The question now is how brave Manchester United are prepared to be in 2022.
If appointing Ralf Rangnick was the first step in scrambling the failed “DNA” that the club’s hierarchy clung to through the disastrous later days of the doomed Ole Gunnar Solskjaer era, the ominous reversion to type on Tyneside illustrates the scale of the project the club need to embark on to reclaim their relevance in the Premier League title conversation.
Last week’s curious claim from John Murtough to the club’s fans forum that Solskjaer’s “re-set” of their culture was the best thing to come from his three years collided with cold, hard reality on a wet night in the North East. The club may be laying foundations off the field but make no mistake, the first team needs a rebuild, not tinkering at the edges.
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Rangnick’s rebuild – if he gets the time and space to get into it – will have to be a big one and success will only come with some high-profile casualties if Manchester United are to recalibrate from the mess that first Norwich and then Newcastle were able to exploit so easily.
The German was a portrait of frustration on the touchline at St James’ Park, howling into the drizzly night when Jadon Sancho’s overhit cross sailed into the Leazes End. A minute later he spun round with clenched fists when Marcus Rashford, whose decline in 2021 has been one of the saddest footnotes of the Manchester United year, mishit a long-range drive into the stands.
Sancho, improving at least after a disappointing start, is protected by virtue of the long-term investment the club has made in him. But is the same true of others who are not contributing enough? A loan offer from Sevilla for Anthony Martial has been turned down but the job of pruning the squad isn’t just about selling a few fringe men. The dynamic just isn’t right.
Big decisions on players with sizeable reputations will be deferred until after the January transfer window and a new managerial appointment is made, but they cannot be kicked into the long grass forever.
Rangnick knows this. His initial meeting in the club’s London offices last month centred on the need for a change in direction, bringing “control” back to the team’s play and their recruitment philosophy. Both have failed in a year which has seen them cede further ground to their city rivals and a Liverpool side who have made up the gap in resources with smart recruitment and even sharper coaching.
It says a lot that Premier League clubs no longer fear Manchester United. One describes scanning his club’s fixture list looking for their game against the Red Devils, confident that in their current state they could unpick the weaknesses that have manifested themselves on countless occasions. Newcastle’s plan to press them high worked perfectly, with Rangnick admitting afterwards the team did not have the answers – physically – for inferior opponents.
Rangnick’s short-term mission is to eradicate those issues. A second half change of formation from a 4-2-2-2 system that was failing hinted at a Plan B that Manchester United did not possess under his predecessor, though much will depend on whether Edison Cavani can stay fit and out of the clutches of Barcelona.
Those close to Rangnick insist he is not naive enough to think that his work will be done after five months’ work on the training ground with a group of players who have been collected like trinkets by different managers to work to different systems and with wildly varying ambitions.
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'No clubs are interested' in Martial despite Newcastle and Sevilla rumours, insists Rangnick26 December, 2021His first priority, they insist, is to work on cohesion, eradicating the ill discipline that undermined much of their work in the last two matches.
Surely the least they can expect is the team to start looking more united. Gary Neville accused them of being “whingebags” given their constant complaining to each other and officials – a charge Rangnick denied.
“I don’t think it was a problem of body language, it was more a question of physicality, of meeting the demands with speed, tempo, physicality, the side effect is the body language afterwards. I don’t think that was the major problem,” he insisted.
But he will see the signs and they don’t bode well. There is so much work to do.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3sKncaJ
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