Dwight Yorke finds Manchester United a tough watch these days. Sometimes he won’t bother and just catch the highlights, if that’s the right word.
Above all, there is still a sense of anger that his old club failed in its duty to stop Manchester City winning the Treble last season. ‘Our Treble’, he calls it.
One of the heroes of ’99, Yorke still feels a deep attachment to United, but there is lingering affection for his first club, Aston Villa, who are just a point off the top of the table ahead of their visit to Old Trafford on Tuesday. Two teams giving off a very different vibe right now.
‘Listen, I think Villa are in a much healthier position than United,’ says Yorke, who played for the last Villa side to go close to the title in 1993 when they lost out to United.
‘Nevertheless, going to Old Trafford is always a daunting task, no matter how bad United might be. ‘The transformation under Unai Emery is massive. He’s got them playing such a dynamic, exciting style. It’s quite remarkable actually, a kind of a fairy tale story.”
We expected this from Erik ten Hag too. He got off to a very good start, got to two finals and won one, and brought back Champions League football. He ticked all the boxes.
‘You’re thinking, we’ve got the guy who’s going to take the club forward now. If anything, he has gone the other way.
‘He spent money, he brought in his players. But the inconsistency, getting knocked out of Europe, must be devastating for them.
‘When you look at the group with Galatasaray and Copenhagen, these are teams that United should blow past on one leg.’
Watching United has been a struggle,’ Yorke admits. ‘There’s no two ways about that. I’m not going to lie, I’ve walked away from the game: refused to watch for a bit, and just try to catch up on highlights rather than sit through the 90 minutes.’ Worse still is that City are sweeping all before them, including United in last season’s all-Manchester FA Cup final.
‘I still haven’t forgotten the fact that we allowed City to repeat history, winning our Treble, because we had a chance to stop them at Wembley and we didn’t,’ adds the former Trinidad and Tobago international.
‘The players didn’t do what they were supposed to do to protect the biggest legacy of the football club. So I’m a bit miffed by that and I haven’t really recovered from it.’
