OLD TRAFFORD – A Cristiano Ronaldo hat-trick to seal a crucial victory would normally have Mancunians buzzing louder than ever on a sunny Easter weekend.
The scene down Deansgate in the aftermath would then resemble the strip in Magaluf, only with Ronaldo songs replacing the techno music.
Yet, the overriding feeling around Old Trafford as Ronaldo dragged another inept Manchester United display over the line against Norwich on Saturday was one of previously unseen vitriol, with one player in particular the target for supporter angst.
Protests against the Glazer family ownership of United are nothing new, even if the sheer number of fans demanding the Americans “get out of their club” was greater than ever pre-match, with the Munich Tunnel under the South Stand blockaded before kick off.
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As Norwich, a side seven points from Premier League safety, came from 2-0 down to level at 2-2, supporters had seen enough, and started the “you’re not fit to wear the shirt” chants.
Not done there, the man they see as the embodiment of this disinterested and emotionless United, Paul Pogba, instigated the loudest boos of the match as he was substituted, before worse followed, and he was invited to “f*** off”.
Pogba wasn’t going to go out quietly. After Ronaldo’s winner did little to lift the mood, the clearly ruffled Frenchman cupped his ears in the direction of the Stretford End as he left the pitch to more acrimony.
“I don’t think it makes sense to target any individual player,” Ralf Rangnick said. “It is a collective responsibility.”
Rangnick is right to suggest Pogba is not the only one who deserves criticism, there were eight other candidates on the pitch on Saturday for example, again bar David de Gea and Ronaldo.
But the frustrating thing about Pogba, and why fans are so angry about the worst sequel since I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, is that his return for a second spell at United in 2016, as the then world’s most expensive player, should have worked out.
He was the perfect player to restore an ailing United to former glories. Possessing all the individual talent one could want in a footballer, Pogba spent many of his formative years in Manchester, understood what the club was all about and knew plenty of familiar faces behind the scenes and in the playing squad.
United were seriously lacking an inspirational figurehead in the midfield to drive them forward, and who better than a former youth product who had gone away, blossomed from boy to man on and off the pitch, to do just that.
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Now, six years on, the most telling thing about Pogba is we still, four managers later, don’t even know what his best position is.
Pogba has made no secret of his desire to leave United in the past, which is something the club’s fans don’t take lightly – just ask their all-time top goalscorer Wayne Rooney, who is not as revered in Manchester as he should be as a result.
But it has become ostensibly clear Pogba has downed tools in recent months, when fit, and fans have seen enough.
i has been told by a source close to a Frenchman that there is still a contract offer on the table for Pogba, a “tempting” one at that, but after Saturday’s final fracturing of a tumultuous relationship between fan and player, the United hierarchy must read the room and think again.
There is only one way this can end now, and that is for Pogba to leave quietly in the summer, with a blockade of bodies behind him to make sure he doesn’t come back for a third time.
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