We’re bringing the Chippy back.
You’re welcome, or sorry, whichever works best for you.
It’s something that helped us get through the COVID pandemic back in the day, speculating on Manchester United goings-on and offering our best attempt at humor along the way. It could be a weekly thing, it could disappear after one go around. Either way, it’ll be about Manchester United mostly with a bit of the rest of the football world sprinkled in.
There was plenty to discuss from this week, and we’ll start with
the biggest news first…
New “Head Coach”
Manchester United doesn’t do managers anymore.
The Americanization of the Premier League first began with the NFL-inspired television money model in the early 1990s, continued with the addition of American bloggers writing about clubs on SB Nation, and now is nearly complete with the integration of team leadership structures.
In reality, this could mean very little. There were reports from The Mail suggesting that the club’s director of football, Jason Wilcox, preferred a move for former Newcastle manager Eddie Howe, while director of recruitment, Christopher Vivell, pushed for Julian Nagelsmann. Both directors were overruled by the majority owners, the Glazers, who preferred Mauricio Pochettino.
That might seem like a wild sequence that signals a dramatic state of incoherent management of the club’s future, but over in the USA that’s just another offseason in an NFL team’s front office.
How will it play out? We can only watch and see for ourselves.
New Annual Tradition: Bruno Fernandes Contract Talks
While the new head coach is sorted, the franchise is still sorting out its star quarterback’s future as he continues getting on in age.
Bruno Fernandes showed his best last season by setting a new Premier League record for assists in a season, and won the PFA Player of the Year award for his role in pulling United back into the UEFA Champions League places.
Bruno showed his worst this season with several poor performances and a post-match outburst that led to his being dropped from the starting XI.
Form is temporary and whatnot, but Bruno’s best years aren’t exactly ahead of him. His fit in Pochettino’s setup will need some sorting out, and the club need to get younger at every position, but there’s no disputing that he’s been central to the club’s successes since his arrival. There has often been a dramatic overreliance on both his availability and form to carry the team to results in the last few years.
At present, Bruno’s contract expires in the summer, but the club want to keep him and hold a +1 year extension to keep him until 2028 if so desired.
Becks into American Soccer HOF
Manchester United legend David Beckham was announced as part of the newest class of inductees to join the National Soccer Hall of Fame in the United States.
Becks has some fitting company in the class, including World Cup winners Julie Ertz and Megan Rapinoe. The latter is also a Ballon D’or winner in the women’s game.
The class also includes some telling company about the state of the men’s game, with Jozy Altidore joining three of the best to ever do it as an inductee.
Beckham, as some of you may already know, is not an American and represented England in the international game. He did, however, help kickstart a modern push to put Major League Soccer into the American cultural lexicon with the LA Galaxy. He did decent work in that regard, and won some silverware along the way to wind down his storied career.
