Manchester United’s Players Have Failed Another Manager

There are bad performances, and then there are performances that tell you something rotten is living underneath the surface.

Fulham was the latter.

Manchester United did not just play poorly. They looked indifferent. Slow to second balls. Slow to press. Slow to recover. Slow to care. The running numbers only confirmed what everybody watching could see with their own eyes: Fulham wanted the game more.

That should be unforgivable at Manchester United.

We have spent the better part of a decade blaming managers, firing managers, unveiling managers and convincing ourselves that this time the cycle will be different.

It never is.

Because too many of the same players remain.

This squad has become a graveyard for coaches. Different systems. Different personalities. Different eras. Same familiar collapse.

Marcus Rashford has played under a conveyor belt of managers. Luke Shaw has been here through almost the entire post-Ferguson decline. Diogo Dalot has survived rebuild after rebuild. Around them, United have accumulated a collection of players who have become remarkably comfortable producing performances that would get people fired in almost any other elite environment.

The manager goes.

The players stay.

Then we do it again.

Michael Carrick should absolutely be questioned when his team looks this bad. He is the manager. That responsibility comes with the job.

But what exactly is he supposed to perform miracles with?

United entered another season carrying too much dead weight, too many familiar weaknesses and too many players who have already demonstrated, under multiple coaches, that when things become difficult they are capable of disappearing.

You cannot build a serious football team on that foundation.

And that brings us back to the people who actually created this mess.

The owners.

They inherited one of the richest, most powerful sporting institutions on earth and buried it under debt. They presided over more than two decades of strategic incompetence. They burned through managers, executives and billions in transfer spending without building anything resembling a coherent football operation.

Then, once again, they handed another coach an unfinished squad and asked him to make the problems disappear.

That is negligence.

United supporters should be furious with the players after Fulham. Absolutely furious. Wearing that badge comes with obligations that have nothing to do with tactics. Run. Compete. Chase. Fight.

Those are minimum requirements.

Too many of these players failed even that test.

But supporters should also remember who keeps renewing the experiment.

The ownership has spent years changing the man in the dugout while protecting the dysfunction around him.

So yes, Carrick must improve.

But before we sack another manager and pretend the slate is clean, maybe Manchester United should finally ask the more uncomfortable question.

How many coaches have to fail before we admit some of these players simply are not good enough to wear the shirt?