I hate to break it to Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sir Dave Brailsford but buying a different kind of pillow for Casemiro isn’t going to fix this. Getting Antony to don a pair of electrically heated shorts isn’t going to fix it, either. Manchester United is the sick man of European football and it is going to take an awful lot more than a few marginal gains to put it on the road to resurrection.

Sure, they can tell a few office staff at Old Trafford that they can’t have two seats together for the FA Cup final at Wembley later this month and Ratcliffe can garner all the easy headlines he wants with emails about how the IT department needs a decent tidy but United are a club that needs major surgery, not a few Band Aids to help with public relations.

I’ve been watching United home and away for more than 40 years. I was in the Platt Lane End at Maine Road in September 1989 when they were humiliated 5-1 by Manchester City, I was at Old Trafford in October 2011 when they lost 6-1 to City and I was at Anfield when they lost 7-0 to Liverpool in March last year.

Those performances were embarrassing but I have never seen a United side look more like a rabble, a disorganised band of disconnected, demotivated, disinterested divas than they appeared on the television pictures from Selhurst Park on Monday evening. There is embarrassing and then there are the depths United plumbed in south London.

The defeat meant United had lost 13 league games in a season for the first time in more than 30 years. It was a mismatch from the start. Palace are a lower mid-table side but they were so superior they looked like they were playing it for laughs.

Manchester United were thrashed 4-0 on an evening to forget at Selhurst Park on Monday 

Eberechi Eze and Michael Olise were so far above anything United had to offer that they started showboating from early in the second half. It was as if they could not believe quite how easy it was.

It looked a bit like a training ground exercise for Oliver Glasner’s team. Actually, it was worse than that. It looked like United had turned up thinking they were playing in an exhibition game. It looked like they had sent out a vets’ team for a Premier League match. Casemiro’s a stage further on from that. I’ve seen more athletic performances in Walking Football.

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Ratcliffe, Brailsford and the rest of the gang at Ineos wanted control over the football operation at Old Trafford as a condition of their minority investment and the Glazers, who probably couldn’t believe their luck, were happy to give it to them. Now they need to do something with that control.

It’s time for some tough decisions. By that, no one means getting rid of Antony. That’s not a tough decision. Nor is dispensing with a host of other players. Some people laughed at the story that the majority of United’s squad would be up for sale in the summer but no one’s laughing any more.

Very few of the players who started the game against Palace are capable of playing a part in a team that could challenge for a title. Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo have the talent and the desire. Fernandes should also be at the heart of the rebuild. Beyond that, it is slim pickings.

The hard truth is that United under Erik ten Hag are further away from returning to their glory days under Sir Alex Ferguson than they ever have been. For the last 11 years, the club’s been on a voyage where it keeps being blown off course. This time, it feels like it’s an old clipper getting smashed to bits on the rocks.

We might as well abandon any pretence that Ten Hag is going to be at Old Trafford next season. United are supposed to be the biggest club in this country and they are floundering in eighth place in the Premier League, playing like a team that is getting further and further away from the top, not closer.

Ten Hag has lost control. His recruitment – particularly Antony, Casemiro and Mason Mount – has been dreadful. He has been desperately unlucky with injuries but he has also been unable to mend a player culture at the club that is rotten to its arrogant, entitled, hedonistic core.

It is not all his fault. But the buck stops with the manager and, after a promising start last season, he has been overwhelmed this season. Bruno Fernandes is the best player at the club but he was the worst choice Ten Hag could have made for captain. That, too, has damaged the manager.

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If Ratcliffe and Brailsford have decided that Ten Hag is not going to be at Old Trafford next season – and he’s not – then the most dignified and cleanest thing is to end his reign now and not leave him like a dead man walking for the last three league games of the season and the FA Cup final.

Nothing that United might do between now and the end of that final against City on May 25, not beating Arsenal on Sunday, not even beating City at Wembley, is going to save Ten Hag’s job so it would be better to call a halt to yet another false start for the club now.

United should look at the way tortured, protracted West Ham mishandled the exit of David Moyes and resolve not to repeat the same mistakes. They might also study the way one of the greats of the game, Louis van Gaal, was treated in his final days at Old Trafford.

Van Gaal’s impending departure was an open secret as United approached the 2016 Cup Final against Palace. Everyone, except Van Gaal, appeared to be in on it. United won the final and Van Gaal grew angry at the post-match press conference when he was asked again about his future. The next day he was fired.

That kind of charade does nobody any favours. Former United stars Paul Scholes and Michael Owen both suggested Ten Hag ought to go immediately in the aftermath of the Palace defeat. Steve McClaren, once Ferguson’s number two and now on Ten Hag’s staff, would be an obvious caretaker.

United need to thank Ten Hag for his efforts and start the search for a successor now. They need to get a new manager in place as soon as possible and they need to start working hard on bringing some quality and some character to a squad that is sorely lacking in both.

Ten Hag is not the man. That, sadly, has become obvious. He tried but the monster of entitlement, complacency and mediocrity that Manchester United has become devoured him as it has devoured so many others before him.

It is time for Ratcliffe and Brailsford to stop dithering. It is time they stopped worrying less about which staff get tickets for the Cup Final and more about finding someone who can build a decent team to play in it.