Manchester are supposed to be in turmoil but the world around them are dreaming
Despite the outbreak of coronavirus shutting down everything, the Serie A’s title race this season has been nothing short of magnificent. For once with Germany, it's not the same old, boring, one-horse race but something more footbally, i.e. wild, untamable and absolutely impossible to predict.
The likes of which haven’t been seen in more than eight years in Germany and just short of ten years in Italy but for once, it’s happening. It’s seen Juventus struggle with their transition and it’s created possibly the best title race in Europe’s top five leagues with Germany a close second. Not just because Inter Milan and Lazio are all playing wonderful football but because at the helm, it’s three different philosophies. Inter Milan and Antonio Conte are the more defensive darlings with an offensive move every now and then.
Lazio led by Ciro Immobile are the attacking, goal-scoring phenoms of the league with a decent defensive record and Sarri’s Juventus are still finding their feet. They want to dominate and play attractive, attacking football with their defence relying on the individuals rather than the collective. Yet barring Simone Inzaghi, the other two are babies at the clubs having only been appointed at the start of the season. It’s two completely different managerial options with Inter looking for the short term but trophy-winning fix in Conte, who can build them a base and then leave.
Meanwhile, Juventus are planning long-term attractiveness in the form of Maurizio Sarri. That has been the case for a long time and the same applies in Manchester. It’s one of the biggest reasons why there was a gaping difference in class and trophies for a long time until that 2011 FA Cup victory. That signalled a changing of the guard in Manchester and it effectively transformed the way both clubs operated with City dominating the last decade. They won more trophies, titles, and even had fewer managers, if one wants to use that metric as a measuring scale, and spent the same amount of money as their cross-town rivals.
It’s that last bit that has changed both the clubs because while both sides have had their issues this season, problems have been the prevalent problem across England. Barring maybe Liverpool, no other team in the English top tier looks like they really want to be here and that will play a part in what history says about this title race. But in Manchester, the problems have been magnified over the years and rightfully so, given the importance both teams place on being ever-present in the media.
The fact that it has backfired and is working against them now to bring about an air of turmoil is not completely their fault despite the fact that there is no real major problem in Manchester. No European football? City have already done that before and they walked out a different team after what seemed like a never-ending 24-year break. It was via a weird rule that saw them get Europa League football and they’ve never looked back since. Maybe the break helps them out but that’s beside the point simply because of what Pep Guardiola and co have created here.
It’s a monster. A trophy winning, the record-breaking, goal-scoring monster who will keep the likes of Kevin De Bruyne, Gabriel Jesus, Raheem Sterling, Aymeric Laporte and so many others. That’s a core of players who have won a title, and more importantly, in the absence of any extra burden caused by the Champions League, will win them another title. Move over to the red side of Manchester, and you have a budding project. One that has been excessively been mocked by those on the interweb and maybe a little warranted given the way they’ve gone about the motions since Sir Alex Ferguson.
Manchester in turmoil? © TwitterBut for once, under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the Red Devils look like they want to do something more than absolutely nothing. Everything seems to be slowly but steadily coming together under the Norwegian. The Odion Ighalo move does show that the club still has a few problems but few can deny the impact Ighalo has made. Whether that was the plan or not, either way, it has worked and worked wonderfully with an added bonus of being a PR machine because of the feel-good story. But the Bruno Fernandes experiment has been a rousing success so far.
Who could ever imagine that bringing in a creative midfielder would help a club more goals and even change the way they attack? It’s shocking what the Red Devils have done, and may even be path-breaking but in a way, Fernandes’ arrival has been timed to perfection. If anything, it gives the club and the midfielder six months to adjust to each other before making a decision on how to move forward with Pogba. More importantly, it hands Fernandes a chance to adjust to the league before truly unleashing what he can actually do for the club because after all, it is a budding project.
Manchester City may be the finished product of what Manchester United want to achieve but United have the one thing that City so desperately crave for. An overwhelming presence on the world. Because for a club starved-off success, the Red Devils are still somehow the biggest money-makers in England. No club has earned, season basis, more than Manchester United since they last won a title or rather since Deloitte’s Money League was brought into existence. Chelsea and Manchester City have come close but never managed to outdo what the Red Devils bring to the plate in terms of sheer commercial revenue.
City craves that so badly, and it’s why they’ve spent absurd sums of money trying to unsuccessfully completely overwhelm their rivals in every possible arena and fail rather spectacularly every year, which only sees them spend more money to circumvent that. It’s why Pep Guardiola is here, and why they’re doing so much to keep Raheem Sterling and the others. But, while their success on the field might help change that, they may never come close to what Manchester United produce.
Because to gain the traction that United have managed in the era of finicky/panicky fanbases is a lot harder to do especially since fans demand success on a daily basis. Because in a 24/7 news cycle where social media is king, you’ve got to be at your best nearly every second of every day and doing that is near impossible. Some may even say it’s inhuman to force a football club to do it, let alone a human. Not hitting that level consistently doesn’t or rather shouldn’t condemn a football club and its fans to a deep state of darkness and depression and that especially applies to Manchester.
Both sides clearly have plans in place. They clearly want to do more than just produce half-assed football teams. And more importantly, they’re doing all that not for themselves but for the millions that plan their years, months, weeks and even days around a football club. And for the money.
