Here is the paradox: Manchester United finish third, and almost at once they are playing some of the worst football in their history. For one Guardian columnist, that is no mystery. Security that vanishes overnight, he argues, was built on quicksand from the start. He opens with Britain itself.

In January 2014, Celebrity Big Brother was so popular that its run was extended by five days, and viewers voted Jim Davidson the winner. Two years later came Brexit, and people asked where their tolerant country had gone. They had mourned the glow of London 2012 as if the 2011 riots had never happened. The columnist reads those riots as a response to long-standing structural racism, sharpened by austerity.

Calm, in other words, can be an illusion. Then he turns to Old Trafford, and the charge sheet is long. Louis Edwards joined the board a day after the Munich air disaster, and later gained control through a questionable rights issue. His son Martin floated the club for personal gain.