Capitalism has an extraordinary talent for discovering the virtues of prudence only after it has indulged itself into a corner. United has been run for years as a vanity project, gorging on transfers and dividends while the less glamorous parts of the club quietly picked up the bill. When a new owner announces that two hundred posts must go and perks must be trimmed to stop a famous institution going bust, it is not cruelty so much as belated realism. The moral failure lies not in the arithmetic of an uncomfortable cull, but in the long complacency that made such shock therapy necessary. I shall save my real anger for the day we discover that the owners have spared their own extravagances while preaching thrift to the ticket office and the training ground. If sacrifice is shared from boardroom to boiler room, this may be remembered as surgery; if it is merely imposed from above, will the operation not be recognised as yet another sermon in hypocrisy?