Chaos and acrimony are more familiar to Manchester United than you may think | Jonathan Wilson

10/07/2024 09:37 AM

Erik ten Hag is far from alone in finding Old Trafford degenerating into a swirl of confusion around him

On Sunday, Aston Villa, fifth in the table, perhaps drained after Wednesday's euphoric win over Bayern Munich, drew 0-0 against a lower mid-table side. Under normal circumstances that wouldn't get the pulses racing, particularly not on a day when Brighton came from 2-0 down to beat Tottenham and Chelsea against Nottingham Forest degenerated into a 15-man melee. But this is Manchester United we're talking about.

At some point, perhaps, the fascination will fade, but more than 11 years since Sir Alex Ferguson left, the soap opera remains as compelling as ever. How can the most successful team in English league history, the club with the highest average attendances, have got things so badly, so consistently, wrong? The basic law of football is that money rises, that the rich eventually prevail: for United to defy that basic truth for so long represents a remarkable commitment to mismanagement.

This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here.Jonathan will answer your questions in next week's edition: if you have a question for him, email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, or reply directly to this email, and he'll answer the best.