Failings at the top have to be addressed if United are to reach heights again

The Premier League is celebrating its 30th anniversary and many people will cast their minds back to Manchester United winning their first title under Sir Alex Ferguson in 1993. What is often forgotten, though, is that they lost their first two matches of that campaign.

United's 4-0 battering at Brentford on Saturday made it two losses from two again but hardly anybody is expecting history to repeat itself and, far from mounting a title charge, the Old Trafford club look set to find things get worse before they improve.

Red Devils supporters are wondering when the club's decline will be arrested, but the biggest problem is that nobody in a position of authority has a grasp on where it’s all going wrong.

Ralf Rangnick came close last season, admitting that the squad was in need of “open heart surgery” and conceding that United had fallen six years behind Liverpool.

It was the kind of straight talking which was desperately needed, but plans to retain Rangnick's services in a consultancy role were soon ditched as United switched their attention to Erik ten Hag.

Given the shortcomings of the squad alluded to by Rangnick, it was always going to take several years of smart signings to get United competing for the top prizes.

But, with two weeks left in the summer transfer window, there are few signs of immediate progress.

Ten Hag is renowned as an excellent coach who enjoys working with the players on the training ground, but he seems to have been given a strong say in summer transfers, perhaps to the club's detriment.

As one of the biggest clubs in the world, United should be casting their net as wide as possible.

But two of their three summer signings – Lisandro Martinez and Tyrell Malacia – were recruited from Dutch teams Ajax and Feyenoord and the other, Christian Eriksen, spent five years with Ajax before his switch to Tottenham in 2013.

Those transfers have Ten Hag's fingerprints all over them and that will only serve to increase the pressure on his shoulders if any of them are perceived to be underperforming.

Ten Hag has not publicly criticised any of his players, but he withdrew Martinez – a reported £57m signing – at half-time in the loss at Brentford and it will be interesting to see if the player is picked for Monday's match at home to Liverpool.

Facing Liverpool at this point could work one of two ways.

United's players could dig a lot deeper and pull off a positive result against a Reds side suffering from significant injury problems.

The likelier scenario is that Ten Hag's side will slide to another defeat but, either way, United's ingrained problems will persist.

Player for player they look nowhere near Liverpool or Manchester City, and a fair way adrift of Chelsea, Tottenham and Arsenal, their supposed rivals for a top-four place.

United are odds-against for a top-six finish, and it is hard to disagree that they seem more likely to regress than improve on last season's sixth place.

Good coaches help players improve and it is still possible that Ten Hag, given time, will get a better tune out of some of the talent at his disposal.

However, the 52-year-old is new to the league and appears to be on a learning curve as much as some of his players because some of his early tactical decisions have been quite baffling.

Eriksen was signed as an attacking midfielder but in his first two games he has started as a false nine and a defensive midfielder, presumably to accommodate Bruno Fernandes.

Martinez was recruited to play in central defence, but his lack of height soon became an issue and, after a tough 45 minutes at Brentford, he may not be given many more opportunities.

There are other strings to Martinez's bow, however, and it is possible that he could play in a holding midfield role.

But the Argentinian's transfer appears to be another case of muddled thinking, as was Ten Hag's decision to play with only one holding midfielder in each of the first two games.

The Premier League is relentlessly physical, where any opponent is capable of exposing an obvious weakness and United, in their current guise, are making themselves far too easy to play against.

Brentford manager Thomas Frank went with a tall team and a direct style of play to unsettle United and his team were more workmanlike than wonderful until Bryan Mbeumo's superb counter-attacking fourth goal, by which point the game was already effectively won.

After the game there was criticism of the United players, whose running stats had compared poorly with Brentford's, and some of it was probably justified.

However, the harshest reality is that United simply lack the quality to compete with the top teams and until better players are brought in or developed the situation is unlikely to change.

Rather than panic-buying a high profile player or two by the end of the window, United should be focusing on the recruitment of a top-class sporting director.

Their status as one of the biggest clubs in world football has not changed, and given a longer-term vision and a modicum of common sense allied to expertise in the search for talent, they should be able to turn the tide.

Until the recruitment situation is resolved the managers, irrespective of their attributes, are being set up to fail.

Whether Ten Hag is the right man to front the recovery is open to debate.

However, United's biggest problems are off the field and, until they are properly addressed, their on-field decline could continue.

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