For a snapshot of why Manchester United is an almost unmanageable beast in 2025 take a look at the week that followed Ruben Amorim’s on-mic promise to Old Trafford supporters that “the good days are coming.”
Not yet they aren’t.
Within five days his team were booed off the pitch after losing 1-0 to ASEAN All-Stars at the start of a lucrative and exhausting post-season Asian tour, and Amorim - back under the media glare and back in ultra-candid mode – was suggesting the boos were “something that we need”.
“I am always guilty,” he said; a remarkably downbeat line to follow the rousing on-field promise less than a week previous, especially considering it was a meaningless game played almost entirely by reserve players.
The headlines and the hand-wringing suggested there is no such thing as a friendly, no such thing as a day off.
Amorim’s greatest obstacle is time. Time to embed his ideas, time to sign players, time to convince the doubters, and – most important of all – time to breathe between the stories that forever engulf the modern content machine that is Manchester United.
The point of his parting words on the final day were to reset the mood music ahead of a busy but long summer transfer window, and yet almost immediately he was bogged down again in the daily grind.
There is no time for resets, for anything other than building the aircraft while it’s in the sky.
Man Utd is a club that nobody will leave alone, case in point being this article. We’re only a couple of weeks into the summer and the main transfer window hasn’t even opened yet, but here we are, scrutinising his every move, pouring over details half-emerging.
But it is worth reflecting on Man Utd’s perpetual limbo, because the events of the last three weeks are instructive of the wider problem United have.
When there’s no space in the calendar for a cultural reset – when there is no escape for manager or players – then there’s no space either for perceptions of the club to change, which explains why Liam Delap chose Chelsea and why Bryan Mbeumo may choose to reunite with Thomas Frank at Tottenham.
United are stuck in a mire with no obvious way out, their transfer activity trapped by the absurdism of their last decade of failure.
Anyone good enough to play for a Champions League team would have better suitors than Man Utd, yet anyone up-and-coming who might grow to that level is too big a risk for a club of United’s reputation.
Put another way, they can’t compete with Liverpool for Milos Kerkez this summer, nor could they have afforded to gamble on Kerkez’s potential when Bournemouth took a punt two years ago.
That leaves United only able to sign players that others have suspiciously overlooked, hence moving early to sign Matheus Cunha, a player so inconsistent at Wolves it was presumed he won’t have the temperament for the elite level.
Cunha is the first of the paradox signings. Any player who wants to sign for Man Utd in their current guise is a red flag. They ought to swerve anybody willing to play for them.
Even if the odd player remains drawn to the shirt - even if Mbeumo joins next month - it is widely reported that Man Utd need to sell fringe players before they can strengthen further.
That makes Hugo Ekitike’s £100 million price tag too much and it makes signing a striker like Viktor Gyokeres pretty unlikely, even if they somehow fend off Chelsea and Arsenal respectively.
But even with money, the good days can’t come if there is no downtime, no period when engagement drops to a low murmur, no silent days to follow the catastrophe of 2024/25.
In this regard the fixture list really hasn’t helped. Here, too, we see the effects of the industry’s schadenfreude about Man Utd; that collective will to create the stories that keep them locked in perpetual crisis.
The fixtures are not computerised, if you didn’t already know.
There is an unwritten acknowledgement games are picked to maximise entertainment, hence why we get exactly one ‘Big Six’ clash on the opening weekend, several expected title clashes in early spring, and, if this isn’t too speculative, the occasional landmine laid down.
Man Utd play three of last year’s top four in their first five Premier League games. According to Opta’s calculations it is statistically the most difficult start in the division.
The bad news just keeps coming.
To turn things around, to revolutionise the club when the news cycle is relentless and unforgiving, is an almost impossible task.
We thought it demanded Amorim racing out of the blocks last autumn. That didn’t happen. It now demands a perfect summer window and a fast start to 2025/26.
The likelihood of that happening is already diminishing - and it isn’t even July.
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