Manchester United decline like a Roman Empire...crumbling down.

Everythings in life has ups and downs, no empire last forever, u hear me Singapore?

Man U have not been doing well lately due to many key players are not putting their hearts and passion for their love of the game. Nevermind the high salary of player likes Rio Ferdinand, passion is where it drove and pushes you to excellence. What is great renumeration if heart and soul is not for fundamental of the purposes? This principles applies everywhere in our daily life and society. Agreed? Does that ring a resonance to you?

Hope people understand that only You can truely made a difference in a big arena.

Be different and actively pro-create, the arena is for you to conquer.

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A team in transition or a club in decline?

Brick by brick, the fall of the United empire gathers pace ( By Martin Samuel, Times London)

GREAT empires do not fall. They crumble. Brick by brick, stone by stone, until there is nothing left but dust and rubble. This process takes time. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire is widely accepted to have begun with the death of Constantine the Great in AD337 and continued, in degrees, until AD476, when Odoacer the Scirian, the Germanic mercenary, deposed Romulus Augustus.

There is no one event on the way that is more significant than all others, just the standard series of calamities, misjudgments, defeats and historical accidents: a humiliating peace with Persia here, a weak succession to Theodosius there, the rise of the Huns and the Visigoths, and now all that remains is a loose collection of masonry dirtied by car fumes off the Via del Corso. And plumbing.

Football can be like that. For 139 years, read three or four seasons. For Attila, read Roman Abramovich. That is all it takes. Sometimes the decline goes unnoticed until it is too late. In 1991, Brian Clough led out Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup Final at Wembley; less than a year later he was back in the League Cup final against Manchester United. Both matches were lost and the next season Forest were relegated and Clough retired, heartbroken. In all that time, there were rumours of waning abilities and erratic behaviour, but the walk down Wembley Way distorted the reality.

It was the same at Liverpool. Having surrendered the league title to Arsenal at Anfield in 1989, Kenny Dalglish’s team reclaimed it the next year, nine points clear of Aston Villa, at which point the disappointment of the previous campaign was confidently derided as a blip. The record books show that it was nothing of the sort. Liverpool have failed to regain their crown in any of the subsequent 15 seasons and have finished second only twice, in 1991 and 2002, both times seven points behind Arsenal. The 1990 title win was the last hurrah of a dynasty in its death throes, the flickering of the light.

So Manchester United may well win away to Lille this evening. They may sail through the Champions League group stage after that. Perhaps they will even rally to inflict a first league defeat of the season on Chelsea on Sunday, as they did to end Arsenal’s unbeaten sequence of 49 matches a year ago. Will this alter the reality of an empire in peril? Not one bit.

Sir Alex Ferguson did not build this kingdom on mighty efforts in isolation. He conquered all, with a ruthlessness that was Roman in its ambition and conceit. Yet United have not done that in four years, not since Arsenal landed the title at Old Trafford in 2001-02. It is said that they are in transition, but to what end? Just as Ferguson’s empire took time to build, it will be painfully slow to fall.

IN THE period in which United have been stumbling downhill, the club contrived to win the league. Yet for them, the 2002-03 season may be remembered as the equivalent of Liverpool’s final flourish in 1990. The best team always win the league, it is said, but for many, Arsenal were the best team in 2002-03. Yet they fell away at the end, hampered by injuries and an inexplicable crisis of confidence, wilting under pressure from the last great United team, in spirited resurgence. Between December 26, 2002 and the end of the season, United did not lose a league match, while between March 15 and May 4 Arsenal could barely win one. Could it be possible that a team engineered such a feat while in decline? Sadly, yes.

The same year that United last won the league, Ferguson also hit David Beckham on the head with a boot after losing to Arsenal in the FA Cup and the club were removed from the European Cup by the first good team they played in the knockout stage, as has been the case in every season since the treble was won in 1999. The beginning of the end? No, merely fresh reverses along the way.

Just as Real Madrid exposed United’s shortcomings against the best in Europe, which have consistently taken a vast psychological toll on the club in six seasons, so the personality clash with Beckham was the first sign that the newly empowered modern footballer and the patriarchal manager, as represented by Ferguson, were no longer travelling the same path.

Look at Ferguson on the touchline against Middlesbrough on Saturday. Has ever a strong man appeared so helpless? He has stood by his players, yet are they standing by him? It was left to his stricken captain, Roy Keane, publicly to read the Riot Act in an assessment so devastatingly inflammatory it was removed from the schedules of United’s television channel by panicking club officials. Keane has been outspoken before, often with Ferguson’s blessing, yet this was judged a carpeting too far. Maybe the manager is too aware that it is not only at the top of the Premiership where the balance of power is changing.

In the past year, two former England managers, Graham Taylor and Terry Venables, men with managerial careers stretching three decades, have admitted that in their most recent club jobs, at Aston Villa and Leeds United respectively, communication with the dressing-room was difficult. They were surprised by what they perceived was a lack of desire to improve on the part of some players. It was, they said, unlike anything experienced before.

In the banned interview, Keane is believed to have singled out some of United’s younger players for criticism, as well as Rio Ferdinand, who may yet develop a full-blown case of wasted talent syndrome in time for next summer’s World Cup finals. More than five years ago, Ferguson was complaining that certain aspects of Beckham’s life were beyond his control. Now that he has Ferdinand getting cosy with Peter Kenyon, the Chelsea chief executive, and Wayne Rooney making regular sorties to the front pages of the newspapers, it is unlikely he feels happier.

Empires in decline are also overstretched and there is no doubt that United’s continued failure in Europe has had a damaging effect, not least in the continued confusion over the best way to win a match. The lone striker began as a tactic in Europe and has seeped into United’s domestic play, until for the first time in recent memory, nobody can name Ferguson’s best XI, or the way they would play, with any certainty.

José Mourinho’s preferred 4-3-3 at Chelsea trips off the tongue as easily as the classic 4-4-2 of United’s past. Yet in aping his greatest rivals, Ferguson ensures only that his players remain second best. Mourinho has specifically constructed a group to play that way and there is no team better suited to it. So United’s best 4-3-3 will not be as good as Chelsea’s. See the problem? The failure is in-built. The equivalent would have been to instruct the Ashes groundsmen to produce turning pitches to help Ashley Giles last summer. One problem: Shane Warne.
When Liverpool collapsed in the 1990s, United dominated, with Arsenal playing second fiddle after brief interludes featuring Leeds United and Blackburn Rovers. Chelsea now stand to capitalise on United’s fall, with Arsenal again reduced to a supporting role. Other patterns are familiar: Liverpool were overtaken by wealthier rivals, as United have been, and key players grew old together, as is happening at United.

LIVERPOOL could clearly not adequately replicate the talents of Ian Rush, Graeme Souness, Dalglish, Steve Nicol, Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson, just as Ferguson is labouring to find the heirs to Keane, Beckham, Peter Schmeichel and, in time, Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes. Liverpool were also said to be in transition when the club was in freefall — now that is the phrase most commonly trotted out to excuse the parade of inferiors through the door at Old Trafford and the fact that the club have needed to pre-qualify for the Champions League in three of the past four seasons.

Increasingly rudderless as answers grew harder to find, Liverpool introduced Ronny Rosenthal and Jimmy Carter and the days grew darker. United have made similar mistakes with Eric Djemba-Djemba and Kléberson in midfield and a succession of goalkeepers each more calamitous than the last. Cristiano Ronaldo and Rooney may represent a rosier future, but Ferguson is missing the glue that has always held his teams together. Most important, he has been losing sight of what made his United great — just as Liverpool did when buying individuals who were technically unable to retain possession.

United have become uncertain, confused and sloppy, traits that Ferguson would not have recognised or tolerated in his prime. More worrying is the thought that their decline is inconspicuous, unexamined and unheeded.

As Odoacer advanced on Ravenna, the seat of the Western Roman Empire, legend has it that a soldier approached Emperor Romulus Augustus. “Don’t worry, boss,” he said. “We’re just in transition.”