuild
A lack of investment leads to a sub-standard recruitment department, a lack of quality signings and a first-team squad that is not fit for purpose and in need of a drastic overhaul in quality.
The pressures of qualifying for the Champions League and securing the lucrative financial pot that goes with it mean that new managers are rarely given enough time, despite hollow mission statements of how things have really changed.
It will be Ten Hag who pays the price if United have another disastrous campaign, rather than those who have failed in their roles for a far longer time but have become masters at passing the blame. All of United’s failures in recent years come under the same umbrella of the Glazer ownership, and until that changes, it is hard to see the club ever becoming a respectable force again.
This common theme of failure makes it easy to brush off any defeat as the Glazers' fault; after all, it is indicative of years of neglect, but that doesn’t mean others at the club should avoid responsibility for their own shortcomings.
Indeed, it was the players who put in an insulting and error-strewn performance at Brentford and it was Ten Hag’s tactical demands that saw his side haplessly play out from the back and pile more misery on themselves despite not having the personnel to buy into his methods.
It was the new United manager who pushed to sign Lisandro Martinez this summer, when the club viewed other centre-backs ahead of him. Ten Hag got his man, though, and the player was axed at half-time against Brentford after an awful performance that saw him struggle, once again, with the physicality of the Premier League.
Ten Hag has also been guilty of taking the easy option when it came to big decisions this summer. For Harry Maguire's own sake, he should have been stripped of the captaincy, a new goalkeeper should have been signed if there was an insistence to play out from the back, and the Dutchman should have demanded a proper defensive midfield addition rather than believing he could overcome it with a tactical tweak.
Just last week, the Dutchman insisted he was ‘happy with the current squad’ and warned that United didn’t ‘need any players, but the right players’ if they were to make any progress this season.
Since then, he has tried and failed to bring Marko Arnautovic to the club, faced resistance from the board in trying to sign Hakim Ziyech and resorted to a move for Adrien Rabiot, a player few other teams wanted to go anywhere near this summer.
Following the defeat on Saturday, he changed his tune, admitting that United 'need quality players' after two harsh reality checks in their opening two matches of the new season.
Christian Eriksen has already been promoted from a squad option to a starter, though Tyrell Malacia has shown promise at left-back despite not earning a start in the league so far this season.
It is true that Ten Hag should have been given more money by the club to quickly conclude a deal for top target Frenkie de Jong or been backed bullishly to go out and sign Ajax ace Antony, but he has still landed three players he wanted and is being given license to pursue even more.
That in itself is another failure of the club. Instead of having a sound recruitment department who present an attainable shortlist of targets for the manager to pick from, United have granted freedom to Ten Hag to choose who he wants, regardless of the background checks that should be run on every target.
United have also found it hard to pinpoint the best available candidates for each position due to an overstocked scouting database that covers so many players that it makes it hard for anyone to stand out. Rather than having detailed reports on a small pool of highly promising players, United instead have a vague knowledge of thousands of players, most of whom are nowhere near the standard needed to shine at Old Trafford.
Every problem roots back to the ownership of the club, but that glaring problem can't be issued as a free pass to brush off any other issues at play.
READ MORE:
