This column was going to be about Birmingham City’s prodigious 16-year-old Jude Bellingham. The calls were made, the research done. I first wrote about him 18 months ago and knew every big club in Europe, including Manchester United, had been watching him.

Or about Javier Hernández, the little pea who returned across the Atlantic this week after a fruitful decade in Europe. How Manchester United could do with scouting and signing someone like the Mexican right now. Back in 2010, he was scouted by word of mouth rather than an extensive database. A United scout had a tip off from a Mexican studying at a university in Liverpool that Hernández was a rising forward scoring goals for club and country. Mike Phelan, now assistant manager, was sent on a secret spying mission to Guadalajara. Sporting a moustache himself, he passed for a Mexican as he struggled to find a taxi to get to the stadium and then one back. But the player was signed and he was a success... until he, like many others, started to unravel in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era.

Alternatively, this column was going to be about possible solutions to United’s striking problem since Marcus Rashford picked up an injury, perhaps looking at players who could come in during this transfer window, even on loan, and make a difference to an injury hit, fatigued squad.

© Alex Livesey

And then Manchester United lost to a Burnley team who hadn’t scored a goal in the first half for eleven games. They did at Old Trafford, though, and it felt anything like a one-off. Not usually at home, granted, but we've seen this horror show too many times this season. Last January, Burnley ended Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s eight game winning run and they’ve brought United to a new low under the Norwegian with Wednesday’s 2-0 win.

Woeful is the only word to describe United’s performance and it is in the context of an awful start to 2020. Wednesday was the fifth defeat in a month since the defeat by Watford, who’d won one in 17. It’s not good enough; it’s not even close to sufficing.

Football is a results business with performances bearing a strong correlation to wages. United have the second highest wage bill in the world. The unpopular Glazers have sanctioned spending in the hundreds of millions and much has been squandered as United remain the fifth or sixth best team in England. This is all happening on their watch, that’s why they’re getting criticism. They’ve overseen the decline on the pitch.

The fans have finally turned at games and it’s serious when that happens. Old Trafford’s match-goers are patient and supportive. David Moyes, José Mourinho and Louis van Gaal would attest to that. They’re anything but hysterical, but they’ve snapped in the last few weeks. That’s why you’re hearing chants against the Glazers and Ed Woodward, though there are those in support for the manager. Solskjaer has a very tough job, but he should take some of the blame for the poor form too, which he accepts.

© Alex Livesey

It’s hard on some of the players. Talented youngsters such as Brandon Williams and Mason Greenwood have been bright points in a rocky season and there are a couple of exceptional younger players who United have spent big on. These youngsters need to be slowly introduced amid established pros – ideally top-class internationals, which is what happened with the Class of ’92.

That young side at Anfield showed plenty of fight, but did they really have a chance without Scott McTominay, who’d played so well against Liverpool, without Rashford, who’d scored against Liverpool in October, and without Paul Pogba, still the most talented player at the club? A defeat against the best team in the world isn’t easy to stomach if that team is Liverpool, but United were still in the game until the end and it would have been a coup if they had scraped a draw.

A home defeat to Burnley is very different. Perhaps, in isolation, it could be stomached, but United have lost more games than they’ve won in the last month.

The fragile confidence of the players that was picked off the floor pre-season remains as brittle as ever. The pressure and scrutiny of being a United player isn’t easy, but players have to be big enough for the challenge. And weren’t they supposed to be fitter, faster and more productive this season playing in a more harmonious environment after the departure of Mourinho?

Fans are desperate in part because they’re so helpless. With your football team you can control almost nothing. Fans can influence the atmosphere, but they can’t stop the team conceding yet another goal from a set piece by singing louder. They don’t stop Daniel James looking pale and knackered or the team continuing to miss chances from close range.

© Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA

How do the team get out of this? Fans would have no issue at all if the Glazers sold up and disappeared to count their profit after nearly 15 years in charge, but first they’d need to shift to being amenable to a sale. And who would buy?

There would be no requests for a statue of Ed Woodward outside Old Trafford either if he were to depart, but they have no intention of going anyway and are adamant that a successful United on the pitch is better for everyone – including them. The Glazers arrived amid sustained protest, survived subsequent protests and still survive protests.

A sporting director is proffered as one solution. I’ve yet to see a football manager in England welcome the idea of an outsider coming in and taking power away from his decisions.

Signing new players? There’s no doubt that this current team needs strengthening. United still want Bruno Fernandes; Sporting Lisbon still want too much for him. The Burnley defeat has played into the latter’s hands, ramping up the pressure on United. Sporting’s president is himself under pressure after a poor start and needs to deliver big numbers if they sell their star player. But what could one player, new to English football, achieve?

United don’t look good enough for a top-four place, just as they didn’t last season. It’s the inconsistency of others that means a top-four finish is even being mentioned as a possibility. Maybe if every player was fit, but since when does any football club have that luxury?

Things can turn quickly in football, as we've seen several times this season for United, but Wednesday felt like a threshold was crossed for the match-going support, as the lack of options on the home bench was painfully exposed and Burnley exploited United’s much-publicised weakness at set pieces and elsewhere with ease.

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