Manchester United are, in all likelihood, going to try to spend their way out of trouble again this summer.
The bloody minded Jose Mourinho seems completely uninterested in changing his style to suit the modern game and will instead adorn Europe with Manchester United’s hard-earned cash.
But the most frustrating thing about the status quo is that TFF believes the answer all lie within the current squad.
It’s pretty pointless to imagine how Fergie would line up this current vintage but we can’t help thinking that Luke Shaw, Eric Bailly and Anthony Martial would already be certain starters and providing the back bone of the next great Manchester United side.
Mourinho’s destruction of Shaw – still the best attacking left back in the league – seems cruel to say the least. And self-defeating to boot. Mourinho doesn’t appear to be the sort of manager to put an arm around his players. Instead he rules through tough love. It’s a questionable management style but, again, we shouldn’t expect much to change moving forward.
But the biggest shame about the current crop is that we haven’t seen what a front line of Sanchez, Martial and Rashford could do.
They have played a few minutes together but that’s not enough time for them to really gel.
And we believe that they could turn Manchester United into the best team in Europe if they were given a proper chance to play together.
TFF believes that there are a lot fo you who agree (let us know in the comments section). But the most painful part of this is that we are not likely to see it come to fruition.
Because Jose Mourinho will stubbornly stick with the very limited talents of the guile free Romelu Lukaku. Meanwhile no one would be surprised if Anthony Martial left the club this summer.
But when you look at the best clubs in Europe right now – Liverpool, Manchester City, Barcelona, Real Madrid – they largely have pacy and technically brilliant front threes. Lukaku would be very lucky to get on the bench in any of these squads.
So we are left to dream about what might happen if Rashford, Martial and Sanchez were able to form a really great understanding together – dovetailing in the way that Suarez, Messi and Coutinho or Mane, Firmino and Salah do at Barca and Liverpool.
TFF thinks that these three would bring the house down if they were allowed to play together. And we have a sense that Fergie would give them a proper try out as well.
But, under the increasingly sour tenure of Mourinho, this is highly unlikely to happen.