One candidate ruled out as tabloid obsession over Manchester United captaincy continues

Ralf Rangnick may as well stop talking as words are being put in his mouth regardless. The Manchester United captaincy obsession continues.

O Captain! My Captain!

The tabloid obsession with which Manchester United player should be entrusted to wear a piece of cloth around their arm continues apace in The Sun, who tasked Ken Lawrence to run the rule over any candidates on show against Chelsea.

He was not impressed.

‘HARRY MAGUIRE should hardly be that worried that he will lose the Manchester United captaincy once Erik Ten Hag shows up,’ he writes.

‘Interim manager Ralf Rangnick declared that a vote should be held amongst the players for who will wear the famous arm band next season.’

Nope. Rangnick specifically said “it doesn’t make sense” to discuss the captaincy situation “because we all don’t know what kind of players will be here, what the group will look like”.

He added: “I strongly believe that the captain should be elected by the team because he’s called the team manager and we always did that. The player with the highest amount of votes was the team captain at the end. That’s how I did it. I know that not a lot of head coaches do it that way. That’s what I would do if I was still the manager next season but in the end I’m not, so this is something that Erik will have to decide.”

At no stage did he ‘declare that a vote should be held’.

‘And that means Maguire, missing against Chelsea and who will also be out with knee trouble for the remaining three games of United’s miserable campaign, won’t get the German’s recommendation to carry on.’

Because no-one will ‘get the German’s recommendation to carry on’. Because “it doesn’t make sense” to even talk about it currently.

Lawrence proceeds to run down Bruno Fernandes,