Why Mason Greenwood should not play for Manchester United again

Warning: This article contains graphic sexual language which some readers may find distressing.

The problem for Manchester United is this: the audio is always going to be out there. No matter how much they try to soothe public opinion, how much PR they sprinkle over it, that recording in isolation will always damn Mason Greenwood.

The internet never forgets and, unfortunately for Greenwood, that doesn't work in his favour if one of the options being considered by United is a phased programme to reintroduce a footballer who the police wanted prosecuted for attempted rape.

Exhibit A: those secretly recorded moments when Greenwood can be heard shouting at his alleged victim to “move your fucking legs up” and his voice sounds hard and unforgiving and absolutely determined to get what he wants.

The woman replies that she does not want sex and Greenwood's tone becomes even more menacing: “I don't give a fuck what you want, you little shit.”

She tries to protest but he shouts at her to shut up. She tries again, telling him she does not want to have sex.

Greenwood responds: “I'm going to fuck you, you twat. I don't care if you want to have fucking sex with me. Do you hear me?”

Chilling, isn't it? Vile, sinister, stomach-churning. Apologies if you really did not want to go through it, word for word, but maybe it is worth recounting this small part of their exchange (sadly, there is a lot more on the audio, all on the same theme) now it seems we might have to adjust our views on what would constitute, to 99 per cent of the population, a sackable offence but what, to an elite footballer, might not be, so far at least.

Mason Greenwood outside Minshull Street Crown Court on the first day of his trial last November (Photo: Cameron Smith/Getty Images)

Something compelled that girl to start recording what was happening and, later, briefly put it out on social media. It felt like a cry for help. She also produced pictures that showed her with a bleeding face and bruises on her body. This, she insisted, was the real Mason Greenwood.

And, like most people who have listened to that clip, my first reaction was that Greenwood — who has never denied that he is the man on the recording — was finished at Old Trafford.

Whatever happened with the criminal investigation, whatever explanation might be given to justify that things weren't exactly as they sounded, it felt almost unthinkable that he would be allowed to pull on the club's colours again. Not when so many people had heard this audio and he was on the main television news.

The police and the Crown Prosecution Service were satisfied there was a reasonable prospect of Greenwood being convicted as a sex offender and abuser. He was charged with attempted rape, assault causing actual bodily harm and engaging in controlling and coercive behaviour, all involving the same woman.

For that last charge, the prosecution case was that Greenwood's behaviour had a serious effect on her, that he made threats and derogatory comments, monitored her social media accounts and altered the way she socialised. A crown-court trial was scheduled for November. Then she changed her mind about giving evidence.

The charges were duly dropped, with the CPS saying: “A combination of the withdrawal of key witnesses and new material that came to light meant there was no longer a realistic prospect of conviction.”

Although we can only join the dots, the sad reality is that prosecutions falling apart is not uncommon in cases of alleged sex attacks and psychological abuse, which says little for the British legal system.

Greenwood, as such, will no longer have to rely on a jury's verdict for his freedom. But here's the thing: that doesn't mean he didn't do what was alleged. Innocent until proven guilty? Maybe in the eyes of the law. But sometimes it is too easy to hide behind that line. It feels like a cop-out, especially when that recording is out there.

United could still cut ties with Greenwood, but the first question to ask of them is this: would they even consider re-integrating him if he was not a potential match-winner?

And the answer, however much they might want to claim otherwise, must almost certainly be no.

Will Mason Greenwood's goalscoring excellence influence Manchester United's decision over his future? (Photo: Sebastian Frej/MB Media/Getty Images)

If this was a fringe player, someone who would not particularly enhance Erik ten Hag's chances of greater team success, that person would have been drummed out for bringing the club, and himself, into serious disrepute and behaving in a way that had brought the police to the door of his employers.

If it was a club director who had been outed this way, would there be any way back? Or a member of office staff? A coach, a scout, a kit man, one of the guys on security; we all know what the outcome would be. Goodbye, good riddance, and close the door on your way out.

Presumably, Ten Hag remembers what happened at Ajax, his previous club, when it came out their director of football, Marc Overmars, was getting his kicks from sending sexualised messages and unsolicited pictures of himself (you can guess which kind of pictures) to female members of staff, who were said to feel scared to report him.

Overmars was a valued member of top-level staff. It still did not save him. “Marc is probably the best football director that Ajax has had,” said Leen Meijaard, Ajax's supervisory board chairman. “Unfortunately, he has really gone over the line, so continuing was not an option, as he recognised himself.”

Marc Overmars is now Antwerp's director of football after leaving Ajax (Photo: Tom Goyvaerts/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images)

So let's get to the nub of why United are considering Greenwood as a special case rather than following what might ordinarily be expected for an ordinary employee. It's simple: his ability to score goals.

Greenwood is a category-A footballer who could save United upwards of £100million ($120.4m) if the ultimate aim is for him to return to the team and play to the same levels as before. This is the bottom line, or he would probably have been sacked already.

We are talking about a player of uncommon talent, an England international who would have accumulated far more than just one solitary cap if his behavioural flaws had not put off Gareth Southgate, the national team manager, from selecting him.

At the age of 21, Greenwood could conceivably spend the next decade helping United chase glories.

Just think of the goals he could score, the trophies they might win.

All of which is worth remembering if United intend to follow a phased reintroduction for Greenwood (including the possibility of a television interview), and project it as being in the best interests of a young man who has made a mistake and wants to improve as a human being.

United, it is said, are mindful that he has lost over a year of his career, which now hangs in the balance. An internal inquiry is ongoing. Greenwood could, in theory, be offered places on education programmes and put in front of counsellors. Psychologists could be hired.

Yet it still feels like United would be badly blurring their priorities if they went through with it. They must be aware it will divide opinion and that huge numbers of supporters will feel compromised, to say the least, if the expectation is that they will find it within them to cheer him on, enjoy his goals, block out his past.

How do you think United's women footballers will feel about breathing in the same oxygen as a man accused of sex offences? Or even some of his more conscientious team-mates? What kind of role model is Greenwood for the club's academy these days?

“I don't think he should play again for Manchester United,” Natalie Burrell, the founder of the Manchester United Women's Supporters' Club, told The Athletic in early February. “They need to make a statement and letting him back would be the worst thing they could do. It would set our club back in terms of what we're trying to do with our women's team and campaigns like Her Game Too, which are trying to encourage women to play and watch football. I don't want to see him training. I don't want to see him in a (United) kit. I don't want to see him ever coming out at Old Trafford again.”

Nobody should be too surprised if the opposite happens, however, when the football industry, as a whole, frequently reminds us about its elastic principles.

Don't forget that United once sacked Roy Keane because he had the temerity to criticise some of his team-mates on the club's in-house channel, MUTV, following a 4-1 defeat at Middlesbrough. Keane was 34 at the time and increasingly susceptible to injury. Would United have taken the same action when Keane was younger, in the pomp of his career, and playing so brilliantly that Sir Alex Ferguson saw him as the heartbeat of the team? What do you reckon?

The mind also goes back to the Derby County drink-drive case in 2019 when Tom Lawrence and Mason Bennett ended up in court because of a two-car crash that left one of their team-mates, Richard Keogh, a passenger, with a serious knee injury.

Which of those three was sacked by Derby? It wasn't Lawrence and it wasn't Bennett, despite being the drivers who did a runner and left their team-mate unconscious in the wreckage. Derby chose instead to sack Keogh, who was 33, facing a year out and therefore of no use to them. It told us a lot about football's priorities.

So did the David Goodwillie case when the directors of Raith Rovers and, more recently, Radcliffe in the Northern Premier League, never fully anticipated the potential backlash to hiring a striker who was found in a 2017 civil court to have raped a woman six years earlier.

Those two clubs also spoke about the importance of rehabilitation and seeing it as their responsibility to help a troubled footballer get back on with his life. But let's get real: it all came back to the fact that Goodwillie was a prolific scorer of goals. He could help them climb the table, and those players aren't easy to come by.

In Greenwood's case, it is always going to be a difficult, complex and polarising issue and it just needs a cursory look at social media to realise how many people insist on seeing it through the lens of who they support rather than any real care for what is right and what is wrong.

Yes, many supporters have concluded that Greenwood is no longer somebody they want to see representing their club. But vast numbers have been campaigning for his return and championing him online as some kind of absent hero.

It has been this way almost since the day Greenwood was suspended from action. Recently, the volume has gone up and up. Attitudes have hardened against the alleged victim ('how could this cruel woman put him through such an ordeal?'). It is depressing to read.

As for Ten Hag, his position is particularly interesting bearing in mind everything he has shown so far about being a man of substance and principles. Ten Hag's voice carries significant weight these days and, if he wants Greenwood in his squad, that could be a useful tool for United on a PR front. The fans like Ten Hag; they trust his decision-making. To some, it would be easier to accept if the manager gives it his approval.

Erik ten Hag's approval for rehabilitating Mason Greenwood would be hugely significant (Photo: Matthew Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)

That doesn't make it any more appealing, though, if it turns out that Greenwood is allowed to pull on that number 11 shirt again.

Nobody expects footballers to be flawless and nobody wants them to be goody-two-shoes (there is even a book, Richard Kurt's Red Devils, about some of the rogues who have passed through Old Trafford). But this isn't a driving offence, claims of a bit of drunken argy-bargy down the pub, or turning up late to a team meeting.

That audio again: the moments when one of the Premier League's rising stars seems to have absolutely zero understanding or interest about what sexual consent means. Judging by the threats that can be heard, Greenwood does not seem to realise he is being recorded. He sounds so angry.

She asks him why she has to do what he is demanding.

“Because I asked you politely and you wouldn't do it. I asked you politely and you wouldn't do it. So what else do you want me to do?”

More fool me, perhaps, for judging football by the same standards as just about every other profession and assuming that a club with United's status would not allow such a person to represent them again.

What I maybe forgot was that the man at the centre of this case has a peach of a shot, an elite first touch and can score with either foot. Let's wait to see if that is what matters the most for a team that is trying to re-establish itself as the best in the country.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)