CASE 025: THE UNITED STRAND BY JOHN BANEY

CASE 025: A UNITED FAN'S PERSPECTIVE - THE UNITED STRAND BY JOHN BANEY

Last week’s clash between Manchester United and West Ham United will go down as a truly odd classic. It was a match that will be remembered not for its happenings on the pitch, nor for a clash of rival fanbases, nor for its significance in the table. Instead, it was the match’s potential influence on one man’s haircut that grabbed global headlines and flooded algorithms worldwide.

Bryan De La Cruz, as we’re all aware at this point, is that Manchester United fan who vowed not to cut his hair until United won five games in a row. He announced this challenge with a freshly buzzed head on October 5th, 2024, and has posted regular updates on social media ever since, as his frizzy, curly locks have grown longer and longer with each passing result.

By February 10th, 2026, “The United Strand”, as his known on social media, had the clippers in his sights, with United arriving at West Ham’s London Stadium on the coattails of 4-match winning streak under interim manager Michael Carrick. 493 days into his ridiculous, self-imposed challenge, De La Cruz had his first opportunity to trim his now utterly ridiculous doo - all he needed was a Manchester United win against a relegation-battling opponent.

The stage was set for the strangest of occasions. But, with all the world watching, and with my beloved Manchester United making a genuine run up the top Premier League table, I couldn’t help but find myself rooting against this guy.

It’s not that I was rooting against United - the chase for top-4 was now genuinely on. But, in the back of my mind, I was totally fine with a draw. That’d keep their unbeaten streak alive and put another point in the bank, but at the same time, would ensure that this random dude everyone’s been talking about couldn’t get his stupid haircut.

Frankly, I’ve found the movement annoying since the very beginning. This Manchester United “fan” has gained all this fame, following, and (probably) money, at the expense of the very team he’s said to support. And, most importantly, he did so by setting an what felt like an unrealistic bar to reach for what was, pretty definitively, the worst version of Manchester United we’d seen in a long time.

The challenge actually began 230 days after United’s most recent five-game winning streak, so De La Cruz knew exactly what he was signing up for upon starting this trend. United were flailing, Ten Hag was on the ropes, and the chaos that would become the Ruben Amorim era hadn’t yet entered the Glazers’ remarkably smooth brains. United were coming off a season where they finished in a disappointing 8th place, and were winless in the four games leading up to the challenge. Asking this United side to win five games on the spin was like asking the Titanic to cross the Atlantic in record time after it’d hit the iceberg.

But, I suppose, that was the point. For this challenge to catch on, jeopardy was required. It needed to be a number that would make everyone stop and say, “Yeah, I don’t think they’re going to do that … ever.” In that sense, mission accomplished, Bryan.

The catch, of course, is that while this felt an impossible task for United, it was an achievable goal for better teams. Clubs like Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool, and Chelsea, for example, have all hit the 5-win mark consecutively since the challenge began. That in itself shouldn’t be the damning part for United. What does make United look silly, however, is the fact that Aston Villa, Newcastle, Brighton, Crystal Palace, Nottingham Forrest, and even Wolves have managed this feat before them. Tottenham, fittingly, is the only other “big six” club not to reach the 5-win mark since the challenge began.

This is when the classic line of “But this is Manchester United we’re talking about!” starts to echo around Twitter, groupchats, and other toxic places. If 10 other Premier League clubs have achieved this goal, surely the mighty Manchester United should as well! It plays into this lingering undercurrent that’s been true since the very day Sir Alex Furgussen walked out the door in 2013 - that this team isn’t special anymore just because “they’re Manchester United.”

They’ve won trophies in recent years, like the Carabao Cup in 2023 and the FA Cup in 2024. They even made the Europa League Final as recently as last year. That’d serve as a pretty feather in the cap of most English clubs. But that’s not enough for Manchester United, of course. They, because of their immense fanbase and because they were very good about a decade and a half ago, are held to a much higher standard - even though neither of those factors has influence on current performance.

All that money they’ve spent, however, serves as a real reason why they “should” be good. But a decade plus of spending and not winning serves as ample evidence that, at least in the case of Manchester United, spending a lot doesn’t guarantee success. Spending effectively, it seems, is far more important.

This nightmare combination of expectation and dysfunction has left United in a horrible position, where what should be considered successes (Carabao Cups, FA Cups, Top-4 finishes in the Premier League) aren’t properly celebrated. Good has become the enemy of Great in a time where “Absolute Dogshit” has been around plenty. As a result, the goalposts of what’s considered success will continue their inevitable shift towards “Premier League, Champions League, or bust” - goals that are simply too high for what United currently are.

Amongst this constant turmoil of expectation, the last thing United needed was another definition of success - especially an entirely arbitrary one like winning 5 games in-a-row. Whether De La Cruz meant to or not, he’s created today’s “Are United Back-O-Meeter”.

With no European football and no FA Cup or Carabao Cup to play for, United Strand’s viral challenge seems to be picking up more headlines than the club’s surprising run towards Champions League qualification. My guy, Matheus Cunha, had some similar thoughts on the matter:

"People are more worried about getting five wins because of the haircut than about the 15 points. So, I'm more for the 15 points; I don't care about his haircut at all. We talk about it sometimes, but it's not very motivating for us. We don't see it as cool … No one wants those five wins more than we do … but I think having this pressure from his haircut hides a bit of the beauty that could be in the season, you know?”

Great goal scorers, like Cunha, always seem to know where the goal is. So, perhaps it's fitting that he can sense when the goalposts have been moved on him and his United teammates. 

If it's rival fans or click-baity English media to blame for constantly redefining what success looks like for this era of Manchester United, then so be it. But, if it's one of the club’s own fans championing the “we’re not good enough” narrative for the sake of his own benefit, that’s really hard to look past when the club is obviously improving.

As Cunha said, wins are what’s really important here - not haircuts. So, as a fan, I’m trying to do my best to focus only on that. But, there remains a petty part of me that hopes United win their next 4 games, draw the 5th, and repeat that cycle for eternity. 

De La Cruz’s next opportunity for a haircut will be on Friday, March 20th, on the road at Bournemouth, 531 days into the challenge. Unfortunately, I fear we’ll still be talking about this then. But, fortunately, I’d bet Bryan will still be pushing hair out of his eye for much, much longer than that.