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United return to the Champions League group stages tonight. Jon Super

Post-Ferguson Manchester United? Come back to me in 200 years

TV3′s Tommy Martin says ‘Louis Van Gaal has delivered the footballing equivalent of a Hornby train set to Old Trafford.’

IS THIS THE first time Manchester United have gone into a Champions League campaign knowing that they can’t win it? Probably not.

There were the early years of struggle with the three-foreigner rule (or The Gary Walsh Experience). Then there was David Moyes and his unlikely but in-the-end-actually-quite-respectable sojourn to the quarter-finals.

But given that the European Cup was Alex Ferguson’s obsession, his white whale, and thus how his United teams set out on their annual continental quest full of vim and expectation, then this season’s outlook feels unusually unpromising.

“WOAH! Back up the ill-informed, half-baked truck just a second! United can’t win the Champions League, eh? They’ve just beaten Liverpool 3-1! All’s well with the world!”

Well, it’s not just United. Realistically, no English club can this season. Even the hitherto reasonable chance of Chelsea bundling the unsuspecting trophy back to Blighty seems to be fading with every plod of John Terry’s aging limbs.

Manchester City might catch on soon, but then again, they might not. Arsenal? That’s not a question by the way, but a suggested rebrand: Arsenal? FC.

Soccer - Barclays Premier League - Manchester United v Liverpool - Old Trafford Sir Alex Ferguson's empire has started to slowly fall apart since his departure. PA Wire / PA Images PA Wire / PA Images / PA Images

Mostly though, they can’t win it because none of them are Barcelona.

So it is unfair to single out United. But then, everyone is having a go these days.

It’s almost as if, after two decades under the yoke of the Ferguson Empire, the oppressed masses of Planet Football have rushed to abandon teeth-gritted deference for gleeful mockery.

But there should be sympathy for United, given the seismic nature of what the club has gone through since they last reasonably held hopes of winning the Champions League.

A keen student of history, Ferguson is probably familiar with the words of former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, who when asked by Richard Nixon during the then US president’s historic visit to China in 1972 to give his thoughts on the historical impact of the French Revolution, replied: “It’s too early to tell.”

This pithy but probably misunderstood quote (it’s thought that Zhou was referring to the 1968 Paris student uprising, not the 1789 noble-nobbling bloodbath) comes to mind when you look at United’s fortunes since their own historic upheaval of summer 2013: the simultaneous departure of Ferguson and his boardroom consigliere, David Gill.

With Louis Van Gaal and Ed Woodward at the tiller, United have just completed a transfer window that resembled the maiden voyage of the Titanic: a confident, no-expense-spared start (Depay, Schweinsteiger, Schneiderlin), backed by outlandish boasts (Ramos, Bale, Ronaldo, Neymar), before disaster struck (they weren’t for sale! To the lifeboats!) and panic followed (Anthony Martial).

The happy ending to the De Gea situation – which is about the best stroke of fortune United have experienced in transfer dealings since Howard Wilkinson decided the boy Cantona was a wrong ‘un – and Anthony Martial’s eye-catching debut against Liverpool don’t disguise the fact that United have come through a third post-Ferguson summer of Supermarket Sweep-style transfer shopping.

The sense of lessons-not-learned is alarming, with the Cesc Fabregas flirtation of 2013 being repeated with Sergio Ramos in 2015. Then there has been the wasteful dumping of expensive mistakes (Di Maria, Falcao), the Jack and the Beanstalk-style failure to fill key positions (“Magic beans are all very well, I told you to buy a top-class centre forward!”) and the over-fondness for the wares of Jorge Mendes.

On the field we’ve seen the anaemic, sterile play of this season’s opening weeks, in which Louis Van Gaal delivered the footballing equivalent of a Hornby train set: painstakingly assembled but it just goes around and around and around…

Soccer - Anthony Martial File Photo Anthony Martial enjoyed a dream debut but he was a 'panic buy.' PA Wire / PA Images PA Wire / PA Images / PA Images

The chorus of criticism from Old Trafford grandees has continued to centre on the sense that something has been changed, changed utterly. Neville, Scholes, Ferdinand: the playing style, the transfer style, everything,

“The club is totally different and doesn’t look like anything I knew when I was there,” Rio told the Sunday Times.

The point is: of course it bloody is. United are currently like an amputee learning to use his new prosthetic limb.

Their efforts must be understood in the context of what they lost two years ago. This Champions League campaign may see them rub shoulders again with the sort of clubs that they have clearly identified as the post-Ferguson blueprint for success.

Real Madrid, PSG. Spend big money, hire big managers, act the big man. We’ll see if it works.

Ferguson’s personal library features a section on notorious dictators and tyrants, whom he greatly admires…er, sorry, I mean, is fascinated by in a strictly academic sense.

He may have a pamphlet in there on Marshall Josef Broz Tito, ruler of Yugoslavia between 1953 and his death in 1980. Tito is generally held to have kept the mongrel state united despite its ethnic divisions through a mix of suppression and concession. Just over a decade after his death Yugoslavia was aflame.

How will Manchester United look a decade after Ferguson? Much too early to tell.

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    Mute The Bloody Nine
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    Sep 15th 2015, 1:10 AM

    Tommy, I’ll have to disagree with your amputee analogy because, as an amputee myself, it only took me 5 months to get used to my prosthetic leg and not two and a half years. Maybe losing Ferguson was the equivalent of a double above-the-knee amputee given a pair of crutches to help him hop along until new futuristic technology came of age.

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    Mute Conor Cahill
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    Sep 15th 2015, 12:20 AM

    I can’t quite see how the empire is falling apart. The team is competitive as always. But not in the right way, if I’ll be honest. Though some of the players were getting old, so i’ll accept it was necessary for the club to spend a lot of money.

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    Mute Arthur Pewty
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    Sep 15th 2015, 12:39 AM

    stop talking sense!

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    Mute Conor Cahill
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    Sep 15th 2015, 12:46 AM

    Don’t worry, Arthur. Apparently on the article about Diaz, I’m not talking sense there.

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    Mute neeneee
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    Sep 15th 2015, 6:29 AM

    Great article but United supporters are in denial and still living in the past

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Sep 15th 2015, 9:40 AM

    get lost neenee

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    Mute dontletitslip
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    Sep 15th 2015, 9:40 AM

    Said the donkey who said DeGea was gone… thanks Ron/Luke/AlanB for another episode of “neenee the numpty”

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    Mute David Melia
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    Sep 15th 2015, 5:33 AM

    5 games in ,3rd in the league and qualified for the group stages,its not exactly doom and gloom; ok its different football but its a results business

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    Mute neeneee
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    Sep 15th 2015, 7:55 AM

    But ye haven’t met any quality opponents yet

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    Mute Ron Koeman
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    Sep 15th 2015, 8:10 AM

    Being 3rd in the league doesn’t mean as much when you look at who is second.

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    Mute David O'Sullivan
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    Sep 15th 2015, 9:18 AM

    or who’s 17th

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    Mute David Melia
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    Sep 15th 2015, 12:02 PM

    no but that’s not United fault is it neenaw! ???

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Sep 15th 2015, 1:25 PM

    Leicester have been magnificent and do deserve 2nd at the moment.

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    Mute Alan Wright
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    Sep 15th 2015, 12:49 AM

    All that money spent rooney gets injured and fellani is your striker. Never a fan o LVG thing Dunphy is spot on about him. Never gave us any credit when we knocked his dutch side out of WC 02 also I remember.

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    Mute James Murphy
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    Sep 15th 2015, 12:52 AM

    BIt of a spoofer me thinks too

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    Mute Galway Club Hurler
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    Sep 15th 2015, 8:34 AM

    To say a team like MU “can’t win” a competition shows a serious lack of sporting knowledge.

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    Mute neeneee
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    Sep 15th 2015, 8:57 AM

    Yea that’s just like saying a team like Galway can’t win an all Ireland hurling final

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Sep 15th 2015, 9:44 AM

    the only teams that definitely can’t win it are those that aren’t in it.

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    Mute dontletitslip
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    Sep 15th 2015, 9:47 AM

    but the teams who aren’t in aren’t just good enough, simples really

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    Mute Ron Koeman
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    Sep 15th 2015, 8:04 AM

    Oh course Chelsea have a chance, the CL is littered with winners who scrap through the group and greatly improve for the knick outs. Think Milan, Juve, Liverpool and eh….. Chelsea.

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    Mute P O Leary.
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    Sep 15th 2015, 8:36 AM

    well then why would other teams not scrape through and win. why only Chelsea?

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    Mute Ron Koeman
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    Sep 15th 2015, 8:44 AM

    Because Chelsea have a track record of being far more defensively resilliant than the other top 4 teama

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    Mute P O Leary.
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    Sep 15th 2015, 8:49 AM

    have you seen them defend this season?

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Sep 15th 2015, 9:42 AM

    Chelsea are doing nothing well this season. Not a hope.

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    Mute dontletitslip
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    Sep 15th 2015, 9:42 AM

    Chelsea won’t get near winning it, not team spirit, defence is ribbons and a manager who is a ticking time bomb.

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    Mute P O Leary.
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    Sep 15th 2015, 10:04 AM

    I actually think Chelsea could win it and they will sort out whatever is going on at the moment but I wouldn’t put their defence down to the reason they will. Hazzard,Costa,Fabregas and Pedro will come good and they will have to play outstanding for Chelsea to win anything. Matic will have to protect that back 4 much better because they are very vulnerable at the moment.

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    Mute Paul Furey
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    Sep 15th 2015, 12:44 AM

    Yeah but £300m !!!

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    Mute David O'Sullivan
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    Sep 15th 2015, 11:54 AM

    Of money earned fair and square and not gifted by a bored billionaire. Do you see the difference?

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    Mute Griska
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    Sep 15th 2015, 8:20 AM

    Man Utd’s net spend was roughly 80m less than City’s this summer. Needs to be said. The article rattles on about the post-Ferguson era, but makes it’s main point, that nobody else is as good as Barca, in an understated and rather hidden way.

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    Mute Ron Koeman
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    Sep 15th 2015, 8:28 AM

    A lot of people around here think that net spend doesn’t mean anything in relation to others clubs.

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    Mute Alan b
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    Sep 15th 2015, 8:32 AM

    Yea Ron it makes me laugh when United supporters used to go on about how much other teams had spent but now when they spend big it’s all about “net” spend I’ve never heard any other group of supporters talk like this

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    Mute Griska
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    Sep 15th 2015, 8:43 AM

    Don’t be daft. Net spend is where the real truth is. I hate talking about football in business terms, but that’s, sadly, where we’re at.

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    Mute P O Leary.
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    Sep 15th 2015, 8:48 AM

    What’s wrong with looking at the net spend. it shows the supporters the club are getting a few Bob back in and it’s not all spend spend spend. and yes 300m is a lot of money but when you look at United’s finances it’s not a big amount to them. would I love to see United not have to spend big every summer and just watch a conveyer belt of youth comming through but that’s not happening with the top English clubs anymore. so the alternative is to just stand still and not invest in the team? it seems like everything United do these days is wrong and everything a United fan says is deluded. as a United supporter for over 30 years I have heard all the Shit thrown at us over the years but this past few years have really taken the biscuit.

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    Mute Alan b
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    Sep 15th 2015, 8:51 AM

    How come net spend was never an issue until United started spending big

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    Mute P O Leary.
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    Sep 15th 2015, 8:58 AM

    It was always an issue and United always spent big. FFP has forced clubs and fans to watch the net spend. it gives you a much clearer picture of a clubs finances. EXAMPLE: take in 100m spend 10m good. take in 10m spend 100m bad.

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    Mute neeneee
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    Sep 15th 2015, 9:04 AM

    What about the 10million loss on Di maria and the million a month in wages that equals 24 million of a loss in 12 months.hardly good business

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    Mute jolly rodgers
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    Sep 15th 2015, 9:09 AM

    Chump change neean

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    Mute Ron Koeman
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    Sep 15th 2015, 9:14 AM

    Jolly is the very person who will say net spend is meaningless when talking about Liverpool but not about United. Double standards.

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    Mute P O Leary.
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    Sep 15th 2015, 9:17 AM

    what about it. it was a loss and as I have said on here hundreds of times every single transfer is a massive gamble. how many 24millions are being wasted across Europe every year. was DiMaria the only bad transfer last season. At least United God a massive transfer fee back for a player who had not played a good game for his club in months. good business there. you see you can spin any story to sound as good or as bad as you want. what about Darmian. that looks like a steal for only 12m.

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    Mute dontletitslip
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    Sep 15th 2015, 9:47 AM

    What is dumb and dumber doing on a CL thread, Neenee and Ron should be warming up for Thursday night football.
    Darmian has been the best right back in the PL so far this season, looks like robbery for 12m.
    Look at Brenda the spoofer, spent 300m take in nothing, can’t even get in the CL the idiot.

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    Mute Danno
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    Sep 15th 2015, 9:51 AM

    No What makes all utd fans laugh
    Alan b is that your still pretending to be two different people . Everybody knows that Neeneee and alan b are the same person.Its not even a case of trolling anymore its just sad.

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    Mute jolly rodgers
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    Sep 15th 2015, 11:50 AM

    Not even going to respond to your points Sour Ron as you’ll only cry and winge when you don’t like what I say and seek attention from everyone telling me not to respond to your comments .

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    Mute Flex
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    Sep 15th 2015, 10:34 AM

    Second in the PL. Sailed into CL. No cup games played. Chill and judge after the season.

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    Mute Flex
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    Sep 15th 2015, 10:56 AM

    Third. I know.

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    Mute Ron Koeman
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    Sep 15th 2015, 8:08 AM

    In the past, when United won the ball back from the opposition the player would immediately run towards the oppositions goal. Under LVG they are told to make sure there is enough defenders back first and usually pass the ball backwards. It’s just not the united way.

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    Mute jolly rodgers
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    Sep 15th 2015, 7:51 AM

    Tommy your talking through your hoop !

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