Last week, Sir James Ratcliffe performed one of the most blatant and expensive attempts to change the narrative in the history of football.

Last weekend, all the talk surrounding Manchester United was about employee redundancies, fan protests and the club potentially falling foul of financial fair play rules. The clouds of doom hanging over Old Trafford were dark and broody, and the natives were getting restless.

Fast forward seven days and pretty much the only thing anyone is talking about in a United context is their proposed £2 billion, 100,000-seater sparkling new stadium.

Not exactly a subtle change of topics.

As a neutral, it was interesting to watch United’s minority owner leap into damage limitation mode in the wake of the fans taking to the streets.

First came an interview with Gary Neville where Sir James explained that the repeated waves of cost cutting were necessary to stop the club running out of money by the end of 2025.

Dramatic, yes. Headline grabbing, certainly. But I can’t imagine anybody with two brain cells to rub together is really buying that sob story.

Manchester United running out of money? That’s a ludicrous notion when the club probably has a billion pounds’ worth of players on its books. Just sell a couple in the summer if things are really that bad.

But don’t pretend that sacking the tea ladies and calling a halt to the staff’s free lunches is essential when the club will probably, despite the belt tightening, still end up spending several million more on players this summer than they generate in sales.

There’s nothing like promising the masses a brighter future to get them to quit complaining about the present

I am not going to say the interview was a total failure. But in my mind, Sir James did little to justify the way he and his henchmen have driven a sword through the heart of the club. Even with a favourable interviewer in Neville, who just happens to be on the committee planning the new stadium.

Which brings us to part two of the charm initiative – the stadium announcement itself. Again, it seems a bit weird that a club that can’t afford to feed their employees a non-Sofrito-level ham and cheese toastie can find a couple of billion for a stadium.

Yes, I know, the two things are different. Operating costs versus infrastructure expenditure. And the money for the stadium will come from loans, investment, sponsorships, etc. I get all that.

Yet it still feels a bit incongruous to be saying on the one hand we are totally broke and about to run out of cash but, meanwhile, look at what we are about to spend £2 billion on.

Truth be told, the new stadium looks the business.

Not sure about the whole draping it in candy floss idea, but the trident on top could well become iconic in the future, and the fact that it has been designed to amplify crowd sound should help compensate for the prawn sandwich brigade (younger readers may need to look that up).

But even so, you got a sense that the whole announcement was rushed through to deflect attention from the club’s current on- and off-field problems. There’s nothing like promising the masses a brighter future to get them to quit complaining about the present.

And, at least temporarily, it seems to have worked.

Seeing double

This afternoon’s League Cup final has taken on a little bit more significance for Liverpool in the wake of their Champions League elimination.

There’s no denying it is the lesser of the three trophies they were chasing until Paris Saint-Germain put a spanner in the works on Tuesday, downgrading their treble aspirations to a mere double.

There doesn’t seem to be cat’s chance in hell of Liverpool not winning the Premier League now. It is such a forgone conclusion that some bookmakers have already offered to pay out to those who put money on a Liverpool success.

But there is something a bit more exciting about winning a double – any double – than just winning the title alone. The league may be the main course but having a domestic cup as side dish shows a different level of dominance.

So, will Liverpool pull it off today? Well, you would need to be complete muppet not to think they go into the match as favourites. However, Newcastle United haven’t won a proper trophy since 1955. To put that in perspective, Winston Churchill was still prime minister at the time.

And on that basis, I think it’s safe to say the team in black and white (as was TV in 1955 coincidentally) and their fans will be as up for today’s final as it is possible to get.

Which ultimately makes this one of those games that is too close to call.

So I won’t.

Big Frank’s big turnaround

Wouldn’t you know it!

I had a whole piece written in my head about the magnificent job Frank Lampard is doing at Coventry City and then they go and lose 2-0 to relegation-threatened Derby County in their midweek match.

Before that they were on an amazing roll, with Frank and his boys winning nine out of 10 matches, their only defeat being to top-of-the-table Leeds United. It was, apparently, Coventry’s best-ever run of league form.

Quite incredible really, considering when Lampard took over they were in 17th place and looking like they could potentially get dragged into a relegation battle. At the time of writing, they are up to sixth and have a great chance of making the play-offs.

Derby defeat aside, Frank has still done a great job under slightly weird circumstances: the majority of Coventry fans hadn’t wanted previous manager Mark Robins fired and an equally large number didn’t want Lampard appointed.

Yet the former Chelsea, Everton and, ironically, Derby, boss has gone a long way towards repairing a managerial reputation that has taken plenty of knocks over the last few years.

Sort of makes him the anti-Rooney...

Until we meet again... and again

A combination of traditional fixture computer gremlins and football fate sometimes conspires to make the same teams play each other in rapid succession.

It happens surprisingly often in the men’s game where you see two teams clash in a cup tie one weekend and then the league a few days later.

Well, apparently the mix of gremlins and fate is even stronger in women’s football.

Today, Chelsea’s women take on Liverpool’s women in the League Cup final.

Then the two teams face each other in the quarter-final of the Champions League in midweek before clashing again in the league next weekend. And then, just to round it off, they play the second leg of the European tie.

So that’s four games between the same two teams in the space of 12 days.

Go gremlins.

E-mail: James.calvert@timesofmalta.com

X: @Maltablade