PENNY for Sir Alex Ferguson’s thoughts, sitting up in the San Mames stands.
Can the legendary Scot really fathom just how low his team, the once great Manchester United that he had regularly dining at the top table of world , have sunk.
Never have they seemed further from the glory days of his tenure, which are becoming more and more of a distant memory.
The TV cameras last night captured a poor young lad, who could not have been older than ten, bawling his eyes out as his Red Devils blew it in Bilbao.
He would surely not have even been alive when Ferguson called time on his glorious, trophy-laden 26-year career at back in 2013.
Now United, after a predictably poor performance in the Basque region to a Spurs side lying 17th in the Premier League table, are facing up to their first campaign without European football in a decade.
How has it come to this?
The hated Glazers, who have presided over this fall from grace, will rightly receive most of the blame for their shameful mismanagement.
But there is plenty more to share around.
, watching on here alongside Sir Alex and United’s majority owners, will be next in line to cop the flak.
Britain’s former richest man was supposed to be bringing the Red Devils back from the depths of despair.
But instead, under his reign, they have plumbed further down, to the backdrop of the unseemly cost-cutting at the club under his watch.
Ratcliffe was the one who OK’d the decision to hand a new contract last summer after the shock FA Cup triumph over Manchester City.
He appeared to go against his original impulse to dismiss the Dutchman, but ended up doing it anyway, mere months later.
Sporting director Dan Ashworth, the man they waited five months to prise from a reluctant Newcastle, went soon after.
Ratcliffe’s involvement in sport is longstanding thanks to his company Ineos’ interests in cycling and Formula One, but his foray into English football is relatively recent.
The U-turns on Ten Hag and Ashworth smacked of naivety, undermining supporters’ confidence in his decision-making.
While the enormous compensation bill racked up by those exits made the DOGE-esque fat-trimming policy Ratcliffe has employed at United for everyday staff harder to swallow.
A massive 250 jobs were culled last year with another 150-200 planned this year as the club targets a return to “profitability after five consecutive losses since 2019”;;.
Ratcliffe has slashed the budget of United’s former players’ association and even axed legendary boss Fergie as ambassador.
One wonders what United will do to their squad of current players after this disaster of a campaign.
Plenty will be shown the door, or at least United will attempt to usher them out.
Question marks remain over whether the likes of , Joshua Zirkee and are up to the task.
But whether buyers can be found, should United want to sell them, remains to be seen.
It is scarcely believable this is the same club that used to dominate English football, season in and season out.”;;
Tom Barclay on Manchester United
There is still the thorny issue of and his £300,000-a-week wages returning from loan at Aston Villa.
Money will be available – moves for Matheus Cunha of Wolves and Ipswich’s Liam Delap for a combined £90million was not believed to be dependent on a return to the via a triumph.
But the club will still be missing out on £100m and so any kind of overhaul may not be as comprehensive as desired.
Homegrown players like and Alejandro Garnacho may be more likely now to be sold because of the benefits of flogging homegrown players due to wonky PSR rules.
Captain Bruno Fernandes said the day before the final that players will always want to play for .
That bold claim will be fully put to the test now.
And what of boss , who was joking with Bruno in his pre-final press conference when asked why he was not under the same pressure as counterpart ?
It seems likely the Portuguese will stay because surely Ratcliffe and Co. cannot give up on him already.
Then again, he has had a catastrophic time since taking over from Ten Hag, going from thrashing Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City 4-1 in the Champions League with Sporting Lisbon to United’s last league winning coming over two months ago.
Some fans may feel Ratcliffe is making the same mistake that he did by sticking with Ten Hag last summer by standing by Amorim, whose puritanical faith in his 3-4-3 system has shown no signs of working.
In summary, it is a complete mess.
It is scarcely believable this is the same club that used to dominate English football, season in and season out.
The one that pulled off the treble in 1999 and won another Champions League in 2008 with , and Carlos Tevez playing up front, and Fergie in the dugout.
For some poor young fans, those feats are not even memories – just videos of former glories from an era long ago.
