2023-24 Season Review

[Lemonade Money]

'Where has this Man Utd team been all season?'​

 

[DubaiSpur]

To me, this isn't playing squad or owner support (hard to argue those clubs are better at that)
- Is it as simple as prioritization? i.e. they are willing to give up the league?
- Or is it expectation (too much, too little?)

I've always felt we go into those moments without the freedom of a Leicester/West Ham/etc. who might see it just as a free hit (no expectations), and not enough experience/belief to "expect it", almost a unique too big a club to just go for it, but not big enough to expect it.

Others?

p.s. Dubai, despite the disagreements, we all enjoy the conversation/input, hope you have a good holiday time.

I'd say it's a combination of what you've described mate.

Here's how I see it -

1) The club's overwhelming priority is to finish in the top four each year - this gets them CL income, and finishing even one place above where you should gets you more in PL prize money than winning the FA Cup/Carling Cup. So, league is always first priority.

2) I have no doubt the bonus structures at the club match this - we probably pay the players and manager more for finishing 4th than, say, winning the FA Cup.

3) Every year, we go into the season with a reasonably strong first 11 and an absolute paucity of decent backups.

This then manifests as the same predictable outcome, year after year, for 16 years now since our last trophy.

1) We start the season off strongly, then the first 11 get knackered/injured/lose form, but the substitutes struggle to convince so we run out of steam/drop out of competitions.

2) Come the business end of the season, we are either in no competitions except for the league, or we drop every other competition to focus on the league and finishing as high as we can, as per club policy.

The solution to this is simple -

1) Buy starter-quality players, every year. Because the path to a good set of backups is not to buy backups - it is to buy first-team players who push the existing ones into being backups whom we know can do a job.

2) Deprioritize the league if we go deep into cup competitions, at least temporarily. As you say, West Ham did this when they won the Conference League, United did this with the FA Cup, Chelsea tried it this season.

ENIC will never do either of the above, because they don't see the value of the club winning trophies, nor do they have the ambition /risk appetite to try to buy starters every year to improve the team.

And so, we meander on, trophyless for the past 16 years, and no doubt for the next 16, too. ENIC's model nearly guarantees it, sadly.

 

[markysimmo]