aAnd we have entered the era of noble and blameless bald men. This is a very good moment for Manchester United’s Ineos. Nothing really important yet. All problems are other people’s problems. All solutions are your own.
For now, you’re just hope, blue skies. You are a silent condemnation on the gantry. You’re Tony Blair without a tie jamming with Shed Seven in the Downing Street gardens. And even bad things are good in a way, because you are not bad.
This phase will also end soon. Decisions will have to be made on difficult matters in football. Most obviously, it’s very difficult to see Erik ten Hag keeping his job after the season ends.
Qualifying for the Champions League has already been set as a goal to remain. More broadly, this is an ideological issue. Lever pull requires pulling the lever. Those who seek profit must find their own profit. And no margin is more obvious than the man standing on the touchline. Not bringing out the knife is almost a betrayal of the method.
At this point, it’s worth noting that, as of this weekend, Gareth Southgate is the frontrunner to become Manchester United’s next manager. What should we actually do about this?
Much still has to happen before that is possible. There should be empty seats (probably). Southgate must be available (his contract with England ends this year). Both sides must want this to happen (United are said to be keen). Most importantly, the public reaction needs to fall somewhere below the standards of masked middle-aged men in jerseys directing Old Trafford walks like Ian Brown. .
And the public’s reaction remains the most interesting part so far. When this prospect first surfaced a few months ago, I too thought it was a really terrible idea. It almost felt like a hoax, a joke thread turned into meat. A position was secured at Southgate. The moment there is a stumble or a sluggish football, a pre-cooked wave of anger is unleashed. @Dz30304 is mentally insane. Men on YouTube rant fluently from their office swivel chairs. Why is this relevant?
The problem is, if you think about it, we’ve come full circle now. A move from Southgate to Manchester Untied is a really great idea. This is probably the last great idea left, an idea so compelling that it’s impossible to even think about doing anything else.
First, for reasons specific to the struggles of the Manchester United industrial complex. The club has basically been inactive for the past 10 years. It’s a haunted house, a ghost ship inhabited by zombies, noises coming from the walls, and a place where the past constantly eats away at the present.
Something significant needs to happen for this to move forward. Manchester United don’t need a great tactician. You need a system expert, an industrial descaler. Essentially, it requires someone to shed the shit. And Southgate is definitely one of them, in fact the only one who has a recent record of doing exactly this and turning faltering and sclerotic football organizations into happier, brighter places.
Southgate did this against England. Yes, he did. Really. He did just that. From 2000, he went back to 2016, looked through lists of outstanding teams, clicked on actual footage, and even asked people not to worry about players taking a knee. Or even if you didn’t choose Player X, accept that he did. So it’s a supply teacher scam or something.
Southgate is a perfect fit for United’s new owners. He knows about the relationship between Brailsford and Ashworth. He’s good at making young players feel good. He oversaw a DNA with England, a pathway, a sense of organic continuity that United clearly lacked.
Mainly he has what this organization clearly lacks: backbone, ruthlessness, and the ability to lie. Who has told the truth inside Old Trafford over the past decade? Ralph Rangnick was quickly loaded into a van. Louis van Gaal shouts into the storm in the wilderness. Southgate will tell the truth, and it will hurt, and that’s good.
You can almost see it already. Mr Southgate was stubborn at a press conference and refused to promise anything. Southgate appears in the bitter, vinegary, disapproving manner of a Lutheran minister. Southgate as the greatest thing that happened to Antony. Southgate heroically lost in the Europa League final, applauding the fans in his shirt sleeves, leaving everyone feeling husky and brave.
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Because this should feel like a cleanse, like an enema in the facility. In fact, public backlash is extremely important. YouTubers have to scream, bots, plastics and aggregators have to feel the squeeze. There’s no traction here, there’s nothing to hold on to, and Southgate, wallowing in his own toxins, says things like, “Our best may not be enough.” Today brings us not glory or hindrance, but cure, purification, and the rain that will one day fall and wash all dirt from the streets.
And yes, this actually sounds deceptive and hysterical and is probably not what would actually happen. Here we have another illusion, another instance of the great man theory, the idea that one man can cure a sick institution. And the man who performs this miracle is actually a decent and intelligent man, with no particular background in club management, but who appears to be unusually honest.
In fact, I want Southgate to do all the work, or at least my own deceptive and hopeless vision of Southgate. It’s not just soccer. I want him to nationalize the railways. I want him to take over the boots. I want to luxuriate in the brilliance of this imagined Southgate personality. Perhaps this is the beginning of a dictatorship, a false nostalgia for a past that does not exist, guarded by a single, stern-faced figure in a neat suit. Perhaps Southgate is actually Britain’s most dangerous man.
Perhaps this is the real story of Manchester United, why Manchester United are such a disproportionate obsession, why we need to think endlessly about exactly why a very wealthy football club finishes in 6th place instead of 2nd place. There is a high possibility that the article will be about the reasons why this is thought to be the case. It imbues this with a sense of collapse on an epic scale.
That is, of course, the dynamic of Manchester United as a British organization. Do you feel it? The football club here seems to embody a parallel sense of falling out more than any other. What has been called the “fucking up” of modern life, the dilution of what was once valuable, the hollowing out of its fabric, and its basically worthlessness. It doesn’t work anymore, and turns into a deliberate design.
Can the problem be solved? This is the question Manchester United always seem to be asking. If so, this is really in the hands of Sir Big Sir Jim Sir Ratcliffe and an unlikely man named Southgate, who is wealthy, 53 years old, and might just want to quit anyway and become an artisan beekeeper. I wonder.
A shining reformer stands tall among the ruins of Camelot. This actually sounds quite exhausting. Needless to say, we’ll probably end up with another strangely fascinating piece of myth-making.
