David Abbott

[Chino @ChinoUTD]

🚨 Roy Keane doesn’t hold back on the Glazers and the state of Manchester United:

“People say I’ve made a career out of criticisms. Fine. Call me miserable, call me bitter. I couldn’t care less. I’m not going to sit on television and tell supporters everything is wonderful when the club is falling apart.

And I’m sick of people pretending this started with the last manager.

A manager comes in promising standards. Two years later he’s gone. Another arrives with a new plan. He’s gone too. And we spend months arguing about formations while the same problems survive every appointment.

Meanwhile, the people who have overseen this mess are still there.

When I played for United, you were expected to win. The manager had authority. The dressing room knew the standards. Everybody understood what the club was trying to do.

Now tell me, what exactly is Manchester United trying to do?

Don’t give me a bloody presentation about a three-year plan. Tell me what happens on the pitch. Tell me why players arrive looking like they’ve got everything to prove and leave looking like they’ve forgotten why they came. Tell me why every new manager seems to inherit the same problems with different names on the shirts.

People say, ‘But Roy, they’ve spent money.’ Of course they’ve spent money. That’s what makes it worse. Spend hundreds of millions without a plan and you build nothing.

And let’s talk about the Glazers. This club was saddled with debt because of how they bought it. Years of interest payments, dividends, all of it. Money that could have helped the club went into servicing that arrangement. And I’m supposed to clap because Manchester United can still announce another commercial partnership?

It’s disgraceful.

Yes, INEOS now run the football side. They have their own decisions to answer for, believe me. But the Glazers haven’t disappeared. They still hold the controlling stake. You can’t oversee years of decline and pretend it has nothing to do with you.

Look at this Fermin Lopez story. United are reportedly asking about him. Fine. But put yourself in the boy’s position. He’s at Barcelona. He wants to play the biggest matches and win the biggest trophies. Somebody tells him Manchester United are interested.

What’s the sales pitch?

‘Come here, son. Beautiful history. Great supporters. And if things go wrong, we’ll sack the manager and start the whole thing again.’

You’d be embarrassed saying it out loud.

I’m not saying Fermin has rejected United. I don’t know what he’s thinking. That’s the point. Manchester United should be a club where the football argument makes itself. Instead, supporters see a top player linked and their first reaction is, ‘Why would he come?’ Think about how far you’ve fallen when your own fans struggle to answer that question.

And I feel sorry for the kids.

A father tells his son about Ferguson, Robson, Cantona, Scholes and Rooney. About what that badge demanded. Then the boy watches another season of excuses and another manager blamed for old problems.

What do you tell him? Be patient for another 10 years?

Supporters have spent their money, travelled everywhere and watched the people at the top escape accountability.

I’m not telling anybody to abuse people. But protests, organised pressure, demanding proper accountability? Absolutely. Because if the supporters don’t keep asking difficult questions, who will?

And sometimes I wonder whether the people running this club have become so comfortable with the revenue coming in that finishing nowhere near the top no longer frightens them enough.

That should terrify every United supporter.

Manchester United wasn’t built so that people could own a valuable business and occasionally remember there’s a football match on Saturday.

It’s a football club. Start treating it like one.

And if you can’t, get out of the way and let somebody who actually understands what it means take responsibility.”

[Stan Collymore @StanCollymore]

Manchester United Football Club.

A football club only works when the sum of its parts is greater than any one human.

At Manchester United that worked ruthlessly well for 20 years.

You can then trace when the rot started.

1. Calling Moyes "Everton". Big time players started to call the shots. That Moyes wasn't up to it is irelevant, the sum of the parts mantra was broken.

2. Ronaldo return. Always about 1 player in pressers, never about the team.

3. The piano playing decadence of Alexis reveal. City announce Haaland in a bland statement. United went full Liberace to "prove" how big they were. Clubs on top don't need to prove anything. They just do.

4. Numerous managers, sporting directors, organisational changes. Villa gave Emery the key to Villa Park and Bodymoor Health and said "you're the expert, we'll bring in your guys". 90% worked, 10% didn't. The 10% exited without fuss. United? Every name is a part of the circus.

5. Leaks. If you're supposed to be the worlds biggest club, you don't leak to Partridge type YouTubers or local journos. Chose players and their character carefully.

6. Fergie. Liverpool ruthlessly moved Shankly well away from Anfield, to the dismay of many. Romantics rightly said " WTF, it's him who started this!". Liverpool board and Boot Room said, "Move him out, he's only ever going to be a distraction". Proved true. The cameras panning to Fergie every game did United no favours. Why? Nobody could compete with that man.

7. Owners. When you allow owners in who only want to use you as collateral ( Hi Mr Big Banker, we own Man United so we're good for the fucking huge loan we want for something else) in a transaction, you're fucked. A lesson that even the biggest clubs are prone to chasing the dollar from anyone and everyone. Time to protect all of our clubs from rogue ownership.

8. Four four fucking two. Attack attack attack. Sometimes, in order to find yourself you need to go back to your roots. United play attacking, swaggering football. Buy two great wide men. Two mobile and aggressive midfielders. One ball playing, one aggressive central defender. Two fullbacks who only defend and a keeper who commands his box. Basics. United do that and even now all the people, characters, noise can be boiled down to basics that at first grind out badic results as the mess above gets dealt with. Basics. Painfully simple ones.

Manchester United Football Club are one of the world's biggest acting like a lost army after a great General left the batallion.

Find your General , on the pitch, in the dugout, at the head of the company, then green shoots will follow.

Sometimes, simplicity is everything and complexity is ruinous. The club believed its own hype instead of following its own DNA.

[David Abbott @dcs_abbott]

@McCookerybook @MsDayglo Where the lager tastes like lemonade

[David Abbott @dcs_abbott]

@McCookerybook @MsDayglo Did you all go down to the esplanade? Or was that some other dodgy bunch?

[Oxford Mathematics @OxUniMaths]

Sometimes mathematicians don't think like everyone else. Muhammad has the hole story.

[David Abbott @dcs_abbott]

@McCookerybook @MsDayglo When's it out? Where's it out?!

[David Abbott @dcs_abbott]

@MercianCRoW @vimmatu @SamCKx Fine. Be PM for a few years and we'll see how well it works.

[Dan Neidle @DanNeidle]

We attempt to put some numbers on the problem here: https://t.co/1HcYQa2LsE

[David Abbott @dcs_abbott]

@TrinCollCam Nice to see the master elect and head porter discussing arrangements in such an informal way.

[David Abbott @dcs_abbott]

@thequentinletts He's probably read your column.

[David Abbott @dcs_abbott]

@notoriousgreen1 @Sidneykidney4 @2wheelsgoodBrum You are saying we can all do whatever we want.

[Patrick Dunleavy @PJDunleavy]

Another treacherous Starmerite with a ludicrously premature whine.
“Andy Burnham not doing enough to boost growth, says former business secretary” https://t.co/rH8RYnW75c

[utdreport @utdreport]

Eric Cantona when asked about Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s comments on immigration:

"Football is a very popular sport. Football is made - all the greatest players come from different waves of immigration. Everywhere, in France, in England, everywhere.

In France for instance, the greatest players in France, they all come from different waves of immigration. I made a documentary on that, French Football: An Immigrant History. Raymond Kopa, in the fifties, was the son of Polish immigrants who came to France, worked in France, and worked hard in France.

And then the Italians, Italians like Platini. And then Spanish, like me, my mother came from Spanish refugees. I cannot accept this kind of thing." [@StevenRailston]

[Kathy Parr @KathyParr101]

Now the Guardian are at it.
It's a very slick, cross-party organised campaign designed to denigrate pensioners and create a divide between the young and the old.
The pensioners are being blamed for past government mistakes.
Don't fall for this poisonous nonsense.

[Snowleopardess 💚 @snowleopardess]

The New State Pension is £241pw. The National Living Wage is at least £476pw.
Many pensioners have only the state pension to live on, so why does "everyone know the Triple Lock must go"?
Why is it suddenly fashionable to begrudge the elderly their pension?
https://t.co/b8Hl5WaMue

[Dan Neidle @DanNeidle]

@KazzJenkins Because we don’t have the 5th largest taxes.

[David Abbott @dcs_abbott]

@McCookerybook @BBC6Music And I listened to your old song 'Food' this morning and now I can't get it out of my head. But that's a good thing🙂

[David Abbott @dcs_abbott]

@nikidoog @FishDerekDick @MikeReadUK @NewWaveAndPunk @GCPunkNewWave @FatOldAnarchist @lee0969 Written by John helmer??

[David Abbott @dcs_abbott]

@LondonStone Marketing.

[David Abbott @dcs_abbott]

@NaomiLWood @rwilliams1947 It's ok, the Falklands war is over.