Every club claims it’s them but one look at column inches in the media tells you, definitively, that Manchester United are the biggest club in England. No other club. Not even Liverpool, generates the content in print, online or broadcast, that Manchester United do.
But this can have a detrimental effect. Are you a writer or a publication that needs to drive traffic to your website or story? No problem, just drop Manchester United’s name into your social media post and watch the clicks and this, the advertising revenue, roll in. But we, as Manchester United fans, aid this. Any journalist, podcaster etc with links to the club will be flooded with replies asking for news on transfers and you’ll often see the same story, rehashed several times, with no new information just to put something out there.
You’ve probably seen this countless times, *insert club here* set to beat Manchester United to signing of *insert player here*. This serves to make United look bad whilst driving those much needed clicks. The truth is that Manchester United were probably never interested on the player but the club, agent etc used United’s name to get a better offer. We United fans have grown accustomed to seeing United linked to a player only to see them sign a new contract a few weeks later. This is not a coincidence, it’s not bad negotiating by United, it’s a ploy by agents. But the resulting new contract results in yet more column inches around United failing and more of those precious clicks.
A few years ago a couple of friends and I decided to run an experiment on Twitter. From the start of the transfer window to close wanted to track the volume of United links. Every time one of us saw a United transfer story, we tag the other two with a list being collated of a the links to avoid duplication. In that period of a little under three months we ended with a list of around 200 players. That’s around three player PER DAY, being linked to United. No wonder we look bad in the market with that many links, no wonder there’s so many replies asking for news.
But it goes even beyond transfers. You’ll see opinion writers using matches United haven’t even played in to write a column about what lessons United can learn from that match, or how certain players United have sold have ‘proved them wrong’. A player succeeding at a club after United (or any other club) has sold them, doesn’t mean United (or the other club) was wrong to sell them, it just proves that they’ve found a club that suits them better. Manchester United have Rafael Varane and Lisandro Martinez at centre back. Meanwhile Chris Smalling has been a success in Italy. This doesn’t mean United were wrong, as many writers, including some United ones, would want you to believe, it just means that a parting of the ways was best for both parties. Personally I’m happy that Smalling is doing well, but I’m not pining for him to come back or thinking we should never have sold him.
I don’t this situation changing any time soon. Whilst the appetite for news remains insatiable, whilst United still generate so many clicks and whilst they’re still endlessly name dropped in transfers, heck sometimes the story is that United aren’t interested, but on social media you’ll see the tag line, ‘Latest on *player x* and Manchester United as way to drive traffic just to find out there’s no story, then journalists and broadcasters will continue to use United to drive traffic.
Lazy journalism