AT various times this season you were warned, warned by everyone who puts pen to paper in the name of Manchester United, that it would get worse before it gets better. Yesterday was the beginning of the end of the “getting worse” part. The first game under the stewardship of Ryan Giggs wasn’t the total transformation and complete rebirth that many had hoped for, that was too much to ask, but it showed enough.
There was enough made of the implied change in spirit, mood and dare I say it, direction, that the actual change was always going to be slower. Donkey David banished, the Class of ’92 come back to steer the ship and under the favourite son Ryan Giggs, the direction is always going to be seen as forward even if it isnt.
There’s a pic of Evra smiling, oh and David and he’s smiling too, there’s a picture of Robin Van Persie and, well betya by golly wow he’s smiling. Yes, we get it, everyone is happy, taking special note of the ones that gave clues to the unrest… smiles all round. Message understood. Everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet now, everyone is UNITED y’know, just in case the subtlety is lost.
For most of the season it’s looked so utterly rudderless out there and there and for all the previous manager may have had an idea what to do it never really seemed that way, so something else, anything else would do.
Ryan and his team are in a win win situation. There are only a handful of games to play, it’s not possible to achieve much more than victories in all of them; even in that case the points at the end would still be the lowest since Noah were a lad or whenever the stats say, all sources say he isn’t being considered for the job full time so Ryan Giggs and every member of his staff can walk away with their status undiminished. Getting that job is “the proudest moment” and it’s one that will cost Giggs nothing and benefit him greatly.
It’s a tabula rasa, a blank slate, the questions are being asked and plans are being made, somewhere deep inside Old Trafford somebody in a suit is talking to someone in a foreign country about things we don’t know yet, polishing a compass that he holds in his sleeve… all of that will come in its own time.
For now, the change was swift and merciless, and on the face of it, it has worked, the closer inspection is for someone else’s eye. GTS
Given to Score 