Heart of darkness Is Amorim the only one treating United as a football club?

Further and deeper into the jungle. Taunted by the quivering vines, mocked by the rubber trees, bitten and bruised by the asphyxiating vileness of nature.

- Jonathan Liew

Further and deeper into the jungle. Taunted by the quivering vines, mocked by the rubber trees, bitten and bruised by the asphyxiating vileness of nature. Ropes groaning, extras muttering, mud and rock resisting. Rasmus Højlund to Napoli, maybe tomorrow, maybe not. Alejandro Garnacho to Chelsea, maybe this week, maybe next. Grim faces in the morning. Grimsby in the evening. Kobbie Mainoo wants out. Carlos Baleba wants in but is not going to go on strike or down tools; plenty of time for that once he actually gets to Old Trafford.

There will be suffering and there will be ridicule, and there is no shortage of parasites to feed on your corpse. A man on the radio thinks you're a disgrace. An influencer in a padded chair is shouting "athleticism in midfield" into a webcam. Both are earning handy six figures a year for doing so.

The jungle plays tricks on your senses. It's full of lies and illusions, the stench of disease, the ghosts of dead men, Nicky Butt's latest take for BetMGM, Bruno Fernandes in a reconfigured midfield double-pivot. Can you still tell the difference between the reality and the hallucination, between everyday life and the dream? Why haul a steamship across the jungle? Why bring the opera to Iquitos?

But of course if you have to ask these questions, you shall never know the answers. Werner Herzog famously dragged a real 320-tonne steamship over the Andes while making his monumental, disaster-strewn 1982 film Fitzcarraldo. Reflecting on the deeply troubled production, during which several crew members were injured and the shoot was marred by delays and screaming rows, Herzog dubbed himself the "Conquistador of the Useless", a man driven by allegorical obsession to see his pointless and morbidly outlandish vision into flesh.