Manchester United’s bruising loss to Liverpool evident of a decade of decay

M anchester United: a correction. When we, the Premier League’s massed quick-reaction media hacks, wrote of a decisive culture shift, of the healing hands, blazing eyes of an ascetic bald Dutchman, of ripping out the rot at source, what we really meant was, steady as she goes, still a fair old bit of damp in there mate, you might want to give it a while.

Headlines such as Banana Bread, Bikram Yoga and Shostakovich: a 10,000-word Deep Dive Into Total Ten Hag; or Everything Is Fine It’s The 90s Again; or Casemiro: How He, Like, Totally Carried Modric For Years may have given the impression that we, the football media, are simply trying to graft some kind of meaning on to a constantly shifting set of parts. Or indeed that it is just more fun to see a story of progress and major chords than a period of indeterminate change.

But there are times when you just have to appreciate football’s arch sense of humour. From a narrative point of view Liverpool’s 7-0 evisceration of Manchester United is, above all, a very funny result. After Real Madrid, Barcelona, the Carabao Cup final, there were some certainties here. The new red dawn. The end of the age of Jürgen. OK. Have a 7-0 defeat. Not four or five. Seven. Nil. Now. You were saying?

The fallout has of course been focused largely on sudden gear-changes, and the whine of high-speed reverse. We hear now that Bruno Fernandes – United’s best player for the past few difficult years – is in fact the cause of that sick and failing culture. It seems now that arguing on the pitch is the final indignity and not, as it was at Wembley a week earlier, a sign of Nelsonian leadership.

There has been chatter about Erik ten Hag’s allegedly scrambled substitutions. And even some suggestion from