MANCHESTER UNITED look like a team that has only recently been introduced to football.
No wonder really, since it seems like every week there are different people telling them how to do it.
It is said that Erik ten Hag's methods were so complicated that the players really did not know what he wanted them to do.
A new backroom team comes in to work with the former boss and more new ideas are loaded into the players.
Then Ten Hag goes and one of those coaches, Ruud van Nistelrooy, tries to get a tune out of an out-of-tune kit.
Now Ruben Amorim talks about the side as if he were talking about teaching a toddler to walk. All this fuss about “little details”.
Working through all this, we come to the analysis of a friend of mine during a Saturday evening debrief in a bar in south Manchester. . . “It just sucks.” Hard to argue.
By contrast, high-flying Nottingham Forest – 3-2 winners at Old Trafford – are looking for a shock European place.
Scorer Morgan Gibbs-White said: “The ambition is to keep progressing and you want to play at the highest level possible.
“All we can do is keep ticking boxes and hopefully that will happen.”
United's back three often passed the ball aimlessly between each other or simply kicked it back to Andre Onana under some pressure.
A risky move in itself, as it could easily end up in the net.
Of all the statistics, the most laughable were the four best passing combinations in the United team. They were all between the centre-backs!
God also knows what the new set-piece coach tells them.
It took less than two minutes for Forest to score from a corner following Nikola Milenkovic's header.
Rasmus Hojlund did level the score, but two minutes after half-time Gibbs-White shot on goal.
Now even he didn't expect to go in. But a slight deflection of the ball of no more than a foot had confused Onana.
He still looked stunned when Chris Wood sent a header over him before Bruno Fernandes got one back.
Yet hope is scarce at Old Trafford at the moment. This is their worst team since Sir Alex Ferguson retired.
As long as they don't have a decent striker, that won't change. Hojlund and Joshua Zirkzee have been terrible signings.
They are not good enough for United. They are not good enough for most teams in the Prem.
Hojlund is in Ten Hag, Zirkzee in the Ineos team, who thought he was good value for money at £36.5m.
If that was on Dan Ashworth, it's no wonder he walked.
It's not good and it doesn't look like it's going to get better anytime soon.
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