Manchester United got beaten yet again this Saturday (December 30), this time going down 2-1 to recently promoted Nottingham Forest.

Gone are the glory days under Sir Alex Ferguson when his teams strode the world as a footballing colossus. Since he stepped down in 2013, none of his successors have come close to attaining sucesss, in fact the club has gone backward.

Erik Ten Hag got Manchester United to third last season and the word was he was the right man and that the Red Devils would press on next season and even win the EPL.

Come the half way point of this season, Manchester United look mediocre and are way out of contention. The team has already lost nine EPL and four UEFA Champions League matches. It is now out of the Champions League at the Group stage.

Despite being in the doldrums and struggling, former Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand adamantly believes the boys from Old Trafford will make top 4 and possibly top 3 behind Manchester City and Liverpool.

His bias here is blatant and his emotions are stultifying his rationality. Manchester United will have to climb a mountain in the new year and on current form that doesn’t seem likely.

Ten Hag doesn’t have a potent strike force and Marcus Rashford has gone missing. At the rate he’s going, he’ll be lucky to score double-digit goals this season.

Maguire is a defensive liability and is as slow as a donkey. He’s nowhere near Ferdinand’s class when he was the team’s defensive general. Ten Hag has a lot of problems to solve with this team.

Based on Manchester United’s inconsistency, Ferdinand is dreaming. OK, he might be figuring that the team is currently in seventh place, 11 points behind Liverpool and that it can make up ground. But that would mean the other teams would dramatically fall off while Manchester United turn a corner, sweeping all before them.

Is that possible, bearing in mind that Manchester United have lost 14 games in all competitions this season, racking up the most loses at this stage since the 1930-31 season?

Ferdinand recently had a hair and beard transplant in Turkey. Perhaps the procedure scrambled his brains. Manchester United have lost nine of their first twenty games in a season. It has lost more games so far this season than it did in all of last season when it finished third and won the League Cup.

Liverpool and Manchester City will finish either first or second followed by Arsenal in third. Then you have Aston Villa, Spurs, West Ham, even Brighton battling for that fourth spot.

Manchester United may well have to settle for the Europa Conference League next year. Now that would be a fall from grace.

If Manchester United end up in the top four come the end of the season, Our Today will send Rio Ferdinand a box of Jamaica’s finest patties, courtesy of Mother’s. We’ll even give you two boxes of Mother’s patties if your boys make top three.