It's time for Manchester United to start thinking about the implications of failing to make next season's Champions League. On the negative side, everyone will have to take a pay cut. But on the bright side, maybe Cristiano Ronaldo will decide it's time to storm off in disgust.
Ronaldo missed United's 4-1 defeat at Manchester City with a hip flexor problem – news which drew a curiously sceptical comment from Roy Keane in the Sky studio before the game: "We talk about Ronaldo being a machine, very rarely injured, then every now and again he comes out with "hip flexor" – it doesn't add up to me."
What doesn’t add up about a 37-year-old having a hip problem? After all, when Keane was Ronaldo’s age, his own bad hip had already forced him into retirement.
It sounded as though Keane was aware of the speculation that Ronaldo's hip problem had only flared up after he had learned that Ralf Rangnick intended to drop him from the starting team against Manchester City.
It’s obvious why Rangnick might have felt this was not a game for Ronaldo. United had put together a fantastic recent record away to City by playing humble underdog football – working hard off the ball and breaking explosively when they won possession.
Whatever goes on behind the scenes is completely irrelevant to me . . . you can get too distracted by other things that are going on at the football club
Remember that Ronaldo has had no impact in other games when United have come up against superior opposition. He barely got a kick in the home defeats against Liverpool and City, and Michael Carrick started him on the bench for the 1-1 draw against Chelsea.
Afterwards Rangnick confirmed he had seen this as a game that would be decided by the sort of off-the-ball running of which we know Ronaldo is no longer capable: “It was clear that if we want to get anything out of this game we have to do a lot of running, a lot of sprinting, we have to be in hunting mode.”
For 45 minutes, Rangnick’s selection was able to keep it more or less respectable.
But the final outcome was a 4-1 defeat, and it’s never easy for a coach to defend the decisions that precede such a result. In the end Rangnick would have been grateful that Ronaldo was technically unavailable due to injury, as it spared him some of the political fallout that always comes with dropping him, even if he’s scored only once in his last 10 games.
Scott McTominay’s analysis was that United’s problem was they kept giving the ball away too easily in the second half, a favour their opponents stubbornly refused to return. City would keep the ball for 20 or 25 passes and by the time United won it back they were so disoriented that they promptly gave it away again; before long disorientation collapsed into demoralisation.
McTominay added defiantly: “Whatever goes on behind the scenes is completely irrelevant to me . . . you can get too distracted by other things that are going on at the football club.”
The remark was interesting as he had not been asked anything about behind-the-scenes drama.
Rapid decline
You don't need to read between the lines of a Scott McTominay interview to know there are problems at United. Take the recent headlines about the supposed rivalry between Harry Maguire and Ronaldo for the United captaincy.
Until very recently it was hard to imagine how rivalry could ever arise between the goalscoring galactico genius and the overpromoted centre half from Sheffield. And yet this season they both find themselves fighting desperate rearguard actions: Ronaldo to avoid becoming a has-been, Maguire to avoid becoming a never-was. For both of them, the armband represents the same thing – a virtual guarantee of first-team selection at a time when their careers are in rapid decline.
As for Maguire, the mystery now is what City ever saw in him, let alone why United decided to make him the most expensive defender in the world
Another thing Maguire and Ronaldo have in common is that they both had the opportunity to join Manchester City, but chose United instead. Ronaldo must bitterly regret his decision.
In City’s team, he might not have seemed so irrelevant. City’s style is to control possession, play in the opponents’ half, get the team into position and make the ball do the work: they would have enabled Ronaldo to focus completely on what he is still good at – finding space with small movements around the box. United’s inability to control games means their matches often turn into the sort of big-pitch, end-to-end tussles in which Ronaldo is a non-factor.
As for Maguire, the mystery now is what City ever saw in him, let alone why United decided to make him the most expensive defender in the world. His occasional clumsiness and his slowness on the turn were well-known before he left Leicester, and it's hard to see how United can ever be the sort of team that plays in the opponents' half with Maguire as their leader in defence.
Before this season, however, he had at least a reputation for doing the front-facing stuff well: heading away crosses, getting in the way of shots, etc.
Perhaps it is the pressure of feeling he is duelling for the captaincy with one of the greatest figures in the history of the game, but even these basic qualities have now deserted him.
Memorable howler
Against City, Maguire gave away the winning goal with a memorable howler. Rather than tap the ball out for a corner kick which would have allowed United to regroup, he threw a dummy to let David de Gea’s parry roll between his legs and back out into the danger zone around United’s goal.
To nobody’s surprise except possibly Maguire’s, this area turned out to be packed with Manchester City players who quickly lashed the ball back into United’s net for 2-1, making it two instances in one half of the ball going through Maguire’s legs en route to a City goal.
As though overcompensating for this, Maguire adopted a vaguely knock-kneed stance when facing up to Riyad Mahrez’s shot from the edge of the box, and the ball deflected into the corner off the outside of his knee for 3-1.
City proceeded to keep the ball for the next 15 minutes, the home fans exulting as United trudged about despondently. They have never seemed further behind City than they do now.
The route back to the top is complicated, but on the captaincy question at least, the answer is simple. Next season the captain should be neither Maguire nor Ronaldo, but instead someone whom you can at least imagine being part of a top-level team.
