Manchester United legend Nicky Butt has launched a blistering attack on his former club, branding the current situation a "s***show" and declaring the club is "rotten from the bottom up." The former midfielder delivered his damning verdict in an interview with FourFourTwo, expressing deep pessimism about the Red Devils' immediate future.
A Decade of Decline and a Gloomy Forecast
Butt's comments come after a turbulent period for United, who have struggled to find consistency since the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013. The club has cycled through managers David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, and Erik ten Hag with mixed results. The appointment of Ruben Amorim last season was meant to herald a new dawn, but the Portuguese coach has so far failed to reverse the club's fortunes.
United endured their worst-ever Premier League finish in the 2024/25 campaign and made a similarly poor start to the current 2025/26 season. Although form has improved somewhat, Butt believes the issues run far deeper than the dugout. He stated that not even the game's greatest managerial minds could provide a quick fix.
"Not Even Prime Ferguson Could Fix It"
"For me, it's fundamentally that the club is rotten from the bottom up at the minute," Butt told FourFourTwo. He elaborated with a stark comparison: "If you brought prime Sir Alex Ferguson back in, he wouldn't be able to turn it around straight away, it would still take time. If you put Pep Guardiola in there, or Jurgen Klopp, it wouldn't work either."
The core of the problem, according to the 1999 Treble winner, lies in the quality of players being recruited. "Ultimately, I think the players we're buying and the players that we're able to buy aren't at the level we used to have," he said. This led him to a sobering conclusion about the timeline for recovery: "It's about accepting the fact that it's going to take five to eight years in order to get the club back to anywhere near winning the Premier League."
Club Ambition Clashes with Stark Reality
Butt's prediction suggests Manchester United will not be genuine title contenders until at least the 2033 season. This stands in direct contrast to the public ambition set by the club's hierarchy. United CEO Omar Berrada, speaking in the summer of 2025, outlined a target for the team to win the Premier League by 2028.
"It's establishing a series of targets within a timeframe so we can focus our efforts and energy on that goal. Can the team win the Premier League title by 2028? Of course," Berrada asserted. He acknowledged the scale of the challenge, referencing the club's 15th-place finish, but remained defiant: "Why not aim for it? Why not do everything in our power? I firmly believe we can do it. We have two or three summer windows to build a team to start competing to win the Premier League."
The chasm between Butt's bleak eight-year prognosis and the board's stated four-year ambition highlights the significant disconnect and pressure surrounding one of the world's most famous football clubs. As United currently sit sixth in the Premier League table, the debate over the root causes of their struggles and the path back to the summit shows no sign of abating.
