It takes a humble man to admit when they’re wrong and that’s not a description normally attributed to forthright broadcaster, Stan Collymore, however, the former professional admitted that he got his FA Cup prediction completely wrong whilst admitting Man United’s players did their club proud.
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Pep Guardiola’s Man City side were expected to wipe the floor with the disjointed Red Devils, but to the surprise of almost everyone, they were worthy winners at Wembley on Saturday.
“I genuinely couldn’t see how Man United could win that FA Cup final. It was fertile ground for Man City. Premier League Champions, no Champions League final to worry about, nice and relaxed and ready to go out and play a team that was fractured and not playing well,” Collymore admitted in his exclusive CaughtOffside column.
“I should’ve known better really. Whatever vintage it is, Man United (or Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Barcelona for that matter) manage to compete.
“I was genuinely shocked because I thought that they would play within within themselves. I didn’t expect them to come out and be like ‘okay, we’ll have a really good go at this’ because I haven’t seen enough big characters or enough personalities in the dressing room throughout the season to suggest that this would be the case. Secondly, obviously with it being a derby game, they showed up to that as well.
“I’m more than happy to hold my hand up and say that I got it completely wrong and I thought that they did the club proud.”
It was a real shot in the arm for manager, Erik ten Hag, too. The Dutchman has been saying for virtually the entire season that if his squad is fully fit, they can stand toe-to-toe with the best of them.
Ten Hag cannot lead this Man United team – Collymore
Whether that was him just talking his players up or not is a moot point, though he can bask in the afterglow of a job well done against, let’s not forget, arguably the best team in the world at present.
Even though ten Hag walked out of Wembley with his head held high, Collymore still doesn’t believe that he’s the right man to take the club forward.
“The performance was a massive positive for Erik ten Hag too so what does that mean for him? He was obviously very bullish and said ‘if United don’t want me then I’ll go and win trophies elsewhere,’ but that’s a bit rich really because he’s only been in Holland before United so he’s not exactly won the Champions League,” he added.
“I think that if you asked me who would do a better job with the youngsters and the seniors at Manchester United, Mauricio Pochettino or Erik ten Hag, I’d go for Pochettino every day of the week and twice on a Sunday.
“It’s great that ten Hag managed to get the players to go out and play for the shirts because that’s always important for Manchester United fans, but I think that there will be an element of dropping the ball if Sir Jim Ratcliffe, INEOS and Sir Dave Brailsford all of a sudden now thought that one performance meant ten Hag was the right man to lead the charge towards a title tilt.
“There has been nothing in Manchester United’s league season to suggest that Erik ten Hag had control of the dressing room in the way that he did for 90 minutes in a one-off final.”
If the powers that be at the club are going to go down a different path, then things need to be put into place soonest.
The European Championship is just around the corner, and by the time it finishes, it will almost be time for players to reconvene for pre-season.
United have to hit the ground running from the first game, and in order to do that, all facets surrounding the first team must be in place and locked down well before pre-season begins.
