Richard Green has an academic writing background and also writes about football, culture and ideas. Manchester United fit all those criteria.

To understand Manchester United’s latest descent into chaos, you don’t need to pore over xG statistics or decipher Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s corporate spreadsheets. You simply need to read King Lear.

Shakespeare’s tragedy is about a powerful ruler trying to bring order to a kingdom that is becoming increasingly difficult to govern. Growing old and anxious about his legacy, Lear divides his kingdom between his daughters, hoping to secure its future. But the decision has consequences he cannot control. Goneril and Regan flatter him. Cordelia refuses to play the game. Furious at her honesty, Lear disowns her and sends her away.

United fans may recognise something of the drama at Old Trafford.

Ratcliffe arrived promising to get United back on track, but the task is formidable. This is not simply a football club in need of better recruitment or a more effective management structure – it is an institution burdened by its own history, stature and expectations. Its past achievements cast a long shadow; its supporters demand a return to former glories; and every decision is measured against a standard that is extraordinarily difficult to meet.

Jason Wilcox, the Director of Football, is responsible for the bigger picture: the club’s football strategy and the direction in which it is heading. Christopher Vivell, as Head of Recruitment, is more concerned with finding the players who can make that strategy work. But the two areas can overlap when it comes to major decisions, such as who should manage the team. This structure is not unique to United – it is typical for big clubs these days and it inevitably creates the potential for tensions. At United, those tensions are simply more visible.

In King Lear, the division of the kingdom doesn’t bring the stability its ruler hopes for. It exposes the fragility of the whole arrangement. At United, the danger is that the people charged with fixing the club become preoccupied with the structures and responsibilities around them, rather than the more fundamental question of whether the club is moving forward.

And while the people upstairs work through the challenges of rebuilding, the manager is left carrying the consequences. Michael Carrick’s future may be uncertain, but the familiar temptation will be to make the manager the answer to a problem that extends well beyond the dugout. Even the most capable coach would struggle to overcome every difficulty created by the institution around him.

That is one of the lessons of King Lear: good intentions and authority are not enough to guarantee a successful outcome. Lear wants to secure his kingdom, but the world does not bend to his plans. Ratcliffe may be trying to do what is necessary to restore United, but the club he has inherited is a formidable opponent in its own right. It is possible to make sensible decisions and still find that the situation defeats them.

The other lesson is about blindness. Lear only begins to understand the people around him after losing much of what he values. In football, the warning is familiar enough: institutions can become so absorbed in their own history and established ways of doing things that they struggle to recognise what needs to change. By the time the damage is undeniable, the opportunity to prevent it may have passed.

And then there is Edmund.

In King Lear, Edmund exploits the cracks in a fractured ruling order and rises through the chaos. He is no ultimate winner; the play ends in devastation, and he is defeated. That is not to suggest Eddie Howe or Julian Nagelsmann would play Edmund’s role, or that any prospective manager is plotting against United. The point is simply that when an institution is unsettled, uncertainty can create opportunities nobody intended.

Finally, there’s Carrick, United’s Cordelia. Lear casts his daughter out, only for her to return with a French army and take the fight back to him. Imagine Middlesbrough reappointing Carrick, then watching him return to Old Trafford next season and, to the cheers of the Stretford End, put United’s shiny new manager to the sword.

It’s not a prediction, but football has a wicked sense of theatre, and United have a habit of turning yesterday’s solution into tomorrow’s problem. Shakespeare might have recognised the script. The French, meanwhile, have apparently relocated to Teesside.