This season has been a mixed one for Manchester United and the club’s fans. Despite being just 2 points off the boil in the Premier League and still in the Champions League, poor performances partly due to injuries as well as player being linked away from Old Trafford and talk of financial crisis have caused anxiety.

As fans of United, you grow used to hearing rival fans claim that everything is set out by the powers that be to ensure that we are successful and that we are bathed in glory and when a decision goes against United then it is just things balancing out.

But this season it has been rather different. We have found decisions going against us but more noticeably is that we have lost our title as so called ‘media darlings’.

Joseph Goebbels once said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” and it appears this is the path the media have taken in dealing with United.

Last season Nemanja Vidic was falsely quoted as saying that he hated the club and was effectively seeking a move away as soon as possible. Rather than checking the validity of these quotes other outlets picked up the story and ran with it adding their own parts such as he was being pressured to leave by his wife and that the most exciting thing to do in Manchester is look at the train timetable!

Vidic came out and denied this but the ball was already set in motion and at various different points the Serbian defender has been touted with moves away. This past week Vidic has been linked with a £30m move to Real Madrid and The Times even went as far as drawing up a list of replacements for Sir Alex.

Not content with linking our players with moves away from the club the media have set about destabilising the club off field by poking holes in our financial state.

Following the club’s decision to pull out of a deal to sign Adem Ljajic from Partizan Belgrade, Partizan president Dragan Djuric claimed that United pulled out of the deal because United were in some sort of financial crisis and thus the story had begun.

A man from another club who had no way of possibly knowing the state of the club’s finances makes a throw away comment and the papers picked it up and ran with it.

The deal was signed in January meaning it would have been budgeted by the club, add to this that United had not received prize monies from winning the Carling Cup and Premier League or for reaching the final of the Champions League as well as Ljajic himself coming out saying the deal failed to materialise due to problem with a work permit and the claims from both Djuric and the media seem redundant but I’m pretty sure this is not the last we will hear of the matter.

Fergie has claimed that he has £60m to spend but if he does not buy anyone this month it’s likely that it will be put down to the financial problems that will imminently cripple the club.

Every club gets it in the press, if newspapers didn’t have these stories they wouldn’t have an audience. Yet these are just a few instances from this season that smack of doom mongering around the club as we go through a rough patch.

So the next time someone tells you that United are loved by the media and there is an evil conspiracy to ensure United are bathed in glory, feel free to highlight these cases.