An access-all-areas documentary was canned long before the cameras started rolling at Carrington, but the fact the idea ever reached Ruben Amorim illustrates how the Manchester United tragicomedy still has a few seasons left to run.
The Athletic reported this week that the Red Devils had been in ‘secret talks’ with Amazon over an ‘All Or Nothing’ series to document next season.
Who the f*** at Old Trafford received that initial proposal and thought it worthy of further consideration?
Yes, we know United are having to tighten their belts and they have made their need to maximise every available revenue stream abundantly clear. Opening their doors to Amazon would have seen them bank in excess of £10million – the largest payment made to any club as a subject of ‘All Or Nothing’.
That amounts to Matthijs De Ligt’s salary for a year, but it would not cover Mason Mount. So while £10million sounds like a lot of money to walk away from, even the secretary or PA who fielded the first enquiry should have recognised that it is a paltry sum to sell what remains of the club’s dignity.
Because given the current state of Manchester United, as likely as not, it could be the biggest sh*tshow Amazon have produced. And they made Beast Games.
You could certainly understand the appeal to Amazon. Barring a sudden and currently unexpected shift in how the team performs and the club conducts itself, Bezos could have Liverpool, City, Leeds fans paying off his wedding with the rush to subscribe among rivals’ supporters. Who of a non-United persuasion would not have paid £8.99 to be a retrospective fly-on-the-wall in recent seasons?
To United fans, though, the most concerning aspect of The Athletic’s story was that Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his INEOS crew were on board with the idea, as was chief executive Omar Berrada. We can understand the bean-counters’ enthusiasm when it was pitched to them, but Berrada has been credited with more nous in the past.
What face did they expect to show of what is now football’s pre-eminent Banter Club? Have they really been paying so little attention over the last 18 months?
If they have, they must recognise that all that is broken at Old Trafford cannot be fixed in one summer. Certainly not to the point where you would be happy to have everything out on display.
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But this is an organisation full of rake-treaders who presumed they could quite easily bank £150million-plus by selling four players who everyone knows they don’t want and can’t keep. Ratcliffe doesn’t come across as a rampant optimist, so perhaps he and his minions really are just naïve and incompetent.
The positive for Amorim is that at least his protest was heard and acted upon. Though the fact he was ever troubled with the proposal must trigger more alarms in the manager’s mind. At least they might drown out the internal screams of a man who often struggles to hide his befuddlement and annoyance at what’s going on around him. The perma-presence of a production crew might have tipped him over the edge.
More worryingly for the manager, the Amazon idea not being given the shortest of shrifts suggests that those above him expect this to be a season in which United show themselves in a positive light. But Amorim has already been denied the one thing that was expected to help him: a full pre-season with a squad he wants to work with.
On Monday, he welcomed one new signing to Carrington among a group he largely tolerates, while giving four players he can suffer no longer a few more weeks off in the vain hope they might find themselves a new club.
Still, at least when he is forced to open the door for most or all of his bomb squad, he won’t have to share the indignity with over 200 million Amazon Primers.