In December 1989, a banner was held up in the Stretford End at Old Trafford. It read:
“3 YEARS OF EXCUSES AND IT’S STILL CRAP… TA RA FERGIE.” It was cheered to the rafters by United fans fed up with poor results and boring football. The banner represented a general feeling that Ferguson was not the right man to lead Manchester United back to the promised land. Had he walked away after that 2-1 defeat to Crystal Palace not many would have mourned his exit. But history, as we now know, had other ideas. Ferguson stayed. Turned things around. And then some!
That moment feels uncomfortably relevant today.
Manchester United is an enigma of a football club. One of the truly great institutions of the game – alongside Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, AC Milan and Liverpool – yet fundamentally different from all of them in one key respect. For all their success, United are essentially a club defined by just two great managers: Sir Matt Busby and Sir Alex Ferguson. Two Scots responsible for almost everything that truly matters in the club’s history.
Beyond those two gilded periods of dizzying success, United have been anything but great. Competitive at times, yes. Dangerous on occasion. But more often than not, mediocre. A cup-run team. A club weighed down by the burden of its own history
That reliance on two towering figures has created an almost impossible inheritance for every manager who has followed them. Just as Busby’s successors failed to live up to his legend until Sir Alex arrived, so too have Ferguson’s. Each new appointment comes carrying not just hope, but expectation – the idea that they might be the one. The next Busby. The next Ferguson.
Which brings us to the latest chapter in the long-running tale of the king’s new clothes: Ruben Amorim.
Like many before him, Amorim arrived with a reputation and a philosophy, welcomed by a fanbase steeped in United mythology and desperate to believe. Yet so far, that belief has not been rewarded. Performances remain disjointed, results inconsistent, and the football often difficult to watch. Players are forced into roles that don’t suit them, systems feel imposed rather than evolved, progress is hard to measure, and barely a press conference goes by without the Portuguese shooting himself in the foot.
“He’s not the right man to manage Man United,” declared Paul Scholes recently and few would argue with that. It just doesn’t feel like he gets it. Surely, it’s time for United to roll the dice again…..
Yet the one thing that seems to work in Amorim’s favour is fear. Fear that United will blink too soon. Fear that, unlike in 1989, they will discard a manager who might — just might — have turned out to be the next great one. Fear that the next messiah will be nailed to the cross of public opinion before there is a chance of a resurrection.
It is now twelve months since his appointment. Long enough to judge performances. Not long enough, perhaps, to judge destiny. And that is the dilemma Manchester United face. How long do you wait? When does patience become blindness? When does loyalty become inertia? Put another way – “how soon is NOW?” as those other Mancunian legends the Smiths put it.
“12 MONTHS OF EXCUSES AND IT’S STILL CRAP… TA RA RUBEN”
In 1989 the banner was wrong. The question today: Is it right now?