Manchester United are no longer merely a football club going through a results crisis or searching for a way back to the winners' podium. They have gradually turned into an open media subject and a vast content factory. Television programmes, podcast platforms and YouTube channels now compete to analyse every crisis, criticise every decision and dissect every detail inside the corridors of Old Trafford.
The club tries to recover its lost standing on the pitch, yet off it the crisis saga rolls on. A large cast of former legends have reinvented themselves as analysts, influencers and content creators, to the point where it's become hard to tell a genuine desire to save the club from a hunt for high viewing figures built on its repeated failures.
Michael Carrick, aged 45, has been handed another chance to lead the team. The club will keep the 45-year-old in post for Saturday's clash with Chelsea, a decision that may grant him some stability while also serving up fresh material for the camera crew of Amazon's "All or Nothing" series, who have unprecedented access to document what happens behind closed doors this season.
So United find themselves facing an unusual scene. Fans await the return of matches so the flood of analysis and criticism might pause for a while. Yet the content keeps coming at a rising pace, turning the struggles of one of the world's biggest clubs into a self-standing media industry.
Intense media coverage of United is nothing new. Global popularity and a history packed with trophies have long kept the club in the headlines. What has changed in recent years is the nature of that coverage, with former players now a key party in shaping the daily debate about the team.
Look at the current scene and it seems far harder to name the United legends who do not own media platforms through which they criticise the club than those who regularly take part in dissecting its crises, according to BBC Sport.
The criticism is no longer confined to traditional sports programmes or post-match commentary. It has spread to podcast platforms, YouTube channels and digital talk shows, giving their owners more room to voice their opinions and a direct line to the club's supporters.
Gary Neville, Wayne Rooney, Roy Keane, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Rio Ferdinand all stand out here. Each shares a great history with the club. Each has today become part of the media circus that follows every new stumble by the team.
Neville and Rooney: criticism that turns into popular content
Gary Neville helped reshape the way United are covered. He launched "The Overlap" platform in 2021, and it took off through video clips, talk shows and podcasts to become one of the most influential platforms in sports media.
Neville was not content with analysis on Sky Sports. He expanded his digital presence, tapping into the club's huge popularity and the growing public appetite for everything to do with its crises.
Last Sunday's heavy 3-0 defeat to Bournemouth opened a new chapter of criticism. Neville made sharp comments during his analysis of the match, then recorded an episode of his audio programme from the Old Trafford pitch, accusing a number of the team's players of lacking professionalism.
Some players, Neville said, do not live the way professionals should. They do not sleep at the right times, do not follow a proper diet and do not give United the attention it deserves throughout the day.
He added that he holds no regard for some of these players, arguing that their behaviour off the pitch does not match the size of the club and its historic value.
The wave of criticism did not stop with Neville. Rooney appeared on Tuesday on "Stick to Football", a YouTube channel dedicated to United news and run by Neville, demanding the players receive what he described as a "strong kick up the backside", a genuine shock to restore their enthusiasm and discipline.
In another episode of "The Overlap", Neville suggested some managers may sometimes need sacking for their own good, while Roy Keane, the former United captain, did not hesitate to call Carrick and members of his coaching staff very lucky to remain in their posts.
Neville's media reach does not stop at his own programme. Last summer he acquired a network of YouTube channels owned by Mark Goldbridge, one of the most prominent influencers specialising in United news, widening the scope of the club's digital coverage.
Goldbridge, whose real name is Brent Di Cesare, boasts a fan base of more than 3.7 million subscribers. He made his name through widely circulated clips of his angry reactions and sharp criticism while following the team's matches.
He now helps present "Stick to Football" alongside Rooney, the club's all-time top scorer, a pairing that captures just how far former stars and digital content creators now overlap.
The Class of 92 enter the fray, and Martinez responds in his own way
Neville, Rooney and Keane no longer hold the floor alone. A number of stars from the club's golden generation, who built their glory under Sir Alex Ferguson, have joined them.
Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt, two members of the famous Class of 92, present a podcast called "The Good, the Bad and the Football". They lean on their long experience to pick apart the team's performance and criticise players and managers.
Ahead of last season's Manchester derby, Carrick's first home match as the team's manager, the pair made controversial claims about Lisandro Martinez's ability to handle the physical strength of Norwegian striker Erling Haaland.
Butt said Haaland would be able to pick Martinez up and run with him. Scholes went even further, predicting the Norwegian would throw the Argentine into the net after scoring one of his goals.
What happened on the pitch was the complete opposite. United won 2-0 and Martinez delivered a standout display, handling Haaland in striking fashion.
Asked about Scholes' comments after the match, the Argentine defender made no secret of his displeasure. He stressed that he does not care what the former player says, and invited him to confront him directly if he had a problem.
Martinez said he had told Scholes he could say whatever he wanted, but if he wanted to send him any message he could come to his house or meet him anywhere else, insisting he was not worried about such criticism.
The episode lays bare the mark these platforms now leave. The former players have gone beyond technical analysis to hand out judgements and predictions that can spark rows between players and fans.
Carrick rejects the noise, and the fans alone deserve his attention
Amid all this media noise, Carrick has chosen to steer well clear of what is said about him and his team, refusing to let outside criticism bleed into his work inside the club.
During Thursday's press conference, the manager was asked how he deals with the noise coming from his former colleagues and old players. He explained that he does not follow those comments regularly.
Carrick said he contents himself with looking at the things he needs to know, and does not go looking for criticism or comments that offer no real benefit to him or the team.
His priority, the manager stressed, is to know the opinion of the fans, to care about the atmosphere inside the stadium and to appreciate the supporters who travel behind the team to back it.
He added that what matters to him is what the players produce on the pitch, and what the fans see of performance and results, insisting he gives little weight to the rest of the opinions.
Those words reflect an attempt to separate the technical work inside the club from the growing media pressures that now surround United, especially as every call on the line-up, the changes or the future of the coaching staff quickly becomes a subject for debate and analysis.
Do former players betray their club or defend its standards?
The controversy around former players' platforms runs deeper than the sharpness of their criticism. It raises a more complex question: do these legends do the club a genuine service by exposing its shortcomings, or do they pile more pressure on the players and turn every crisis into fresh media material?
In the past, a player might have bristled at a low rating in one of the newspapers after a bad match. The situation has changed greatly. He now has to deal with debates that can rumble on for entire days, packed with detailed analysis and criticism from former stars who know exactly what life inside Old Trafford is like.
Erik ten Hag, the former United manager, recently spoke about the difficulties his players faced in dealing with criticism from figures such as Neville and Ferdinand, arguing that former stars could offer the club greater support rather than simply dishing out blame.
Speaking to "The Athletic", Ten Hag explained that he had conducted good interviews with Neville and Ferdinand and was not personally bothered by their opinions, but he pointed out that some players are hit psychologically by the criticism they hear.
He added that these stars achieved great things with the club but could also offer more help to the players and the team, stressing that support should be mutual rather than confined to criticising mistakes.
Even so, the Dutch coach acknowledged that a person is often harsher in criticising the things he loves, a nod to the emotional bond that ties the club's legends to United.
It's a view Neville himself shares. He has admitted he may not always have struck the right balance during his criticism of the team over the past ten years.
During his appearance on Ferdinand's podcast last summer, Neville faced a question about whether he was excessively harsh with United compared with other clubs. He replied that the matter requires a degree of balance, pointing out that of course he does not want to see Manchester City come close to winning the Premier League title.
United matches, he admitted, are the hardest for him when he works as an analyst, and he may be harsher in his criticism when the team falls short.
Neville has a strong case to defend his corner. He spent 19 years at Old Trafford and won 18 major titles, giving him wide experience in judging the standards the club should maintain.
During the Bournemouth defeat, Neville pointed to a banner raised in the Stretford End during the first half, bearing a single word, "Standards". Those standards that made the club's history, he argued, had vanished a long time ago.
Nicky Butt, another academy graduate, believes the criticism from former players springs from their love of the club and their desire to see it recover its standing.
Current players, he said last January, should not treat every criticism as a personal attack, or complain about being under pressure when results go badly.
He stressed that he has supported United since he was six or seven years old, and that his talk about the crises is not meant to attack the players or stab them in the back, but to tell the truth about the bad situation the club is living through.
Fame is a double-edged sword, and crises generate views
Away from the row over the intentions of former players, one fact cannot be ignored. Negative content about United pulls in enormous public interest, not just from the club's fans but from supporters of rival clubs and neutral followers.
United remain one of the highest revenue-generating football clubs in the world, despite falling short of the Premier League title since 2013, a sign of their enduring commercial and popular strength even as the sporting results decline.
Much of that strength rests on major commercial sponsorship contracts and the global spread of the brand, alongside the high returns from matches at Old Trafford.
Last season, only Arsenal beat United in the Premier League for matchday revenue, confirming that interest in the club has not fallen as sharply as its achievements on the pitch.
Ed Woodward, the club's former executive vice-chairman, angered fans in 2018 when he said the team's performance on the pitch does not have a tangible effect on the club's ability to hit its commercial targets.
The comment drew heavy criticism, yet it exposed a philosophy of treating United as a global brand that transcends sporting results and competitions.
From there, the link between media crises and commercial fame grows more complex. The more the team stumbles, the more it is talked about, and the sharper the criticism, the more new programmes, extra episodes and clips appear, racking up wide viewing figures.
None of this means the club deliberately manufactures crises. But its global fame clearly makes everything that happens inside it capable of turning into a media product to be marketed and monetised.
"Hated, adored, never ignored": a slogan that sums up the scene
United have always treated their permanent place in the circle of interest as part of their global identity, captured by the phrase that appears regularly on fans' banners at Old Trafford: "Hated, adored, never ignored".
The matter did not stay in the stands. The club put the slogan on a clothing collection bearing the same phrase, a nod to its awareness of the value of a permanent media and popular presence.
What is happening now, then, can be read as an extension of United's nature as one of the most compelling clubs in world football, whether they are winning or sinking into crisis.
The difference is that the club once imposed its presence through titles, achievements and stars. Today it fills a huge space in the media scene because of its repeated failures and the controversy swirling around its management, its managers and its players.
Carrick keeps trying to steer the team back on course while the club's legends dissect every detail and criticise every stumble. The biggest question lingers: does this media industry help United recover its lost standards, or has it become part of the cycle of failure the club is living through?
The answer is not yet clear. What is certain is that United are no longer merely a team waiting for the next match to correct their course. They have become an open series whose episodes renew with every defeat, and whose details are sold through digital platforms, while their fans keep waiting for the long-absent ending: the club's return to the winners' podium rather than simply topping the news headlines.