Manchester United fans are not blaming Michael Carrick for this crisis but those above and below him at the club.

Keep scrolling because we also have mails on the Champions League and more. Send your views to theeditor@football365.com

Bruno Fernandes is a rat and should leave Man Utd
Bruno F***ing Fernandes, leave my club. You are a Rat. You bloody don’t go in front of the media and rat out your manager. After a thumping. After a p***-poor bloody performance. You didn’t have a foot hold in the game and was rightfully hauled off. Dare I say we were better after you left. And you are the captain of this team amd you owt them down. Why didn’t you have the balls to call out R. Martinez at the World Cup for his horrendous tactics?

Your team is getting stuffed and you can’t keep the ball for 3 minutes. You are in the opposition half and in possession and you play a deft touch losing the ball rather than showing composure. Add all the Dalotesque shots from outside the box.

And why all this? Because your manager took you off and not because you and your team played poorly. However tactically inept Carrick and his staff were, where was the desire from you and your team to not win but at least compete.

If you want out of the club, just bloody go. The fans stood with Licha because he spoke from his heart but your little man ego will find no support.

I have always held him in great stead and so do many other fans. But this is the lowest point of an already disastrous season.

Carrick most probably will not be at the helm for Bournemouth. I wish that he is in charge against them, drops Bruno altogether from the squad and somehow manages a victory.

Bruno Bloody Fernandes, just leave my club.
Vasanthan Coimbatore, TN, India

Man Utd dreams are in the past
I am most definitely not a ManU fan but purely from a footballing point of view, why can’t people get their heads around the fact that Man U are a club of the past they’re not a great club any more they haven’t got brilliant players, they haven’t got a brilliant manager, they have one player in Fernandes who is dragging the club down, as talented as he may be he should go asap.

All in all people and fans have to come to terms with the fact that it’s just a bang average mid table club with some bang average players, some not even that. The club used to be known as the theatre of dreams but now it’s clearly the theatre of dreamers.
Colin Owen

The Man Utd players should be ashamed
I can also see why the brains trust had to go for Carrick in the summer. Champions league qualification, best record in the league etc etc. If they had changed managers at that point and then this had happened, the outcry and clamour would have been twice as bad as it is today.

As it now stands, in the most predictable of situations, the team is now in freefall.

Would a different manager have prevented it? I doubt it. They may have held on a little longer, but the end would have been the same. Whose fault is it? Everyone’s really. From the leeches up top, to the inept board, to the inexperienced (but committed) manager, to the entitled and deluded players. It’s the whole club that is rotten, and it’s a damn shame.

The players though… you guys are so lucky to be where you are. Playing football in the premier league and champions league for a club which has such a rich history. Earning retirement money every couple of months. Whatever the scale of the shitshow above you, ultimately you are the ones stepping out on the field. You should be ashamed of yourselves after that Como performance.
Akillies

Man Utd issues are not about the manager
First-time contributor to F365, 50-year-old Man Utd fan, so yes, I’ve had plenty of time to watch this slow-motion bin fire develop.

Changing the manager at Old Trafford and expecting some glorious, long-term improvement is like giving your car a shiny new paint job when the arse has fallen out of the engine. The managers have never really been the problem. Not even Moyes.

This is what happens when you’re bought by people who have always viewed the club as a personal cash machine with a football team inconveniently attached. Compare United’s gradual, entirely predictable decline with that of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers since 1995 if you want a parallel.

Successful clubs have alignment in thought and ambition from the owners to the board, to the manager, to the players. At United, we’ve boldly decided to try the opposite: corporate greed, competing agendas, muddled thinking and the strategic coherence of a pub argument about Brexit at closing time.

How can the brains trust of Glazer, Wilcox, Berrada and Ratcliffe possibly think it is acceptable to start a season with one unfit striker, a midfield you could saunter through in flip-flops and a defence with more sick notes than a student facing an 8am lecture?

They’re not fit to sit in the boardroom, never mind run one of the biggest clubs in the world. I’d even prefer City’s owners over ours.

It’s. Still. Not. The. Manager.
Ben Cause

The Man Utd manager pattern
This seems to have been the Manchester United Manager pattern ever since they let Sir Alex retire to green pastures.

1) Get a marquee manager, a big name, proper football man who will take no sh*t. A discplinarian. They will be able to fill the big shoes left behind and whip these boys into shape

2) See early green shoots, United fans get excited

3) The limited nature of the players they signed, along with their crumbling facilities, cause the cracks to show (literally and metaphorically)

4) United leadership think it’s still 2002, not 2026 and demand more, demand excellence, demand lots of things that United haven’t had in over a decade

5) They amplify the fan discontent, and the leadership idiocy amplifies the fan discontent

6) They agree the manager needs to go, so they sack the manager after some poor results

7) A local boy favourite, a son of Fergie is given the reigns in the interim, a role with little pressure.

8) All hail the old school boy, he gets them running, he may not be a tactical genius, but the team turn a corner

9) The results paper over the cracks and United fans feel hope again, and some start saying give him the job full time

10) A late run, and the contract is given. However some people have been doubtful, but you know what, new season, he’ll have the whole summer to get them working to his plan, we’ll get new signings.

11) Season starts and none of the actual problems, the club, the leadership, the poor players, the poor training have been resolved

12) Season starts with a bang, everyone is hungry, and United suffer a string of poor results

13) Old boy who was made manager was not good enough, we need a big name manager to take us back to our (long forgotten heights)

14) Pressure builds and old boy is sacked, and they look to a no nonsense big name to pull everyone in line

15) See point 1

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
John (Notice how Arsene’s sons did ok in management, Sir Alex, not so much) Matrix AFC

Defending has ruined football
I’ll tell you very quickly and simply why football in general – and especially the Prem is worse than it was and will continue to get worse. From about Jose’s first Chelsea onwards, defending got better, and better and better – coached to the enth degree at all levels – ad nauseum until eventually the game grinds to a halt. I guess thats a metaphor for life itself isnt it?

Fergie’s great sides of the 90’s into the 2000’s had great defenders – but they didnt set up in such a way that there wasnt a single sq cm of grass not accounted for. They all played to try to score goals. Unless we tweak the rules (Wenger’s offside rule for instance is as good an option) – or change the overall mentality of players and coaches and get back to the whole point of football (attempting to score goals being the main objective over not letting them in) – then the game is (already is) heading to a place I dont wish it to. Like the world in 2026. Which I’m trying to distract myself from.
Shunt LFC

The Champions League and its issues
I see Mr Tickner is once again bemoaning the lack of jeopardy in the new Champions League format as if the previous one brought shock after shock… Even if you finished third you could have a little go in the Europa League. Anyway, I’ll leave tha for others to mail in about or discuss BTL.

I will confess to having one issue with the new Champions League. It’s sort of format related but sort of not and a tad tin hat conspiratorial in nature, but bear with me…

We’re in year three of this format. Take a look at the last round of fixtures for each year (I’m not going to list them), and bear in mind that every team in Pot 1 plays two teams in Pot 1 and two teams in Pot 2. It seems hard to believe that the old fixture computer isn’t being fed a little bit of extra info along the lines of ‘don’t let the big boys play each other in match 8′.

Have a look at this years’ first… I’d say that currently Bayern v Betis looks like the tastiest fixture. Note how many of the ‘big’ teams are at home too. Sheer coincidence that City v PSG/PSG v Barca/Bayern v Arsenal/Arsenal v Real and all the other heavyweight matches aren’t in week 8?

Take a look at the previous years too if you so desire, or just trust me. I see you UEFA. I see you!
Gary AVFC, Oxford (Might need a walk)

…Dave Tickner’s article on the Champions League feels long on complaint and short on solutions. UEFA has long sought to minimise jeopardy and maximise revenue for the biggest clubs, hence the original transformation from the European Cup to the Champions League. Under the old format, to give a few examples, Real Madrid qualified from the group stages every year (28 out of 28); Bayern Munich 26 out of 27 times’ Barcelona 23 out of 28; Chelsea 18 out of 19; Man City 11 from 13; Juventus 19 out of 23; AC Milan 16 out of 20; and PSG 14 out of 16 and Arsenal 18 out of 20.

The Champions League has, bit by bit, become the European Super League in all but name, systematically destroying the competitiveness of domestic leagues in the process as success. Since 2010-11, there have been sixteen seasons and Bayern have won the German league 13 times, PSG have won the French league 12 times, and between them Barcelona and Real Madrid have won La Liga 14 times. Bayern, Real and Barca have always been dominant in their respective leagues, of course, but that has only strengthened and accelerated since the dawn of the CL and especially in the last two decades.

This domestic dominance, rather than any inherent problem with the new CL format, has been a structural advantage that PSG have had for 15 years but which they have only recently been able to take advantage of thanks to a fantastic coach and a change in recruitment policy to give them a superb squad rather than a collection of some superstar names tacked onto a much weaker squad.

Where in top class football these days do we see the real jeopardy Tickner craves? Not in domestic football in Spain, Germany or France: a bit more in England and Italy (since the decline of Juve). There was precious little of it in the old CL format. In the last matchday of the old system in 2023-24, 10 out of 16 games were dead rubbers (meaning that neither side could change whether they qualified) including both games in no fewer than four of the eight groups.

Jeopardy only real comes in knockout football and we won’t ever go back to that on a European stage. Personally, I rather enjoy more games and the mini stories that emerge through the group phase.

A proper tweak, however, would be to ditch the play off round entirely and just make the top 16 qualify, then 1 plays 16 etc. 2 plays 15 etc. with no country protection. Anyway, stop moaning Dave or, if you are going to moan, think of some proper solutions – the current CL is the product of 35 years of evolution to get to this point, not an aberration of UEFA in the last two seasons.
Andrew (LFC, Cambridge)

What is Yamal’s case for the Ballon d’Or?
Even though the voting closed a while ago, another Kane masterclass and the upcoming result on Monday has got people talking about the Ballon D’Or again.

To me it is obvious Kane should win it – it’s the second best scoring season in modern football behind only Messi’s best year, he’s one game behind Ronaldo’s all time record for most consecutive games with a goal in the CL, and he scored 12 goals for England over the period as well. But the important thing to come out of me looking over the numbers again is not that Kane should win, but that Yamal doesn’t have a case at all.

Let’s just look at the numbers. In the 25/26 season he got 16 league goals, 6 in the champions league and 2 others for a total of 24. Kane’s numbers are 36, 14 and 11 for a total of 61, over 2.5 times as many.

But Yamal won the World Cup is the only argument I’ve heard against this, and let’s be clear, Spain won the World Cup and Yamal wasn’t a particularly big part of the reason why. Did you know he scored 1 goal for Spain in the entire 25/26 season? You know the one goal against Saudi Arabia in a 4-0 win? If we’re going to give it to a Spaniard because they won the World Cup we may as well give it to Pedro Porro who doubled that tally and played far better.

I don’t really understand the case for Mbappe either but at least he was World Cup top scorer and had a dominant individual season for Madrid (let’s ignore the fact that his teams win less when he’s in them).

If Yamal wins it’s pure marketing BS and nothing else.
Phil, London