Just how are Man United joint top?

Supporting Manchester United is a strangely ambivalent affair at the moment. There were reasons to come away from Old Trafford on Saturday feeling distinctly positive after the 2-0 win against Wigan. After all, the three points allowed United to draw level with Chelsea at the top of the table, thanks to the leaders losing for the third time in four – this time 1-0 at Birmingham – and Arsenal failing to turn a two-goal half-time lead against Spurs into victory in the lunchtime game. Nonetheless, doubt and dissatisfaction was still hanging in the air at the final whistle. The double dismissal that Wigan suffered early in the second half – Antolin Alcaraz and Hugo Rodallega seeing red in quick succession – had killed the contest at a time when Wigan could have felt justifiably aggrieved to be a goal down after a first half in which they had quite literally made most of the running.

Javier Hernandez ultimately added a second headed goal to Patrice Evra’s earlier effort and United, understandably given their numerical advantage, enjoyed a very comfortable second half. Perhaps feeding off the United players’ uncharacteristic reticence coming forward throughout the game, the cheers when the referee blew for time were polite rather than rapturous. The relatively subdued reaction to a final whistle that put the team joint top of the table was exacerbated by the fact that Old Trafford had been emptying rapidly for some ten minutes, and a 2-0 home win against a team who played for half an hour with only nine men and who slipped into the relegation zone as a result of their defeat might not be much to crow about anyway, but the win had given United a share of the lead in the table and so the theme of United supporters’ confused and conflicting emotions at the moment is one worth pursuing.

One player in particular, of course, is causing United fans inner torment at present. The Wigan game saw the return of Wayne Rooney to action for the first time since his appearance as a substitute in the 2-2 draw against West Brom five weeks previously. Since then he’s asked to leave the club, undermining his manager and his fellow players in the process, and then backtracked upon his decision by signing a new, vastly improved contract, before flying off to Dubai to try to heal his marriage and then stopping off in the United States to work on his much-discussed fitness levels. When Rooney was introduced in the fifty-sixth minute, then, I can’t have been the only United fan wondering quite how to react. Do I applaud or not? Would a cheer be appropriate? Should I remain in my seat? I can’t actually boo him, or can I? In the event, although relatively little criticism emanated from my part of the ground, anybody who watched Match of the Day on Saturday night would have noted that Rooney entered the fray to a distinctly mixed reaction from the fans as a whole. Personally, I clapped as the substitution was being made but even I had no idea where my applause for the departing Federico Macheda ended and my response to the entrance of Rooney began.

This season, United supporters are watching a side with frailties in defence, midfield, and attack that has nonetheless managed to avoid defeat in its first fourteen league games and that has, in recent weeks, conspired to wipe out what was threatening to turn into an ominous gap behind Chelsea. As if that wasn’t confusing enough, last season’s star player is now considered a pariah by most for flirting with Manchester City’s money. To a few, however, he’s quite the reverse; he’s a whistleblower who said what the fans are all thinking (the current owners are allowing the team to regress) and who has allegedly provoked the Glazers into sanctioning greater transfer investment as a condition of his signing a new contract. For me, Rooney’s past month amounts to a sort of “end of innocence” experience as a football fan. I do not object to the fact that United are now paying twice as much per week to a player who is, at a generous assessment, playing half as well as he was twelve months ago, if that is what it costs to keep him at the club longer in the hope that either his form will return or he will be sold for a huge fee. Instead, I am saddened by the way Rooney managed to secure his own future by insinuating in public that United should be grateful to have him.

There is nothing, it seems, for Manchester United fans to be certain about at the moment. The team obviously isn’t playing well and yet looks to be on course for both another title challenge and participation in Europe beyond Christmas. That doesn’t mean they’ll win anything though and, even if they do, it will not be enough to address the slide that the club has been on since the most recent on-pitch peak of 2008, which in turn did not address the off-pitch ownership problems that stretch back half a decade now.

With the Glazers in charge, every penny that the fans give to the club – from ticket sales to replica shirts to pre-match burgers – is handed over in the melancholy knowledge that the revenue generated by their inability to turn away from the club only perpetuates the current regime. And now I must stop writing, before I linger too long on the unsettling truth that Sir Alex’s bitter falling-out with the Irish racehorse owners (and United shareholders) in 2005 gave them every incentive to sell their sizeable stakes to the Glazers in the first place, challenging even the great Scot’s legacy in a “Blair’s oil war” sort of way.

Follow William Abbs on Twitter.