After a drab start to the season and a Jadon Sancho-less transfer window coupled with an underwhelming deadline day, the knives are very much out for Manchester United.
Every man and his computer literate dog is having their say on the situation at Old Trafford, with pretty much none of them complimentary.
Newspapers all around the world have been joining the party and assessing what’s going on, and today it is the turn of Algemeen Dagblad.
Their excuse for wading in is Donny van de Beek, the Dutch international who joined United from Ajax in a big-money move this summer.
He’s had an inauspicious start to life in Manchester, with some even questioning the move despite it being in its infancy.
AD now have their say, via journalist Geert Langendorff, and worry that a ‘disaster year’ is waiting for the midfielder at Manchester United this year.
He starts by covering the arrival of Edinson Cavani and claims the transfer is just a ‘gaudy screen’ to divert attention away from a summer transfer window that was ‘without a clear plan’.
And that should worry Van de Beek, because as far as he’s concerned, they are making an ‘amateurish impression’ at the moment, with the British press even likening them to the Titanic.
A fitting analogy according to Langendorff, who says the club have been ‘floating aimlessly for seven years’ as far as he’s concerned.
That brings him to the squad and the lack of a ‘signature’ signing this summer, Van de Beek aside of course.
That failure has once again left the squad short, and in need of a ‘refresh’, he says, and the Dutchman, Telles and Cavani alone ‘cannot turn the time around’.
Then there’s Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
His skill ‘also raise questions’, and Langendorff accuses him of lacking ‘the qualities’ to liven things up in the dressing room when required. Indeed, it’s won’t be long before he’s gone if things continue, according to him.
This, though, plays into Van de Beek’s hands. He’s got a chance to take advantage, stake his claim and a ‘huge opportunity’ lies ahead for him to make himself ‘indispensable’.
That, though, is nothing more than ‘little consolation’ given at Manchester United ‘nothing goes normally’ for a team who are ‘more of a commercial vehicle than a football club’.
