At one point during Manchester United’s humiliation at the hands of Tottenham on Sunday, the Sky Sports cameras cut to the posh seats in one of Old Trafford’s stands. There they were, all seated together: the lads. More specifically, the Ineos Brains Trust, all employed by minority shareholder and entitled billionaire Sir Big Jim Ratcliffe. Apparently they are the executive elite, the best of the best and tip of the spear when it comes to football club leadership, administration, finance, player recruitment, analytics and in one specific instance, seeming shifty and unconvincing when appearing before government select committees tasked with combating doping in British sport. Hunched in their seats, these expensively assembled high-performance hucksters and marginal gains gurus from the football equivalent of Top Gun appeared to be outdoing each other in their efforts to look more gravely concerned than the others by what they were seeing unfold on the pitch. Assorted suits with matching red ties sitting alongside each other but alone with their thoughts; with each almost certainly arriving at the conclusion that “this fiasco certainly isn’t any of my doing”. While it seems pretty obvious that it’s only a matter of time before these members of the Brailsford Hive Mind subject each other and their boss to endless PowerPoint presentations before arriving at the stunningly novel collective conclusion that it’s time to appoint a man whose sole foray into the world of club management ultimately resulted in the relegation of Middlesbrough from the Premier League, nobody seems to have mentioned it to the current head coach. Having masterminded a team effort so abject that the only player on the pitch to hint they might have the United manager’s back was the predictably profligate Tottenham winger Timo Werner, Erik ten Hag insisted that he and those in whose hands his future lies are – to borrow a phrase from the Tory party – all in this together. It was a sentiment that couldn’t have rung more hollow if it had emanated from the pie-hole of Boris Johnson and the beleaguered Dutchman’s insistence that “we need some time” sounded equally unconvincing given that the 3-0 defeat was right up there with the very worst performances he’s overseen in two-and-a-half years at the club. Even his regular go-to excuse of “injuries” sounded nonsensical, given that Luke Shaw is the only first-team staple currently sidelined, while Spurs were missing Son Heung-min, who would have put away at least one of the chances Werner missed on the frequent occasions he was put through on goal. Of course no United embarrassment is complete without an addendum from Gary Neville, who stepped up to the plate by describing his former team’s first-half performance as “disgusting”, before adding that professionalism of United’s players being questioned last week by a senior dressing-room figure such as Christian Eriksen should carry more weight than anything a humble pundit such as he might have to say. In other post-match fallout, Tottenham felt compelled to put out a club statement condemning “the abhorrent homophobic chanting from sections of our away support at Old Trafford”, stating that “it is simply unacceptable, hugely offensive and no way to show support for the team”. While largely supported, a quote-tweet from Proud Lilywhites, the official LGBTQ+ wing of Spurs fans did garner a significant number of replies from assorted members of the “woke nonsense” and “it’s only b@nter” brigades, who apparently remain too dimwitted to realise that using the insinuation somebody they don’t like is not straight as a pejorative might in some way be hugely insulting to vast numbers of their own tribe. | 
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José Mourinho, laptop manager. Photograph: X
