Everybody knows that the ex-AC Milan legend came out on Dutch television to take a swipe (just like several others) at fellow Dutchman Erik ten Hag and one of his new signings.
van Basten spoke about how he finds it "bizarre" that ten Hag spent €50m on Manuel Ugarte.
"How on earth did Erik ten Hag decide to spend €50m for Ugarte? It's bizarre."
The speaker responded to him saying that he's (van Basten) only seen Ugarte play two games so far insinuating that the midfielder hasn't played much football for him to be judged.
van Basten replied (pretty arrogantly in my opinion) that he "only needed those 2 games to see that he's not even worth 25% of that amount", via The European Lad on X.
I just want to ask, why is it always us? Why do people like to pile onto United?
Yes, admittedly Ugarte hasn't started off life at MUFC too well but he has only started two games and has played just the 256 minutes with most of it coming from the bench.
So can one judge that a player isn't good enough when they haven't featured that much?
And this is why I say it's always United.
Last season it was another Dutchman who also played under ten Hag at Ajax in Ryan Gravenberch, who was in a similar situation to Ugarte.
He was a new player who came to a big club in Liverpool and didn't feature that much under then manager Jurgen Klopp. Whenever he did play though, he failed to flatter indicating why the German opted to put him on the bench.
Yet, you heard nothing about him. You heard nothing about how substandard he is.
As soon as it happens to a United signing or United player, well he's useless, forget about him and I've no idea how he even plays football.
The way these ex players and pundits talk, it's almost as if United should sack ten Hag and bring them in as they seem to know everything. I'm not exactly sure as to how much van Basten actually knows about United. Does he even watch us intently every week?
There are so many reason as to why we got Ugarte. How does van Basten (or anyone) know that it was actually ten Hag who was desperate for his signature? I'm sure that the manager would've been happy with the signing but what if it was a board signing? ten Hag also didn't tell them to spend €50m on Ugarte, that was just the agreement MUFC could reach with PSG.
And when looking at one of our team's issues, it was the midfield. We leave so much of space for opposition's to exploit that we needed someone to come in and try to cover that ground. We needed an old-school, destroyer of a CDM when taking into account how ten Hag wants to play.
Ugarte was one of the best at ball recoveries, interceptions and tackles across Europe last season. Those are the qualities we needed in our team. And just because it didn't go too well at one club doesn't mean it can't work out at another.
Ugarte also didn't suit PSG's style under Luis Enrique as his is more one of possession-based which is not a strength of Ugarte's.
So, there are several factors to consider in the decision to sign him.
We fans do have our opinions that would make us sound like we know more than the manager but at least we are more in tune with the details of the club, we actually watch and read about MUFC daily. The fans know quite a bit of what's going on.
Yes we know that the club in general is underperforming, that a lot of our players whether new or not are underperforming and of course, Ugarte and anyone else could be a flop, but this constant pile on onto us just frustrates me.
The only reason I can see why is because United just bring a lot more attention to things compared to any other club. If they spoke about others, they probably wouldn't get as many views so they might as well talk shite about MUFC.
It really does grind my gears when people speak about my club like this. And the worst part is, a lot of people believe this crap, both United fans and otherwise
Marco van Shitsen. What an absolute knob.
Background Image: Manuel Ugarte comes on for 17 minutes at Southampton | Creator: Ryan Hiscott | Credit: Getty Images Copyright: 2024 Getty Images via Man Utd News