Manchester United’s suffering can be pinned on the drop off in player quality of recent years
The Manchester United of old featured heaps of world-class talent, while today’s team is an assortment of bit players, youth, and aging superstars.
On this day, February 1st 2005, Manchester United ended Arsenal’s 32 unbeaten match home streak in comeback fashion by downing the Gunners 4-2. United were loaded with world class players that day and that’s precisely why the Red Devils are struggling now – the squad lacks that same talent despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars.
Ryan Giggs, John O’Shea, and Cristiano Ronaldo twice found the back of the net that day as United secured three points and stopped one of the greatest Arsenal teams to take the field. It was a game that saw United down early but come back to make sure that Sir Alex Ferguson and his men were the winners.
Besides O’Shea, no offense, Ronaldo and Giggs are two of the games biggest legends, but this team was full of them. Paul Scholes, Roy Keane, Rio Ferdinand, Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Edwin van der Sar, Louis Saha, Gerard Pique, Gary and Phil Neville, and a young Wayne Rooney were all on this team and, if you compare those names to this current United line up, the reasons why United are struggling become glaringly obvious.
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Don’t get me wrong, Manchester United does have good players, but good doesn’t get it done at this club – if United want to be successful again they need world class talent. They’ve spent the big bucks but their large investment has hardly had produced the returns the club wants, not even close honestly. The Red Devils used to compete for first but now their ambitions mirror Tottenham, making sure the club reaches the top four (just to get knocked out in the group stage of the Champions League).
The “big names” on this team aren’t that big besides Wayne Rooney, who has found his form again, and David De Gea. Other than that, this team lacks the world class talent that United used to have on a yearly basis before Fergie retired. Anthony Martial will one day be a world class player if he keeps developing like he is but for now he’s just a youngster getting his feet wet in the Premier League. Memphis Depay showed that he could one day be a world class player at PSV but his first season at United shows that he has a long way to go if he wants to be the Dutch CR7.
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Adnan Januzaj, Luke Shaw, James Wilson, Nick Powell, Andreas Pereira, Phil Jones, Cameron Borthwick-Jackson, and Jesse Lingard are also promising young talents but also need to step up and improve if they want to become the kind of players United used to have. Young and very talented players were how the club became so great, and it’s time for this new batch to do the same.
Players like Juan Mata, Chris Smalling, Daley Blind, Ander Herrera, Morgan Schneiderlin, Matteo Darmian, Bastian Schweinstager, Antonio Valencia, Ashley Young, and Michael Carrick have been good but as I said, good doesn’t cut it at this club. These players are either too old, injury prone, or just haven’t played to their potential and the lack of goals and results shows that.
Marouane Fellaini gets his own paragraph as he is the epitome of whats wrong with this squad. Spending way too much on talent that doesn’t even deserve to be apart of this club. In my opinion, he was the beginning of the end for this club in how they do business in the transfer window.
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Manchester United have a long way to go if they want to be competing for trophies again and will need another overhaul to make sure they get back on track. Some names need to go and new faces to need come in to ensure that United don’t become the next Liverpool.