So they sold Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's best goalscorer to Inter Milan. They loaned his best defender to Roma. His best midfielder is available for weddings and birthday parties but very rarely for football matches.

They loaned Alexis Sanchez without replacing him, too, although whether anybody really noticed he had gone is a moot point. Solskjaer's best forward is out injured for most of the rest of the season, too.

When Solskjaer tries to sign someone in the transfer window, his executive vice-chairman, Ed Woodward, suddenly decides he doesn't want to be Father Christmas any more and says he won't pay.

Pressure is mounting on Ole Gunnar Solskjaer but his task has been made harder by the club

Ed Woodward (pictured with Avram Glazer, right) has much to answer for on United's demise

To make things even better, one of those targets, Erling Braut Haaland, has scored five goals in 57 minutes in the Bundesliga for his new club, Borussia Dortmund. And yet Solskjaer is out of his depth, apparently. That's what I keep hearing.

Woodward, who is still the de facto director of football, started the clear-out at Old Trafford but forgot the rebuild. Manchester United have got more noodle sponsors than functioning midfielders but let's not allow that to get in the way of the idea that Solskjaer isn't up to the job.

United are fifth in the Premier League. That's a place higher than they were when Jose Mourinho left and scarpered back to London.

With the squad Solskjaer has, and the mess he was bequeathed by the conglomerate of incompetence that came before him, that he has managed to keep United in contention for the top four is an achievement, not a reason for scorn. In case you hadn't noticed, United have not been title contenders for a while.

It remains to be seen whether Woodward will bow to pressure and pull the trigger on Solskjaer

Woodward and the Glazer family can put their hands up for that. They have led United to a land a million miles away from the place where Liverpool and Manchester City reside.

The scrap for the best of the rest is their blasted landscape now and somehow Solskjaer has managed to keep them ahead of Arsenal and Spurs in the race of the one-eyed giants.

This may not be the most opportune time to defend Solskjaer. The eve of an away trip to League One strugglers Tranmere Rovers, which has got FA Cup giant-killing written all over it, very rarely is. And, sure, the home league defeat by Burnley last Wednesday, the lines of fans heading for the exits with 10 minutes to go and the swathes of empty seats was not a good look.

But to get rid of Solskjaer now would be the most damning symbol yet of quite how far the club has strayed from what made it great. To bow to hysterical demands to change the manager yet again, barely a year after he took over, would be to complete United's transition to the antithesis of what they once stood for.

Once, that was stability and trophies. Now they teeter on the brink of anarchy.

Everyone knows who is really to blame for the omnishambles at England's biggest club. It is the club's owners, the Glazers, and their placeman, Woodward. Many of United's match-going fans recognise this, which is why they still chanted their support for Solskjaer on Wednesday night and turned on the ownership instead.

Some of the chants went too far. The Bonfire Song, whose lyrics paint a picture of people being burned on a pyre, has become a staple of English football and United fans have, apparently, been adapting it to include Woodward and the Glazers for some time.

Fans are now turning against the United chief, with vile and disrespectful chants in the stands

Matters were not helped by United target Erling Haaland scoring for fun at Borussia Dortmund

Some years ago, England fans sang about putting Rio and Anton Ferdinand on the fire. It was not acceptable then and it is not acceptable now. That, however, should not be allowed to obscure the fact that Woodward and the Glazers bear the primary responsibility for what has happened to United. They bear the responsibility for the club's fall from grace.

They bear the responsibility for turning it into a cash-cow rather than a football club. They bear the responsibility for a series of botched managerial appointments. The buck stops with them. They bear the responsibility for the shockingly poor player recruitment that has left Solskjaer with the skeletal playing staff he has now.

The Glazers have taken somewhere in the region of £1billion in dividends out of United and the club is starting to reek of decay on and off the field.

Compare them with Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, Liverpool, Manchester City and Spurs and United look old and jaded and tired and starved of investment.

Woodward is not a malevolent man but he is the frontman for a regime that has ripped the heart out of a club that once ruled the English game.

He does not deserve to be abused and threatened but nor does he deserve to be in charge of a club like United. In the seven years since he took over from David Gill, he has been a spectacular failure. Woodward is clearly a very talented financial operator but he is blinded by celebrity and by reputation.

The mess at United is deep-rooted, and leaves the clubs miles away from Liverpool and City

This is a man who, it is reported, addressed Wayne Rooney as 'Wazza' when he texted him as if he wanted to be his friend. This is a man who hired Louis van Gaal and Mourinho when they were both past their sell-by dates. This is a man who blew United's chance of hiring Jurgen Klopp six years ago by trying to sell United to him as 'an adult version of Disneyland'.

This is a man who has sanctioned the purchases of has-beens with famous names and of journeymen who barely survive a season. This is a man who thought he could throw money at the situation and found out, perhaps for the first time in his life, that money can't buy everything. This is a man who has turned Manchester United from a football club into a trading floor.

Once, they were an elite club awash with tradition and class. Now, they're a pound shop Real Madrid, worlds behind Liverpool and City.

The conclusion is obvious: Woodward should be kept a long, long, long way away from football decisions. He should have been removed from his role a long time ago. The fact that he wasn't is more evidence the Glazers prize success off the field above success on it.

Woodward's only slim hope of redemption lies in continuing to back Solskjaer, as he has promised to do. And if the Glazers ask him to betray the manager and fire him, Woodward should do the right thing, take the blame himself and finally admit that if there is one person at Old Trafford who is out of his depth, it is him.

Pep's being selfish

Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola suggested last week that English football should scrap the Carabao Cup to ease fixture congestion and reduce workload.

Here's a different suggestion: instead of dispensing with a competition the revenue from which helps some of our lower league clubs to survive, how about dialling down the Premier League greed machine a notch?

If Guardiola's worried about fixture overload, maybe he should take a look at the four games in 10 days City played in Nanjing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Yokohama last July instead of driving another nail into the coffins of clubs on the brink of extinction already.

Perhaps Pep Guardiola should consider other areas before suggesting to axe the Carabao Cup

Morons must be able to take the abuse, too

Ben Stokes' colourful riposte to an abusive South Africa supporter at the Wanderers on Friday was not ideal — but nor was it the worst sin.

I'm sorry but I have one rule to cover morons who think the price of entry entitles them to scream insults at a player: if you're going to dish it out, you better be prepared to take it, too.