Maybe this season needed to happen for Manchester United
There's a story about Mithridates VI, who was King of Pontus from 135 BCE to 63 BCE. His father had been poisoned in a plot devised by his attendants, which meant that one of the deceased King's sons, Mithridates or his brother, was supposed to ascend to the throne when they came of age, with their mother ruling as regent for the time being. However, Mithridates had become suspicious that his mother favoured his brother as she was essentially pushing for the other sibling to become King.
The young Mithridates became paranoid of everyone around him. He was convinced that there was a plot in play to get rid of him and install his brother as King. He had never really trusted his mother and always suspected her of being involved in his father's death. At some point, the young Prince began to experience stomach aches regularly after meals. He suspected that his mother had ordered that small amounts of poison be mixed into his food to kill him off slowly. It took a few more assassination attempts for Mithridates to finally flee into the wilderness.
The Prince began ingesting small doses of non-lethal poison, combining them with other types of poisonous substances with an ultimate recipe he invented, intending to develop some form of immunity to all kinds of poison. It's basically where the term "Mithridatism" came from, which is the practice of protecting oneself from poison by slowly self-administering small doses of it. So, where am I going with this? Think of Manchester United fans as Mithridates, and imagine the small doses of poison they've been ingesting as the entire 2021/2022 season.
Before the start of the campaign, I had never seen Manchester United fans this ecstatic at the prospect of a new season since Sir Alex Ferguson left the club. They had finished second in the Premier League the season before, gotten to the final of the Europa League, and for many supporters, the next step was a title challenge. The club signed Jadon Sancho, a player they had been after for over two years, and the excitement compounded. Raphael Varane and Cristiano Ronaldo were the next two major signings, both of whom had vast experience winning major trophies. Even now, it's hard to blame the fans for getting too excited. I'd say they had every right to be. The signings raised the expectations to unprecedented levels.
However, some fans also knew that the team just wasn't ready. Not yet. They knew that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and his coaching staff would be going into the season without a starting defensive midfielder along with a major tactical overhaul they had clearly not prepared very well for, while the failure to win the Europa League weighed heavily on their shoulders, like a bad smell they didn't know how to get rid of. Meanwhile, The supporters were desperate. They needed trophies, any trophy, and when all four new signings (three, really) were finalised, the ultimatum, going into the season, was that the team needed to win a major trophy and challenge for the title in the process; there was no room for anything else, not with the quality of the signings.
A string of poor results and performances led to Solskjaer's departure from the club. While there was a brief moment of hope with Micheal Carrick in the three games he managed, it was fleeting, and United hired Ralf Rangnick, who apparently accepted the job on the condition that he stay on for two more years as a consultant. The German International took over from Carrick at a time when finishing in the top four was as likely as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.
There was absolutely no way the team couldn't finish in the top four, right? Especially with "any competent manager could challenge for the title with these players.'' Regardless, the six months following Solskjaer's departure were arguably the most toxic in the club's recent history. The poor performances on the pitch were just a symptom of a host of problems; we had numerous leaks about players getting into physical altercations during training sessions, managers and players publicly disagreeing with each other, and a blatant lack of communication between the coaching staff and the players, confrontational press conferences, even certain players playing the blame game. It was like a soap opera, not even a fun one, and the football was no longer interesting to watch. We've seen United play poorly in the past, but this added toxicity sapped the joy right out of everything.
But this season had to happen for several reasons, the most important of which is that some Manchester United fans may finally understand the virtue of patience. We've been taking these small doses of poison for the last six months, and it's difficult to imagine how things could get any worse for the supporters. We're literally at the bottom of the proverbial barrel, with an overwhelming majority of fans agreeing that the new manager, Erik Ten Hag, will need time. I'm not exactly sure how much time some fans will be willing to give the Dutchman; I mean, we've already seen certain fans criticising him after one press conference because he refused to antagonise the team or some players before he had even gotten a chance to assess them on the pitch personally. I'm not even going to mention the bizarre behavior of the media and their body language experts.
Anyway, the appointment of Ten Hag could be Manchester United's watershed moment. The club could be on the precipice of greatness again. They appear to have a new long-term plan, a new structure that keeps the club's marketing and football aspects as more or less separate entities, and a new CEO who appears to recognize that he isn't a football man. From the outside, it seems that United are putting a support structure in place for Ten Hag, which is critical in the modern era of the sport. But, more importantly, fans realize that some of the players aren't good enough, that we might need to be more patient this time, that things will get worse before they get better, and that Ten Hag can't possibly do much worse than Rangnick.
Many fans, like myself, are going into the start of the next season with absolutely no expectations. None. We've seen too much to just start demanding for titles without realizing that it's always going to be a process. It may be a slow process, but it will be a process. We've seen enough toxicity and negativity to brace ourselves for what will undoubtedly be a challenging but also a hopeful season.
Mithridates did eventually return to Pontus, deposed his mother and brother, and ascended to the throne. It's not very clear whether his poison recipe worked, but it was enough to make people take the prospect quite seriously.