It’s not a development anybody wanted to see after a stunning victory, but at least Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt have confirmed a theory with their Lisandro Martinez drama.
What started as an unnecessary playground humour-esque jab at Lisandro Martinez’s physicality snowballed into a public back-and-forth with Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes.
The ex-players’ ill-researched criticism saw a brutal response from Martinez, and then neither Butt nor Scholes looked in the mood to take the high road after being proven wrong.
Who are you backing in Paul Scholes and Lisandro Martinez’s war of words?
Paul Scholes and Lisandro Martinez have reignited their feud after the Manchester derby…
It’s all just a mess that Man Utd fans can do without as they revel in the excitement and hope after a derby win, but it confirmed their theory in the process.
Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt personify a cynical Man Utd theory
Both Butt and Scholes, when called out by Martinez, went on the defensive and started to do the very thing they criticised the defender for.
You can’t ridicule a player’s personal trait on a public podcast and play a “why are you getting offended at a joke” defence to get away with it.
Ironically, they were both extremely upset at Martinez for not having a thick skin, when they were the ones who got rattled when one of their unlimited jabs at the players finally received a response.
The way Scholes and Butt responded to Martinez confirmed a cynical fan theory that these ex-players want to go viral, print money, and drive clicks to their own media in the name of “caring for the club”.
The circus with these ex-players all looking for that viral soundbite at the cost of adding toxicity to the club they claim to love is getting reminiscent of Arsenal Fan TV.
It’s not a coincidence that AFTV has stopped going viral and becoming mainstream as soon as Arsenal started to win games.
These ex-players are feeding off the same negativity, and when they don’t have any to feed off of, they create it with these unnecessary jabs.
At no other club do the ex-players attack their own club with such pettiness. Forget attacking, ex-players like Jamie Carragher, Ian Wright, or Micah Richards are almost annoyingly staunch in their defence of the clubs they played for.
When given the choice, it’s a no-brainer that fans would rather have annoying defence instead of constant toxicity. They get a lot of that as it is from rival fans!
Success is the only way to silence cynics
Just like Arsenal’s case, the only way to silence these cynics – and United are unfortunate to call their own legends cynics – is by winning matches.
It’s clear that ex-players with their own podcasts to run have made a choice that getting the “hate” clicks from rival fans is more profitable than catering to the people who gave them the legend moniker in the first place.
The only way for the players to let them know that this isn’t about the ex-players anymore is by making it about themselves by winning football matches.
Once that starts happening consistently, the toxicity will fade away automatically, and these ex-players will have to start catering to the positivity because anything else will just make them look foolish.
That happened after the derby as the room turned against Butt and Scholes; now the Man Utd players need to do it consistently.
Fans shouldn’t get carried away by the seeds of negativity people are trying to plant to unsettle the club, even at a high point.
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