Once again, Manchester United have sacked their manager and there's more talk about DNA than you'd find at your average forensics convention.
As is the case for experts in such a field, the chief suspects can be readily identified when we get into the weeds of culture, grandeur and 'The United Way'.
"There is a very good video online, [United and England great] Bobby Charlton talks about what Manchester United is as a football club — adventurous, exciting football, playing young players, entertaining the crowd. Manchester United must take risks and be courageous in playing attacking football," Gary Neville told Sky Sports News.
"Manchester United have got to appoint a manager that fits the DNA of their club. Ajax will never change for anybody, Barcelona will never change for anybody. I don't believe Manchester United should change for anybody.
"You can't say these managers [since Sir Alex Ferguson] are not good coaches, but they've all come in with different ideas, different styles of play, different philosophies and none of them really fit the Manchester United way. The club have to find a manager now who's got experience, who's willing to play fast, entertaining, attacking, aggressive football."
MORE: Why was Ruben Amorim sacked?
It felt telling that, with Ruben Amorim's final employment-torching press conference after Sunday's 1-1 draw at Leeds United, he namechecked former United captain and current podcast magnate Neville, whose work at Sky Sports since retirement in 2011 has put him at the forefront of the punditocracy.
English football's TV talking-head class is dominated players from United's glory days under Sir Alex Ferguson. One of the most viral clips since Amorim's demise came from two of those, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt, tipping another — Roy Keane — for the United job. Keane has not worked as a manager since he was sacked by Ipswich Town 15 years ago.
After the failure of Amorim's 3-4-3 dogma, the urge to fall back on something comforting and familiar feels strong. If the recently departed United head coach (not manager) was right to identify Neville et al as Old Trafford tastemakers, then the path to more bad decisions is wide. Just imagine Darren Fletcher wins handsomely at Burnley and then against Brighton & Hove Albion in the FA Cup. Even if he doesn't, consider Ole Gunnar Solskjaer or Michael Carrick overseeing an upturn as interim manager from now until the end of the season. Everything will feel warm, familiar and fun. People like nice things. Why can't we have nice things?
MORE: United's best option as an interim manager
Man United "DNA" cannot replace Ruben Amorim
Neville would bristle at this comparison given he's frequently spoken out in favour of progressive political causes, but "Manchester United DNA" is a phrase in step with our turbulent times. It's "Make America Great Again"; the sunlit upland of "Brexit Means Brexit" and "taking back control". In the form it's presented, using simplistic and emotive terms (who doesn't like fast, entertaining, attacking, aggressive football?), Manchester United DNA is a fugazi: a made-up tale that has never existed in such a simplified way.
This is not to say Manchester United do not have proud traditions and common threads that run through their history. All football clubs do. It's one of the great joys of fandom and the community it creates. For better or worse, Amorim is now part of the same tapestry as Bryan Robson and William Prunier; all very different stories to tell, all cherished and retold with the smiles of triumph or gallows humour.
1 - In the Premier League, Rúben Amorim had the worst win ratio (32%), the worst goals conceded per game ratio (1.53) and the lowest clean ratio (15%) of any Manchester United manager. Coach. Pic.twitter.com/oZMVat44Us
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) January 5, 2026
The successful clubs also have the most towering figures to reference. United's are Sir Matt Busby and Ferguson, two of the three Old Trafford bosses to have won an English league title. United's joint-record 20 championship-winning campaigns were all led by either Busby (five), Ferguson (13) or Ernest Mangnall (two). Under Busby and Ferguson, United were an attacking, dominant team. The most financially powerful clubs in any era generally have the greatest opportunity to be exactly that.
The most tangible and romantic link between the Busby and Ferguson dynasties is the prominence of youth, from the Busby Babes to Fergie's Fledglings. The club was seldom shy when it came to furnishing those homegrown talents with marquee transfers, from Denis Law to Wayne Rooney.
The problem with the "Manchester United DNA" talk as a throwback to Ferguson is it underplays his unique brilliance. No one has a more solid case of being considered the greatest manager of all time. Ferguson was a master motivator who moved with the times in a way none of his contemporaries did. The hairdryer was dormant in the dresser by the time Cristiano Ronaldo was on the scene. He pioneered squad rotation and tailored United's approach in Europe, making them a far more refined proposition to other British clubs who were trying to crash, bang, wallop their way to glory despite the fact the continental game had moved away from them during the ban on English clubs following the Heysel disaster.
To suggest, albeit inadvertently, that Ferguson was great simply because he played aggressive, attacking football with wingers and young players, is an affront to his genius. Then there's the problem of placing United in a bracket with Ajax and Barcelona in terms of a footballing identity and way of playing.
Ajax and Barcelona styles are nothing like Man United
Both Ajax and Barca's playing models are derived from the Dutch school of Rinus Michels, who managed both clubs and the Netherlands national side, with his great pupil Johan Cruyff at the forefront for all of those teams. Cruyff developed those ideas when he returned to Barcelona in the late 1980s, where Pep Guardiola was his midfield lynchpin.
Guardiola is, of course, the current high priest of the style and any mention of him in this article is likely to make United fans bristle. The argument is not that Cruyff and Guardiola's doctrine of positional play is greater than Ferguson's principles; it's that it's inherently more teachable.
The modern game isn't short of people in thrall to Guardiolisme who have talked their way into top jobs and been found wanting. But there are also the likes of Luis Enrique, Mikel Arteta, Vincent Kompany, Enzo Maresca and (to a lesser extent) Xabi Alonso, who are disciples of the style and have thrived at the top of the modern game. Guardiola insists successful head coaches cannot work on the basis of "copy-paste" and all of the coaches above have brought their own experience and tweaks to the template. Guardiola's own work has evolved significantly since his era-defining stint in charge of Barcelona between 2008 and 2012.
But the existence of bullet-pointed principles of position play, the training pitch famously divided into 20 zones, means it's more easily sustained at places like Barcelona and Ajax and transported elsewhere. Set alongside Cruyff and Guardiola's coaching trees, who are the most successful Ferguson alumni? Mark Hughes? Steve Bruce?
No collection of pleasing football adjectives can change the fact that Ferguson was a one-off. In time, maybe when ex-United players aren't so dominant in the chatterati and the Godfather himself isn't turning up at the training ground in a time of crisis, this can become a strength. Because clubs who pride themselves on having a clear identity or have one foisted upon them by a dominant figure usually have to deal with unwanted fallout further down the line.
Ajax and Barcelona having their Cruyffian ideals does not make them immune to crisis. On the contrary, these fiercely guarded principles are a key ingredient in the interminable politicking behind the scenes at both clubs. Cruyff might have led Barcelona to the nirvana of their Guardiola days, but this thinking also resulted in Louis van Gaal's dreadful second spell in charge and Ronald Koeman flailing around in a job he always desired but was beyond his capabilities.
Arsenal were the antithesis of everything Arsene Wenger stood for before he turned English football on its head in the late 1990s. Chelsea were jazzy freewheelers in the 1970s and 1990s before Jose Mourinho arrived as a hard-bitten winner, causing a shift in the collective mentality around the west London club that remains and has been baked in by their more recent state of flux.
When he was appointed at Liverpool in 2015, Jurgen Klopp astutely observed that you cannot carry history around in your backpack. Liverpool were 25 years without a title at that point, and it took Klopp five years to end the wait, building one of the finest teams the Premier League has ever seen to thrillingly go toe-to-toe with Guardiola's Manchester City. United will be 13 years removed from Ferguson's 13th and last title at the end of this season and all the evidence suggests a much longer wait is on the cards.
One of Klopp's many achievements at Anfield was to stop history from weighing down Liverpool and — only once he had built a team worthy of tugging at such emotionally rich threads — using it to propel them, creating new stories of "famous Anfield nights" and suchlike. After the success started, fans could cite Klopp's sympathies for socialist principles and cast him as an heir to Bill Shankly. What really made him a worthy successor to Shankley, Bob Paisley and the rest was his being a superb football manager, in tune with his squad and the wider context of his club.
United need one of those. Plenty of elite coaches will look at Senne Lammens. Leny Yoro, Kobbie Mainoo, Bruno Fernandes, Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo and see the nucleus of a squad that can play progressive, exciting, winning football. You don't need Manchester United DNA to see that, nor do you need to bury the next attempted reset in such loud, useless talk.