These matches shouldn't be complicated for any Premier League club, but Manchester United have a way of creating drama and crisis.
In the dug-out sat the head coach, peering at his Ipad as though trying to decode hieroglyphics as he tried to work out what to do about what was happening on the pitch. Four… four… two? What is thisvoodoo?
We live in difficult, fractured times, and perhaps we should be grateful to Manchester United for giving us the first truly shared experience of the 2025-26 season. Because if we can’t all come together to enjoy them getting knocked out of the EFL Cup by Grimsby Town, then what hope is there?
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There is something almost too on the nose about Grimsby Town knocking Manchester United out of the EFL Cup. First of all, there’s the opposition. Grimsby Town are one of the personifications of the ‘unglamorous lower division team’, the little club from League Two with the old-fashioned ground and a strong connection to an industry that that can be mined - well, fished, if we want to be literal about it - by commentators as though it’s an infinite resource.
And then there’s the way in which they did it, a microcosm of the now standard Manchester United cycle of despair, false hope, and then back to despair in the space of a couple of hours. First came the early shock, two first half goals, both of which were to some extent the fault of the £50 million goalkeeper.
Then came the rain, blowing in sheets off the North Sea, pathetic fallacy in action. But a Manchester United narrative isn’t a Manchester United narrative without a degree of false hope, so two late goals to peg the match back to 2-2 and usher in a penalty shootout, including a Harry Maguire equaliser. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
And then there was the shootout itself. 26 penalty kicks, of which three were missed, two of them by Manchester United players. For those who want to go deep, you may wish to reflect upon the two penalty misses for United coming from two of the fancy attacking options they brought into the club for more than £120 million this summer, Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo.
There was a point at which all three - with the third leg being Benjamin Sesko - of these summer splurges were on the pitch. Between them, those three players almost certainly cost - because no, I am not going off to Companies House for the rest of the day to work this out - more money than Grimsby Town have earned in revenue in their entire history.
Yet still, they couldn’t get over the line, and there does come a point at which you start to wonder whether this might even be some sort of work of performance art. This isn’t just a Premier League team. This isn’t just a Premier League team with Champions League aspirations. This is Manchester United. One of the biggest clubs on the planet. A well-known name wherever you go. Except, of course, what they’re well-known for now isn’t quite the same as what they were well-known for a few years ago.
And the atmosphere around Blundell Park was very much of the old school, right down to the pitch invasion at the end of the match. This ground is one of the finest in the entire League, atmospheric and intimidating in its own unique way. And it should absolutely not be forgotten that Grimsby were excellent, last night. They hurried and hassled. They pushed and prodded. They saw the whites of their opponents eyes and exploited their inherent wobbliness. They were the better team, and they thoroughly deserved their win. Grimsby had rotated their team for the match as well, so they may not even have been playing their first eleven.
It does seem a bit early to ask “what happens to Ruben Amorim now?”, but there’s no doubt that questions are being asked. The head coach remains utterly wedded to this 3-4-1-2 formation which simply isn’t working, and that tactical flexibility is starting to look like an albatross around his team’s collective neck.
Amorim is, if nothing else, enjoyably honest in his press conferences and interviews, and after the match he gave every impression that he might not even be at Old Trafford by the end of the first international transfer window, which comes the weekend after next. He wasn’t shy in chiding his team or apologising to supporters, either.
If we’re looking for reasons as to how this could possibly have happened, the answer may well rest in the heads of the Manchester United players. We can all agree that, with the best will in the world (and with the arguable exception of their goalkeeper), Manchester United have better footballers than Grimsby Town. Not “your entire revenue over more than a century versus three players” better, but that’s just the perversity of the transfer market in action.
So if they lose a match like this, is the answer that the culture and atmosphere around Manchester United is so toxic that it makes playing to the best of their abilities practically impossible? Is this a club now so addicted to the drama that they can’t help but set up this sort of scenario?
After all, nights like last night shouldn’t be an enormous hassle. Go to Cleethorpes, win match, beat chests and shout “UNITED ARE BACK”. Should be simple, shouldn’t it? So why aren't they making lighter work of it? Have they managed to persuade themselves that they’re a soap opera rather than a football club? What hope can there possibly be, following a result like this?
More hope than there surely is for Andre Onana’s ongoing career at Old Trafford, would be the obvious answer to that question. Onana was, of course, the goalkeeper that United paid £50 million for because he was supposed to be good with his feet, because that’s what the manager before this one wanted.
And as a subs-paying member of the goalkeeper’s union, I do probably have a greater degree of sympathy for Onana than most. Goalkeeping is most definitely a confidence position, and it would be absolutely understandable were he to go into every match looking at the constant, Pigpen out of Peanuts-esque dust cloud of noise that now seems perpetually suspended above him, thinking, “THIS ISN’T HELPING.”
But to hang all the blame entirely upon one player is to miss the point. Amorim himself pointed this out after the match, saying that, “This is a fourth division team, Andre should play just with his feet during this game.” And there’s a fundamental truth there. Grimsby had ten shots on goal, of which four were on target.
In a match such as this, that shouldn’t be happening in the first place. It’s absolutely reasonable to say that Onana chucked two in last night, but it’s equally reasonable to say that Manchester United shouldn’t be allowing this amount of pressure from lower division teams in the early rounds of a cup in the first place.
It’s been a long time since I wrote a piece with so many question marks in it, but that is appropriate, considering what happened at Blundell Park last night. Because ultimately, Manchester United are a giant question mark at the moment, just as they have been for more than a decade now.
They simply don’t make any sense. Nothing they try seems to work, and no amount of money that they spend on shiny new players makes any difference. They’ve just spent £200 million on three new forwards, but their central midfield consists of an increasingly pissed-off looking Bruno Fernandes - although he was on the bench unused last night - Casemiro, who remains in transformation towards becoming a human jelly baby.
Last night, it consisted of Manuel Ugarte, the answer to a question nobody has ever asked, and Kobbie Mainoo, who United apparently want to offload, presumably because he is a promising young player. Fernandes came on at half-time and stood around glowering. They had 70% of the possession, but failed to do any more with over 90 minutes than their League Two opponents could with 30.
The cast of characters surrounding this debacle has been so great that the biggest issue can only be institutional. The club was sold, except it wasn’t, and the new owner (who isn’t the owner) seems to be doing as bad a job as the previous owners (who are in fact still the owners). Coaches have brought in from progressive clubs with a culture of success and fallen flat on their faces.
And the mask of invincibility that they wore once upon a time lies in the gutter outside Blundell Park amid the slowly deflating inflatable fish, an increasingly distant memory. It’s not even the end of August yet, but Manchester United are floundering already. Burnley at home, next. What could possibly go wrong?
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