Being eliminated from the FA Cup, Liverpool has even more reason to focus all its efforts on the Premier League, the tournament where Klopp and his team won the title in the 2019-20 season. Currently, The Kop is ranked second with 70 points, one point less than top team Arsenal, equal to the score of third place team and defending champion Man City. However, Liverpool played one match less than these two opponents.
On the contrary, the FA Cup is a “lifesaver” for Man Utd this season. The “Red Devils” of Manchester were eliminated right from the Champions League group stage. In the Premier League, Ten Hag and his team ranked 6th, but 11 points behind fourth-placed team Aston Villa, 9 points behind 5th-ranked team Tottenham.
The gap between Man Utd and Liverpool is 22 points, accurately reflecting the difference in class between the two teams before the match at Old Trafford in round 32 of the Premier League (9:30 p.m. April 7). If The Kop is the quintessence of contemporary English and European football, then the “Red Devils of Manchester” are just an average team, with mediocre players and coaches.
But because Man Utd is the greatest team in the most attractive tournament on the planet, their decline makes fans confused. How can such a prestigious club continue to ruin things on the field?
After a heart-warming victory over Liverpool in the FA Cup, as usual, Man Utd revealed its unstable face with a 1-1 draw against Brentford in the Premier League. In some strange way, despite taking the lead in the 90+6 minute, Man Utd could still only get one point.
In the recent match against Chelsea, Man Utd continued to make incomprehensible errors in defense and suffered a 3-4 defeat, including two goals conceded in injury time. Currently, the goal difference of the Manchester club is -1, they have scored 43 goals and conceded 44 times.
Man Utd’s instability is the result of a long period of poor personnel planning and recruitment. In addition, there is the ease and indecisiveness in using people at all levels of leadership.
Don’t be too harsh on Ten Hag and his students, because the vast majority are simply not qualified to play for Man Utd. This failure belongs to the higher-ups, the executives who allowed such a normal squad to be built in the first place.
Co-owner Joel – Avram Glazer, CEO Ed Woodward and successor Richard Arnild, are the people mainly responsible for Man Utd’s fortunes after Sir Alex Ferguson.
Since February, billionaire Jim Ratcliffe and his colleagues at Ineos are controlling the team’s football activities, but to rebuild and bring the “Red Devils” back to the top requires a lot of time and ruthlessness. .
In recent years, despite spending huge amounts of money in the transfer market, Man Utd rarely receives effective contracts. Since the 2019/20 season until now, only Chelsea (1.27 billion pounds) has spent more than Man Utd (776 million pounds) on rookies, but what are the results?
Man Utd once had Jude Bellingham, Declan Rice and Erling Haaland in their sights, but for some reason, the “Red Devils” recruited Donny van de Beek (replacing Bellingham), Casemiro (replacing Rice) and Odion Ighalo (replacing Haaland). .
Last summer, when Harry Kane announced he was leaving Tottenham, Man Utd decided not to pursue the number one scorer in English football and one of the best goalscorers in the world, with a price tag of 88 million pounds.
Instead, the “Red Devils” spent 72 million pounds on 20-year-old young talent Rasmus Hojlund. No matter how good or bad Hojlund is, it’s clear that the Danish striker needs a lot of time to prove it.
Many similar cases have occurred over the years. In 2016, Jose Mourinho was interested in Virgil van Dijk when this player was still playing for Southampton, but Man Utd brought in Victor Lindelof.
In 2019, Woodward proudly said that the “Red Devils” recruited Aaron Wan-Bissaka for £50 million, after analyzing 804 right-backs. Perhaps artificial intelligence also contributed significantly to this deal. That same summer, Man City spent 60 million pounds to get Joao Cancelo from Juventus.
There are also bad purchases at expensive prices. Casemiro (60 million pounds) and Raphael Varane (34 million pounds) were brought back from Real Madrid even though both have passed their peak. Meanwhile, Mason Mount also spent 55 million pounds despite losing his position at Chelsea.
And in the coaching position, Man Utd also chose the wrong person at the wrong time. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was signed to a long-term contract in 2019, although Man Utd initially wanted Mauricio Pochettino.
However, Solskjaer did a very good job as an interim coach after Mourinho left. Giving power to the Norwegian strategist was a much simpler and more economical choice than convincing the then-current coach. lead Tottenham.
When Erik Ten Hag arrived in 2022, Pochettino was overlooked again in favor of another coach who, despite having a good record with Ajax in the Netherlands, had never tried his hand at major domestic championships in the Netherlands. Europe. All of these mistakes created a mediocre and unstable Man Utd like today.
After many years of failure, the Man Utd squad still includes many players who have existed in one of the biggest names in the football world, even though they have contributed almost nothing significant.
Luke Shaw (since 2014), Anthony Martial (since 2015), Victor Lindelof (since 2017), Diogo Dalot (since 2018), Harry Maguire (since 2019), and Aaron Wan-Bissaka (since 2019) still stay, although none of the names just mentioned are of the same level as the name Man Utd.
According to Transfermarkt, Man Utd is at the top of the Premier League rankings in terms of the average time a player stays at the club: 1,539 days.
Liverpool’s success in recent years is partly due to their agility and decisiveness in the transfer market. Not only did Liverpool choose the right person at the right time, they also created a space of competitive pressure between players at Anfield, in contrast to the comfort of 1,539 days at Old Trafford.
