We should talk about Manchester United

On a windy day on England’s south coast, Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth picked up their fourth win of the young season. They didn’t put in a particularly special performance, but a nicely improvised take from Josh King earned them a goal on the stroke of halftime, and that was more or less that. The Cherries’ triumph was a routine home win in a match between two mid-table teams.

Except it was also a win against Manchester United. Before this game, Bournemouth had only beaten United in the Premier League once. In years past, this win would have been something special. In 2019, with the Red Devils mired in their second consecutive worst-start-in-recent-memory, it’s a formality. United have won away in the league once in two Brexit extensions, and Howe would have seen this fixture as an excellent chance to arrest his team’s four-game winless run.

Any big team can wander through a slump. And Bournemouth are no strangers to giant-killing. But unlike, say, Tottenham Hotspur, United aren’t performing below their recent level. This is simply their new reality: they have a squad bereft of impact talent and a manager who can’t seem to elevate them. They are, therefore, easy pickings for a side like the Cherries, points-in-waiting rather than scalps to be celebrated.

The fact that anything was made of United’s recent run — wins away at Partizan Belgrade, Norwich and then Chelsea were pointed towards as a sign of revitalisation — is itself indicative of just how far this team has fallen since the appointment of David Moyes more than six years ago. Celebrating a Europa League group stage win is embarrassing. Celebrating an admittedly dominant 3-1 victory at Carrow Road, with the Canaries mired in a relegation fight, is embarrassing. Granted, a win of any sort at Chelsea is always admirable, but with both sides playing weakened lineups for the Carabao Cup it’s difficult to read too much into a 2-1 snoozer unless you really have to.

United really have to, and that’s more damning than any single result.

Despite hundreds of millions of pounds spent in the transfer market, they have one world-class outfield player to show for their work, and Paul Pogba has been some combination of injured and actively feuding with the club for years now. Without him, the picture is grim. Neither Marcus Rashford nor Anthony Martial are real centre forwards, but both think they are, and between them and defence ... well, the Manchester United midfield used to be an embarrassment of riches. Now? It’s an embarrassment of McTominays (I checked, this is the correct term of venery).

All of which is why Bournemouth can put in a decent-but-not-memorable performance and come away with a 1-0 win against the most successful team in English history. It’s now been the better part of a decade since United were any sort of force in domestic football, their last league win so far in the past that the whole team seems to have forgotten even how to be angry at how bad they are.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will presumably get the sack sooner or later, the latest manager to have tried and failed to turn things around at Old Trafford. Probably his replacement will get a regression-aided bounce, be appointed full time and then go through another tragic spell before being axed in turn. Players will come and players will go, and once Pogba and David de Gea leave it’s difficult to see any connection between the Manchester United of myth and that of reality.

When Sir Alex Ferguson retired, he bequeathed an enormously pretty (if somewhat rickety) mansion to his successors. At that point, United were defending champions and the best-resourced team in the country. What was required was a real assessment of the situation. Instead of examining the structure and making changes where rot had already set in, however, United have simply piled random objects — a Marouane Fellaini here, an Alexis Sanchez there, and don’t you think Angel di Maria would make an appropriate gargoyle? — on top.

This has, unsurprisingly, led to a collapse of the whole edifice. And while it’s tempting to blame the long list of players who’ve ‘flopped’, or the managers who’ve overseen the nosedive, we’ve seen enough different names wash in and out of the club over the years to know better. The problem is above them.

Ed Woodward is the man who’s put the club in this position. As United’s executive vice-chairman, he’s been the one directing club strategy, controlling managerial hires as well as their ill-fated forays into the transfer market. Somehow he’s managed to hold everyone accountable for their fall from grace but himself.

Manchester United are now in a truly unenviable position. They’re not just starting from scratch; they have the debt of six years of incoherent (but expensive) decision-making to clear out. But the longer they wait to start the work, the worse it’ll get. The club has spent years labouring under the pretense that their dynasty is merely in hibernation, that it might be revived by some long-lost prince.

Enough games like Bournemouth, with United limping along to a damp squib of a defeat, should puncture that denial eventually. But what then? Is this club capable of not just resetting itself but deliberately re-laying the foundations for greatness? Some of the ingredients are there: United, after all, still dominate the financial side of the English game. Unfortunately, in Woodward they have a cook who’s managed to spoil everything he’s touched.

Until United fix that, they’re going to be staring up at the likes of Liverpool and Manchester City, wallowing in a tragic combination of envy and denial. You hate, as they say, to see it.