It's all gone from bad to worse for Manchester United so far this season. After separate public outbursts from defender Lisandro Martinez and club captain Bruno Fernandes, United slumped to their third Premier League defeat of the season, losing 3-0 to Bournemouth at Old Trafford on an occasion where Michael Carrick chose to bench Fernandes.
The captain's post-match interview after last week's Champions League loss to Como questioned Carrick's tactical decision making, which comes just a few short weeks after Martinez had a go at the club's boardroom and ownership for not backing the club well enough.
These public critiques of the manager and ownership, while they might have reflected how a lot of United fans are currently feeling, have not boded well for the overall feeling around Old Trafford and the club have only won twice from all competitions so far this season.
For a storied club with so much history and success, two wins from twelve matches is more than just not good enough, it's disastrous, and something needs to change.
Rio Ferdinand Sees Deep Problems At United
As a legend of the club who was a serial winner in the days of Sir Alex Ferguson, it's hurting Rio Ferdinand to see the state of United right now. The club is a shell of the side that dominated the 90's and early 2000's in the Premier League and often went far in Europe.
Speaking on his Rio Meets X account, Ferdinand highlighted issues behind-the-scenes:
"There's clearly a problem in that dressing room now, that's the difference. Two players this week speak out (Martinez, Fernandes) about the manager and about the director of football and the football operations. You can't tell me there's only two of them (players) that think like that. They've got the confidence to come out and speak like that because they know there's a group, there's a cluster in there that think along the same lines as what these guys are thinking."
Ferdinand added: "That tells you the culture in the football club is in the changing room, where it's meant to be your heartbeat at the club is all wrong, especially when stuff's going wrong. When stuff's going wrong, that's when you need to lean on culture even more, because that's what's going to get you out of it. That togetherness, that resilience, when you look to the side of you and you go 'you know what, we're a couple of goals down' or 'we've had a few bad results - he is going to run through brick walls for me, because he believes in everything that we're doing here," Ferdinand passionately continued.
A Broken Club Without A Fix In Sight
Clearly, the dressing room at United right now is severely lacking in belief and it's showing with their performances on the pitch. It's gotten to the point where it's difficult to say if sacking Carrick and bringing in a different manager would even change anything as the recent history at the club has shown that any sort of new manager bounce momentum is only temporary at best.
All of Carrick, Erik ten Tag, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Ralf Rangnick, David Moyes, and Jose Mourinho either won matches at the beginning of their reign as United manager, some won silverware, but none lasted the test of time in begin consistently successful at the club.
To make matters worse, United's upcoming schedule looks rather daunting with the situation they currently find themselves in. They face Chelsea, Roma, Aston Villa before the international break.
