As emotion poured from Ange Postecoglou in a heart-warming sight on the San Mames turf, Manchester United’s dejected players, stood, to a man, as desolate figures.
There was no consoling of friends. Nobody offering a shoulder to cry on. Just underperforming, inept footballers alone with their thoughts.
Top of their concerns, other than a handful of more useful assets, is how they can go about convincing their employers to keep them for another season after limping to a 20th defeat of the campaign against Tottenham in their Bilbao or bust Europa League final. Or whether in fact they actually want to stay.
Some improved parts are on the way – Matheus Cunha is almost there, with Liam Delap reportedly still keen, even without European football on offer. But who else will want to join? A generation of talent is not old enough to remember United being anything like the force they were in the Sir Alex Ferguson epoch, and if there are other Premier League rivals in contention, transfer targets will almost certainly look elsewhere.
A disastrous season had the most fitting end. Manchester United are hurtling back in the opposite direction from where they are supposed to be heading. Unless Ruben Amorim is some kind of miracle-working footballing alchemist, United’s immediate future is bleak. More defeats. More redundancies. More misery.
What Ineos and Amorim must do, with fewer funds to work with, is concentrate on strengthening one area, the one most in need. After another blunt, unimaginative and listless showing in Bilbao, that point of concern is staring them straight in the face.
Cunha and Delap won’t be enough of a panacea to their striking ailments. United’s strike department needs gutting and starting all over again.
It is unfair to single out young strikers like Rasmus Hojlund. This is not what he signed up for, at 22, to be the might of Manchester United’s only central strike option. But here we are.
All too often in Bilbao, long balls into the Dane were swallowed up with glee by Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero. Time and again, Amad Diallo got to the byline, but failed to deliver the telling cross. Mason Mount deserved his big moment from the start, but barely got a touch – the story of his Old Trafford career to date.
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All three can be useful players when they want to be. But none, at this stage of their careers at least, are going to be enough to drag United back up towards the top of the table again.
Pre-match, the contrast in demeanour was stark. While Postecoglou cut an even more prickly figure than normal, biting back as suggestions he could be labelled a “clown” should Tottenham fail to end their nadir-filled season on a high, the beaming smile never left the faces of Amorim and Bruno Fernandes for long, as their quipped and joked their way through their media responsibilities.
On the pitch, both teams assumed their customary psychologically fragile, physically inept Premier League selves for a first half that was every inch 16th versus 17th. While the lack of fluidity and cohesion hardly made for gripping viewing, one thing remained to keep those within the stadium glued to every wayward pass straight out of play – the encounter reeked of desperation.
United’s performance was the perfect microcosm of their entire season. Fernandes, in a deeper role, simply could not be everywhere at once, as much as his team-mates wanted him to be, wide players got into dangerous positions only to get the final passes glaringly wrong, while sluggish defending, in key moments, ultimately became their undoing.
Goals, or lack thereof, have been a problem for far, far too long around M16. It is all well and good to want to stick to the “United way”, signing young players over more proven names. But look how that has turned out.
Enough is enough. Sir Jim Ratcliffe will be aware of such. Everything must go, for the right price, and start again. Especially in attacking areas.
Quite how they can attract the right talent, to a team hurtling in the opposite direction from where it needs to be, without a continental carrot to dangle in front of prospective charges’ faces, is another challenge altogether.
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