So, once again, Manchester United will be slumming it in the Europa League, one of the world’s biggest clubs consigned to mostly forgettable Thursday nights playing against the lesser lights of the continent.
If ever there was a signal of the team’s decline since the retirement of Alex Ferguson, it’s that United will be featuring in Europe’s oft-derided second-tier competition — the poor relation to the lucrative Champions League — for the third time in the past five seasons.
It’s a record Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich — the game’s major European powers to who United likes to compare itself — wouldn’t countenance.