Jesse Lingard and Marcus Rashford have been on holiday Miami this week. Even 4,000 miles away they’re still boiling piss
So this is how the great Manchester United empire crumbles to dust: Jesse Lingard’s silly Instagram stories. This is how Ancient Rome falls. This is how the legacy burns. Lingard beatboxing a song about beans. Lingard showing us his hotel rooms. Jesse Lingard continually addressing Marcus Rashford as “ey, Rash”.
The trophies are worthless now, melt them down. Topple the Sir Alex Ferguson statue. Sir Bobby Charlton’s, too. Hit them with a slipper. Erase Denis Law and George Best and Eric Cantona from the annals of history. It never happened. United never happened. It was all for nothing, this once gleaming bastion of a football club, this once grand theatre of dreams. What is it now? What it is? A shambles. A laughing stock. A joke.
Beans. Beans. Beans.
Rashford and Lingard.
Single handedly wiping the gloss off the once great Manchester United. https://t.co/GEAsrUjloe— • ᴅᴀᴠɪᴅ ᴇʟʟɪs • (@fullback03) June 20, 2019
https://twitter.com/RedDevilBible/status/1139881620629012484
The responses to the two videos, typically from middle-aged white men, are almost universally hilarious. The word disgrace pops up in every other reply. As does the idea that Fergie would have shipped them off to Ipswich Town within the week. The overarching theme, though, is that this, this, is what is wrong with the club. Two of their best academy graduates in recent years, full England internationals, now close friends, are pissing about on holiday. Sickening.
Yes, that’s it. That is wrong with Manchester United Football Club, that is the disease rotting away at it from the inside, it is nothing to do with the Glazers, nothing to do with Ed Woodward remaining in charge of the club’s transfer spending, nothing to do with their historic rivals, Manchester City and Liverpool, appointing two of the most intelligent managers in the game, each with a proven philosophy of attacking football and building through youth talent, a bit like the old United, whilst they appointed the infamous miserablists and defensively orientated coaches David Moyes, Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho in succession.
No, it’s nothing to do with that. It is definitely, definitely *checks notes* Jesse Lingard and Marcus Rashford having a laugh on holiday.
The good aspect of all this is that a) Jesse Lingard and Marcus Rashford know stuff like this boils piss, which is why they kept doing it, but more importantly, b) that it boils exactly the right kind of piss. It boils the piss of people whose piss is practically served boiled. The piss of people that just sits there, red-hot and molten in their bladder, pre-heated, ready to explode because of nonsense like ‘millennials’ and ‘veganism’ and ‘caring about the environment’.
On TalkSport, Ian Holloway ranted and raved about the footage (“He filmed this HIMSELF, he uploaded this, HIMSELF” – yes, that’s how social media works Ian, that is literally how Instagram works) before declaring that there was no going back for the player now, as though this really was the unforgivable sin people were making it out to be.
Holloway also admitted that he is glad he doesn’t currently have any involvement with Manchester United, implying that he would come down on them like the proverbial ton of bricks. You have to ask ‘I wonder why that is, Ian? That you aren’t employed by Manchester United’. The mind boggles with regard to the United supporters calling this an embarrassment, and unacceptable, and not befitting of the club, calling it something that never would have happened under Fergie as though Eric Cantona, Lee Sharpe, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Roy Keane, Rio Ferdinand and Wayne Rooney actually were erased and never existed. All had far worse off-field incidents under his tutelage.
To treat these two silly videos as even remotely comparable to the above is far more of an indictment of the club’s supporters than the two players themselves. Perhaps these fans would rather the duo behaved in the same manner as model professionals Ashley Young and Antonio Valencia, two players who wouldn’t get anywhere near a game for any other side in the top six. Or perhaps you’d like them in the Phil Jones and Chris Smalling mould, completely bland and personality-less, just happy to be there, keeping their head above water at a club they have no right to play for given their actual footballing ability.
Perhaps you’d like them to behave David De Gea, Anthony Martial, Romelu Lukaku, Paul Pogba, Alexis Sanchez, wantaway, disillusioned stars prone to strops and fits and bouts of discontent.
Or maybe you take them for what they are, the only remotely cheery, positive thing about a football team that just hates itself now, a middle-aged man in a midlife crisis standing in front of the mirror checking its hairline and grabbing at its stomach angry that it isn’t what it used to be.
Maybe you take them for what they are; actual, normal people doing things normal people do. Like going on holiday. And pissing off dickheads just because they can.
