There's no other way to put it, Manchester United has fallen from grace. The football club used to be one of, if not the best club in English football and sometimes the world too, but the past decade or so has not been as kind to the team and it has seen far less success. There are a multitude of reasons as to why this slump has occurred, but seemingly one of the biggest issues is a fault of Sony's, as the lack of new handheld PlayStation Portable (PSP) systems is clearly holding the team back from returning to form.
This might sound like a daft joke, but in a recent episode of The Wayne Rooney Show podcast, the striker, still known for being Man United's record goalscorer, noted that PSPs were vital to their success.
As per VGC, when talking about the arrival of EA Sports FC 26, Rooney stated: "Do you know what we used to play? Not FIFA. True story, this, but at Man United I really believe a big part of our success was playing the PSP."
He continued by talking about the games the Man United players used to flock to on PSP, and surprisingly it wasn't FIFA or a football alternative.
"No, honestly, because it got us communicating more. We used to play it on the plane, on the team bus. You'd play 5v5, so it would be me, Rio [Ferdinand], Michael Carrick, John O'Shea, Wes Brown in 5v5. It was called SOCOM, on the PSP. Army game.
"You have to talk, you have to tactically be right, go and revive people when they get killed, and it was a massive part of our success, I believe. Ask any of them players who played it the same time, it was brilliant. And actually, how you played that game actually reflected that player, how they played the game, it was crazy.
"Michael Carrick was a little sneaky calm one - you'd be lying down hiding and hear a little grenade bouncing by where he'd thrown it. I was just all in, straight in frontline of the trenches, get in there. And that might surprise you, but that was a massive part of our success."
Rooney did note that some of the Man United players didn't get onboard with the PSP fun, as goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar "used to get annoyed" and "used to try and get as far away from us as possible."
So there we have it United fans, perhaps the solution isn't a new manager, a new stadium, better players, better ownership, or anything similar. Perhaps Sony just needs to launch a new handheld console, which it reportedly is doing in some form. Is a United return on its way...?