I really shouldn't get going on this question at 12.15 on a working night, but **** it.
Manchester United's problems are obviously multifaceted. No single component of the club is functioning particularly properly, and instead, we are strung together by several disjointed elements. If you want to break down United's early season woes, you shouldn't look at what's happening at the beginning of this season or even what happened at the beginning of last season; our problems have been several years in the making. Many United fans - and even fans of other clubs - have anticipated these problems for a while now, but almost nobody thought that our collapse would happen so starkly and so drastically.
So, while it's possible to go back as far as the Glazer takeover in 2005, it's probably best to start our story at 2008, when we were were Champions of Europe. The height of our powers.
The squad that featured in the Champions League Final was arguably United's finest ever. We had the illustrious jewels of Rooney, Tevez and - of course - Ronaldo spearheading our front-line, but we also had one of the single most dominant defensive lines in Premier League history in Vidic, Ferdinand, Evra and Van Der Saar - all in their prime. The squad had various elements of minor weakness, such as Wes Brown as fullback, an aging Paul Scholes and a fairly average Michael Carrick in midfield. But truthfully, Scholes and Carrick were serviceable even though not world class and the rest of the squad could happily compensate for any of Wes Brown's shortcomings.
The collapse of this squad was caused by a number of factors. As you can already see, stalwarts like Vidic, Ferdinand, Evra and Carrick have continued to play for our club but age has robbed them of their elite performance levels. Others, like Van Der Sar and Paul Scholes have finally retired (at 41 and 39 years old respectively) while Owen Hargreaves' career was ended by a long-term knee injury. And, of course, Ronaldo and Tevez left us.
There's a lot of bad luck on that list, and surely, things might have been a lot different if, say, Ronaldo had decided that United - not Madrid - was his real home. Owen Hargreaves is currently only 33, and there's every chance that he could have been a substantial component of our midfield had his knee held up a little bit better.
But bad luck happens, and we've actually had a lot of time to build on the team we had. Why, for instance, were we not more ambitious in the transfer market after the departure of our main goal-scoring threats, Ronaldo and Tevez? Did we ever really think that Valencia or Michael Owen would be substantial replacements?
Why have we not sought any replacements for Vidic, Ferdinand and Evra? It was obvious to anyone watching that the trio have been in decline for several years now, and surely it would have been wise to seek additional competition for defensive positions if not outright replacements.
Why did we choose to bring Paul Scholes - then 38 - out of retirement during a January transfer window rather than buying a new midfielder? How did we let Hargreaves slide off the face of the earth without finding someone else to take his place?
These are all questions that have gone largely unanswered, and rather than using our initiative to actually find those answers, we have become the international club of excuse making. Bad or one-dimensional players have replaced good players, highly touted youth prospects have been pushed into the squad and used as a reason not to invest, players have been allowed to drift into their thirties without any reasonable forward planning. The whole thing has been a shit-show.
That's why we fielded a squad on Sunday featuring Blackett, Smalling, Jones, Young, Fletcher, Cleverley and Valencia. That entire lot consists of youth prospects that are currently unproven or have amounted to nothing, or older players who have been bought on the cheap - Young and Valencia are pennies compared to the talents of Eden Hazard, Willian, Yaya Toure or David Silva.
Even the good players, like Van Persie and Rooney, are approaching the twilight of their careers, and someone like Mata was bought in a moment of desperation last season. Van Gaal was absolutely right when he pointed to the imbalances in our squad.
So when I look at the comments in this thread, and see things like "The players [are at fault]. they don't seem bothered." I am caught in two minds. Yes, the players are the central reason for our decline; they simply aren't good enough to perform at the levels required at Manchester United. However, I completely disagree with the idea that they aren't bothered. They're dejected, low on morale. It's not Tom Cleverley's fault that he's limited as a player, he's doing the job that we employed him to do - and in fact, he's doing a good job of it if he's beating his squad-mates onto the team sheet.
Surely, the fault lies with the men in suits that have decided that Cleverley is the best we can do. Surely it lies with those at the top who haven't had the foresight to develop a sustainable squad, and who have managed to take the European Champions out of Europe in the space of six years.
As far as I'm concerned, Sir Alex Ferguson's retirement has been a looming possibility for some time now, and the board should have anticipated that we would need to build a strong squad that was capable of surviving without his careful guidance. We ought to have been putting in the ground-work years ago: stringently modernizing our scouting, training, and medical facilities, aggressively using each transfer window as an opportunity to build the best squad in Europe, looking to have a managerial successor in place years in advance.
But we did none of those things. Much like this transfer window, we've allowed things to drag on for as long as they possibly could, we've left everything until last minute. While we undoubtedly have expanded the Manchester United brand and strengthened the commercial arm of the club, we have completely neglected the squad and all the club's infrastructure.
I don't think you can blame the managers or the players for this shit-show. We've been screwed over by a completely pedestrian board.
. RVP giờ có dấu hiệu tuổi tác rồi, Ro hói k phải mẫu tiền đạo cắm điển hình, cũng k sắc bén như xưa nữa, 2 con lợn Chicha với Wbz thì khỏi phải nói 
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