United Humiliated After Ange Mic Drop - The Fallout

Friday, May 16th 2025 will likely go down as an uneventful day of Premier League football for at least 90% of the viewing public. It was an evening of top-flight action that had taken a while to reorganise, with two teams in particular citing the prospect of a crucial European excursion as a strong reason for the powers that be to move their fixtures, allowing them as much time as possible to prepare.

We are, of course, alluding to traditional 'Top 6' stalwarts - Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.

This 'Friday Night Football' (itself written in inverted commas by yours truly as he continues to lament the diminishing value of the once epic Ford Super Sunday, italicised to prove a point) was billed as something altogether different. Chelsea and Aston Villa have, in their own inimitable way, had reasonable seasons, and still stand a chance of earning a spot at Europe's top table. All this without needing to draw inspiration from whatever god forsaken Europa League highlights package certain clubs deigned to produce before embarking on the most uninspiring 'date with destiny' 90 minutes any two professional football sides have ever produced. But we're running before we can walk. Chelsea and Villa have done OK. One or both could still make the Champions League. And both played like it against our aforementioned 'Premier League juggernauts'.

I'm doing an awful lot of inverting of commas. I would encourage you, the reader, to actually imagine I'm doing the old quotation marks gesture physically as you read. Throw in an eye roll for good measure. Let's be clear. They may be giants of the game. They may even still consider themselves amongst the traditional top tier Top 6.

But Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur...are not very good football teams. Note that word 'teams'. It will become important as I delineate later in this post.

Friday, 16th May. Chelsea 1-0 Manchester United. Aston Villa 2-0 Spurs. I watched both at varying intervals, prioritising United as they are, sadly, the team I have hung my hat on. For years it was a hat that hung higher than any other. Several hats are currently on the floor and, earlier this week, my best hat might has well have been in the toilet. There will be stretched metaphors in this post - strap in. I must, again, emphasise the insignificance of this evening of association football to most of the viewing public. Chelsea weren't bad, and scored a very decent goal. Villa were excellent against a weakened Spurs side.

And there we have our first tepid reference to the real significance of the evening. Beleaguered hipster tactician Ruben 'Chinos' Amorim went full strength, if United even possess such a thing in their current guise. Ange 'It's What We Do' Postecoglou might as well have asked one of the many visiting NFL sides to cobble together a midfield three for their visit to Birmingham. The approaches could not have been more chalk and cheese. And frankly, at the time, no one gave a monkeys.

Fast-forward to Wednesday 21st May. Bilbao. San Mames. A stadium home to a team in Athletic Bilbao who must have been sat comfortably in their chairs wondering how it all came to this. Like buying a Lamborghini, parking it in your drive way, and letting stray dogs play in it for 90 minutes. They should have been there, driving their own car, making their own memories. Two horrible football sides were there in their place. Football, eh?

The glitz. The glamour. Nothing else matters. So what if Spurs have lost 21 games this season. So what if Paul Jewell took Derby down as the worst Premier League side in history with a better points-per-game average than 'Chinos' Amorim. It's the Europa League. It's all or nothing. Bilbao or bust. This is what the season has been building towards.

Only it isn't, is it. United were 8 minutes away from losing to the 10 men of Lyon. Spurs crawled past a plucky Bodo/Glimt. This bitter United fan knows his audience, but he'll be bitter regardless. This is no showpiece event. It has a nice enough theme tune and the prize is reasonable, but the build-up would have you thinking this was greater than the Champions League, the World Cup, and even the epic upcoming 'Club World Cup' which I know we all 'can't wait for' (make the gesture, do the eye roll, do me proud).

Spurs scored a goal they likely won't remember the structure of. United conceded a goal they have conceded about 100 times in the last 3 years and 4 managers. Without wanting to sound reductive, a review of the game is beneath me. It was bad. Spurs won. I felt pretty good for Ange. And Manchester United, as we all know it, is likely dead.

And that is the point I will finish this post on. It is an extreme but pertinent one. Manchester United Football Club held a barbecue for its players yesterday. There is conjecture about who attended, but I'll speculate for fun. Tom Heaton cooked a bit. Jonny Evans made a salad. Hojlund couldn't find the venue, and Amad went for 5 minutes because he promised he'd Facetime Antony for a bit. The point I'm making, albeit badly, is that the jokes are easy to make now, and they're not even that funny any more.

Devoid of the £100m windfall an undeserved Champions League qualification would garner, and facing a deserved 17th place finish, Manchester United face a summer of overhaul, significant outgoings that had seemed previously implausible to sanction, and the distinct possibility of being unable to acquire even 2nd or 3rd choice transfer targets. New majority shareholder Sir Jim Ratcliffe has seen his wealth plummet as his business and sports enterprises falter. The share price (the existence of which demeans this once great club still further) has halved overnight, and one of the most promising young coaches in Europe is the latest to be exposed to the inherent toxicity that hangs over a rusting Carrington.

Perhaps the most damning commentary, however, is from a non-footballing perspective. The final whistle blown had barely sounded on a dreadful night for United in Bilbao before reports started to flood in about £100m transfer budgets, £150m bids for mercurial captain Bruno Fernandes, and dummy-out-of-pram bombshells from Alejandro Garnacho. The forlorn squad enjoyed an overnight stay in a lavish hotel, a chartered flight home, and (one imagines) an average of £150,000 will wend its way to their bank accounts as they prepare for the deadest of rubbers this Sunday against Aston Villa. In the aftermath of all of this, an unsettling feeling has hit me.

250 staff members were made redundant last year at the club, with any 200 planned for the end of this season. This happens at businesses, and I am not blind to that fact. United had the largest workforce in the league, and it needed addressing. But one point needs making. 14 professional football players played the way they played for 97 minutes in Bilbao on Wednesday, lost the game, and the undeniable truth is that people will now lose their jobs. The players won't. If certain players don't want to walk away from £300,000 a week, they don't have to. They can't be made to. The staff can. And they will be made to. This is not the behaviour of a bad football 'team', but the actions of a truly terribly run 'club'.

Spurs, for their part, are an excellently run football club, with stability and financial certainty at their core and in their future.

Manchester United, for so long a bad team, are now a terrible club. A club who haven't just let their fans down this season. But a club that has seen its soul ripped out and popped in an Uber with 450 of its long-serving staff. I'd be amazed if they stumped up for an Exec.

But don't worry...they're signing Liam Delap. I bet everyone's quaking in their Predators.