Running a football club into the ground

Ten minutes ago, as I write this on Monday morning, 5th Janauary, Manchester United have sacked another manager.

This comes just five days after Chelsea also sacked another manager.

These are two of the most welll funded football clubs in the world, and two of the largest. That they are both run to something akin to Trotter's Independant Traders is a sad reflection of money men getting involved in the game.

A football club should be a simple business to run: scout players, recruit players, tran and develop players, bring into the first team. Rinse and repeat.

Both clubs, and with those we should also include Tottenham Hotspur, all have the funding to appoint the best on sporting management as chief executives, sporting directors and all the other things that a football club needs, or thinks it needs, to function.

That all three of them, three of the biggest clubs in the country, and the world, do not have the knowledge to be able to recruit and let a manager or head coach be successful is, quite frankly, astonishing.

The three are the gifts that keep on giving, providing an endless source of material which to talk and laugh about. How can such institutions be so bad at the one thing they are supposed to do?

Failure to plan equals planning to fail.

Nearly fourteen years after Sir Alex retired, and Manchester United are still going backwards, letting a stream of talented players leave because they can be made to fit in, then to see them flourish elsewhere.

After their takeover in 2021, Todd Boehly promised things would be different.

Readers, things were not different.

Managers appointed, then sacked. Rinse and repeat.

All three clubs are bin fires of different proportions, as to which is the biggest, I'd say United as this has been going on for fourteen years, and the club is now back to square one, and which top ranked manager or head coach would sign up to have their career destroyed at Old Trafford, or Stamford Bridge?

At Utd, two of Europe's best young coaches were appointed, apparently because they were young and had been successful at their respective clubs, Ajax and Sporting, and thought that such coaches wedded to a particular formation would repeat that formular at Old Trafford. Tomake that mistake once is bad enough, but to do it again right after is beyond careless, but shows a clear lack of strategic management and thinking.

Still, it is bloody funny.