MANCHESTER UNITED look like a team who have only recently been introduced to playing football.
Little wonder, really, given that they seem to have different people telling them how to do it every week.
The word is that Erik ten Hag’s methods were so complicated that the players genuinely did not know what he wanted them to do.
In comes a new backroom team to work with the former boss and more new ideas are loaded into the players.
Then Ten Hag goes and one of those coaches, Ruud van Nistelrooy, tries to get a tune out of an off-key outfit.
Now Ruben Amorim talks about the side like he is talking about how to teach a toddler to walk. All this stuff about “little details”.
Cut through all this and we come to the analysis from a mate of mine during a Saturday-night debrief in a bar in south Manchester . . . “It’s just s**t.” Hard to argue.
In contrast, high-flying Nottingham Forest — 3-2 winners at Old Trafford — are looking to nab a shock European place.
Scorer Morgan Gibbs-White said: “The ambition is to keep progressing and you want to play at the highest level possible.
“All we can do is keep ticking off boxes and hopefully it will come.”
United’s back three often aimlessly passed the ball between each other or just kicked it back to Andre Onana under any pressure.
A risky move in itself given it could easily end up in the net.
Of all the stats, the most laughable came with the top four passing combinations in the United team. They were all between centre-backs!
Goodness knows what the new set-piece coach is telling them as well.
It took less than two minutes before Forest scored from a corner courtesy of a header from Nikola Milenkovic.
Rasmus Hojlund did level but two minutes after the break Gibbs-White had a shot on goal.
Now even he did not expect it to go in. But a slight swerve on the ball of no more than a foot had Onana flummoxed.
He still looked bewildered when Chris Wood sent a looping header over him before Bruno Fernandes got one back.
Yet hope is in short supply at Old Trafford right now. This is their worst team since Sir Alex Ferguson retired.
Until they get a decent striker it is not going to change either. Hojlund and Joshua Zirkzee have been terrible buys.
They are not good enough for United. They are not good enough for most teams in the Prem.
Hojlund is on Ten Hag, Zirkzee on the Ineos team who thought he was a good value-for-money buy at £36.5million.
If that was on Dan Ashworth it is little wonder he has walked.
It is not good and it does not look like getting better any time soon.