The Issues With The Twitter Fanbase: Manchester United Edition

There is a huge issue with the modern football fan on Twitter, and it’s developing into a toxic state of affairs that is seriously damaging. Things happen in football, with Manchester United at the moment being the biggest example. Erik ten Hag has taken over three seasons ago now, billed the saviour by people who lambasted Ole Gunnar Solksjaer for smiling and made suggestions that any manager with a tactical nous would come into this club and win the league.

Erik ten Hag was the buzzword at that time, rightfully so because he was and still is an extremely talented coach, and the feeling on Twitter was positive when he arrived. A tactician at last, come to save a Manchester United side who apparently weren’t coached in any way shape or form by Ole Gunnar Solksjaer. How funny. People who have never coached in their lives suggesting a man who won Molde their first championship in 30 years had absolutely no idea how to coach a football team and that they were running solely off individual brilliance for three years. How truly, truly idotic.

Erik Ten Hag: He’s Forgotten More Than We’ve Ever Known

The Ajax manager took Manchester United over, and there was immediate improvement despite a rocky start. The start shouldn’t be forgotten, but United improved, finishing third and winning their first trophy in six years, in what felt like a monumental moment for the club and the manager.

Erik ten Hag’s red army was the chant in the stands. People in January believed United were fit for a title challenge after beating Manchester City at Old Trafford. There was belief. Erik was the man.

Fast forward two seasons, and Erik ten Hag now apparently doesn’t know how to coach, has no personality, and is being insulted on a day-to-day basis about his appearances. How fickle the modern football fan can be, and what a sorry state of society that people allow their own individual feelings to spill onto a football app and think insulting a man they have never met and their appearance is acceptable because their favourite football team lost a game.

United losing is tough. I understand it. The 3-0 defeat yesterday hurt, but what ever happened to constructive criticism. You see accounts like Jack Fawcett and HtoMuFc; they are unhappy with the performances of the manager and the tactics being deployed, but they go about displaying that online in a constructive manner backed up by actual evidence and points they’ve bothered to research.

Instead, on the other end of the spectrum, you have accounts who have made a name off insulting players and staff within the club standing outside Old Trafford with a mic suggesting he will fight people who are asking for Erik ten Hag to remain in the job. That is so sad, and it’s such a damning indication of how society has gone and is continuing to go.

6 Managers Have Come To United, 6 Have Failed:

Nobody is blind to the miscomings of the current Manchester United team. It’s obvious. They are not set up well enough structurally. They don’t seem to be deploying the right game plans. They seem to be too easy to play through. It’s clear. The evidence is not something you can ignore. Is it all Erik’s fault? I can’t say I believe it is. Is it a collective responsibility from players and manager? I believe so. Is it a case that these players are not trying? No. I don’t think any current player at United is going out onto the pitch with the intention of not running. I don’t think any of them don’t care about the football club, and I think these defeats are hurting the players on a huge level.

I also don’t buy into the belief it’s the same players throwing a manager under the bus. These players are not throwing Erik under the bus; it’s not a case of that at all. The manager is also not throwing the players under the bus. It’s just not working at the moment for either of them.

I don’t know whether Erik’s ideas are not getting across well enough. I’m not sure whether the players do actually understand the instructions and then they’re not carrying them out to a high enough level. It could be a collective amount of things, but it seems like every 17 months we hear the same conversations. Fans have now suggested Louis Van Gaal, Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, David Moyes and Ralf Rangnick have all had no tactics. The same buzz words, “What are they doing in training?” and “Lost the dressing room,” show up every couple of months at a rate that would truly make you chuckle.

This isn’t a suggestion United should remain with the manager even if they drop to the lowest of the lows.  But we’ve had good managers at this football club who have gone on to teams after us and won European Cups. Ralf Rangnick is regarded as one of the greatest German coaches of all time, but he struggled with a Manchester United side against Middlesbrough despite pushing an Austrian team to go toe to toe with France on one of the biggest stages in World Football at the EUROS.

Many will say international football is different. If you can coach eleven players at club level, you can do the same at international level. If you can coach an Austrian side to play a high-level, high-pressing style against France, you can coach Manchester United to be competent against Middlesbrough. This is not an opinion; it’s a genuine fact.

INEOS Know What They’re Doing:

INEOS may have looked into the market during the summer, but they deemed no manager on the market to fit into the way they wanted to do things going forward. Erik ten Hag is a world-class coach who was earmarked at Manchester City to replace Pep Guardiola and endorsed by the Spaniard himself. If things don’t improve at United in the coming months, then it may become a case of he’s taken the club far enough, and that will be fair if that time does come, but Twitter’s insistence on this new shiny toy year after year who’s going to be the thing that fixes everything, only to throw that toy away a couple of months later because they’re bored with following the process is something that has to stop.

People who hated the ground Ole Gunnar Solskjaer walked on during his incredibly impressive reign at United are now suggesting the club were wrong to let him go. The same people who are baying for United to sack Erik ten Hag now will be running the same regimes if the next manager reaches a similar standstill and there are calls for him to be removed. It’s a cycle. It’s been happening for a decade, and at some stage you start to ask yourself if Manchester United are genuinely too big of a club to be fixed.

Every word is scrutinised. Every touch. Every header. They are the most microanalyzed club on the planet. They are the most criticised players and managers on the planet. Kieran McKenna and Michael Carrick were accused by Twitter expers of only being at United because it was ‘jobs for pals’, only for McKenna to go on to become one of the most sought-after managers in English football and Carrick to do some brilliant work with Middlesbrough alongside that.

The shirt is the heaviest in football. Jadon Sancho, while his behaviour at Manchester United was not acceptable and it was right for him to leave for all parties, was always a quality player, but the shirt weighed too heavy at United. The same goes for Antony and a number of other footballers who have just crumbled under the sheer microcritiques hurtled at them during their time at the club.

The Topic Of Not Giving Player’s Time:

Another scandal in modern Twitter is the insistence on dragging down the club’s players at every opportunity. Certain accounts smash into Marcus Rashford at every chance they get. They’ll clip a ten second sequence against Luton but won’t clip him back in his own box, tracking back with his team at ten men down yesterday. Joshua Zirkzee is already being deemed not good enough for the club on Twitter despite showing clear signs of quality in every single game he’s played, and Rasmus Hojlund, who is still a young player with literal years to become a great player and reach his full potential, is already being deemed surplus to requirements by people who couldn’t kick a football into the grand canyon.

Joshua Zirkzee is a Roberto Firmono profile. Liverpool fans stood bullish over their defence of Firmino for years, and they were right. Neither player will ever be a prolific 20-goal a season striker, but they’ll facilitate the team around them to become better players. Rasmus Hojlund, one look at him from the eye of someone who understands football and you’ll understand what you’re looking at. That’s a proper striker. A beautiful profile of a player who is only likely to be successful in this sport as long as he can stay fit.

It’s not just Manchester United, but the level it happens at United is above any other club. Marc Cucurella was hounded out of Chelsea football club 12 months ago, only to be one of their most important players now. Darwin Nunez— I’ve seen people online refer to one of the hardest players to mark in the Premier League as a ‘donkey. If Darwin Nunez is a donkey, let me be a donkey every day of the week. I can only pray I was that good at football.

Twitter has given people with no knowledge voices that are too big. People who do no research on subjects speak on them as fact, and unfortunately sometimes their followers are that big that the point they make, which hasn’t been researched and doesn’t come from a place of knowledge, is taken as gospel. It’s a true pandemic, which goes alongside the team-leaking situations we’re seeing at the moment.

It’s a sorry time to be a United fan, and a football fan in general, with the truth being told. I will continue to back every single manager that comes into this football club. Am I happy with the performances? Of course not! They’re not good enough. Will I understand if the club parts way with Erik? Reluctantly, I’d have to trust in the decisions of a collection of people in the shape of INEOS who are clearly experts in their field and who feel this is the right decision. If we made decisions based off what the experts on Twitter said, Marcus Rashford would be one of the best players in the world at another club in the Premier League, with Bruno Fernandes probably doing the same.

Football teams losing does not give you an excuse to be nasty online and hide behind the fact you ‘love the club’. Don’t accept mediocrity, of course, but there’s a way to vent your frustrations without having to become personal with your words. Hopefully one day people understand that. It’s the fickle nature of the football fan. Brennan Johnson was public enemy number one at Spurs three weeks ago; now he’s a hero. It’s almost as if young players are not the finished product and make mistakes? God forbid anyone was alive to watch early Cristiano Ronaldo; they’d have hounded him out of Manchester United within three weeks.