Monday Cannon Fodder: ranting

It’s Monday and I’m feeling ornery. Those two things may or may not be directly related, but that it’s Monday certainly isn’t helping things. Garfield had it right. So I’m going to rant for a bit because the football media is pissing me off.

Can we please throw some cold water on the slurp-fest for Erik Ten Hag and Manchester United? My goodness, I’m so sick of the media love affair with that club. If they sneeze, it’s front page news. I mean, come on. What is this nonsense? I guess when you go six years without a major trophy, people get overexcited when you finally manage it again.

Manchester United are 8 points adrift in the Premier League, still in the FA Cup, and the Europa League. Arsenal are leading the Premier League and also still in the Europa League. Where is all the talk about the potential for a Gunners double? Also, remember when Liverpool were in contention for a quadruple? How’d that turn out for them? The way people are talking about it, you’d think United are planning four trophy parades.

You know who else won his first shot at a trophy? Mikel Arteta. And he did it in the COVID-interrupted season. People are talking about ETH as if he’s the second coming of Sir Alex Ferguson. But how many false dawns has United had with managers since the legend left?

On the ESPN+ broadcast postmatch, they were talking about what an incredible job ETH has done in turning around Manchester United, that nobody else could have managed it. Give me a break. That’s a ridiculous statement.

ETH is a good manager. He has done a very good job with his team thus far. Annoyingly, it looks as if he is going to make United relevant again. But he also took charge of one of the most valuable clubs in the world with nearly infinite resources at his disposal. He spent 70M on 31-year old central midfielder Casemiro, 60M on a central defender Lisandro Martinez, and 100M on Nicolas Pépé Antony.

There are at least a dozen managers in world club football right now who if you gave them 230M to spend on three players could turn a team around. You get talented guys when you spend that kind of money per player. Casemiro has been fantastic, but again, he’s 31. Lisandro Martinez has looked better after an extremely rocky start. Antony was an absurd overpay. So it’s not like ETH is some transfer guru, either.

Let’s pump the brakes, please. Marcus Rashford is going to come back down to earth at some point. Then we’ll see what ETH is really worth as a manager.

Also, it’s the fucking League Cup. The one nobody cares about. Arsenal, who recently beat Manchester United pretty convincingly, went out of that competition starting ONE of their first choice players at the time (Eddie Nketiah started but Gabriel Jesus was healthy).

I should know better than to fall for clickbait / engagement bait that is designed to rile me up, but I really don’t like that club. It’s a different dislike from Tottenham, too. I enjoy the rivalry with Spurs. I plain despise Manchester United. Born on third-base thinking they hit a triple-ass club.

/rant