Former Manchester United midfielder Oliver Norwood has given his take on what has gone wrong at Old Trafford recently.
With Erik ten Hag at the Manchester United helm, the club finished third in the Premier League, won a Carabao Cup and featured in the FA Cup final against Manchester City.
This season, however, has been far from promising. Four defeats from eight Premier League games and back-to-back defeats in the Champions League.
Former United academy graduate Oliver Norwood has given his thoughts on the current malaise at the club.
Norwood’s verdict
Speaking on the One Of Our Own podcast, on the Sheffield United YouTube channel, Norwood believes the club have lost a sense of its history.
“I think they’ve lost that bit, the feel of Manchester United and I do think they’ve lost that a little bit,” Norwood said.
“I don’t want to sit on a high horse but I think the club has a very different feel to it now than when I was there and came through the academy.
“The people who worked behind the scenes at the club when I was coming through are not there, it just feels different.”
This has been a common criticism of the club that they seem to have lost the feeling of being United and what that means and how you carry yourself.
Norwood is right
It’s hard to disagree with the former United academy graduate who knows the club inside out and was part of the academy during the glory years of the club under Sir Alex Ferguson.
In the same podcast, Norwood also revealed that the academy players used to train at the Cliff training ground, where the Busby Babes and the Class of ’92 trained.
According to Norwood, this was designed to highlight just how fortunate they are and how hard they have to work for their opportunities.
It may well be hard for the academy players of today to train there but the club seem scared, or perhaps unwilling, to dip into their history just to emphasise to players how hard they have to work to make it at the club.
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