Mourinho Illustrartes How Many Billions His Squad Cost
Jose Mourinho brings his Manchester United side to St.Mary’s
for the penultimate game of the season and boy is he pissed off about it. Every interview is full of moaning about
fixture congestion which he says is a problem for the biggest club in England. Having reached the final of the Europa League,
he decided to put all his eggs regarding Champions League qualification in that
basket, rather than in trying to finish in the top 4 so basically they’ve
tanked their last couple of games, playing weakened sides. What with shelling out £90 million for a
player whilst having about £400m in leveraged debt and having such a nice bloke
as a manager, it’s enough to make you feel sorry for them. Wankers.
Some have tried to make out that this is some sort of revenge
mission for the EFL Cup Final – it isn’t.
We just want to score a fucking goal at home. The Middlesbrough win has lifted a bit of the
cloud over Claude Puel but not all off it.
0-2, 0-0 and 0-3 have been our last three home results and in all three
of those games we hardly had a shot or made the opponents work particularly
hard to get a clean sheet.
Virgil van Dijk and Claude’s future has been under the
microscope this week as Motivational Hockey Guy Ralph Krueger gave a long
overdue interview, the main points of which were that this summer we didn’t
have to sell any players out of financial necessity and that the takeover
happening or not makes no difference to future plans. Whilst it’s nice to know that we don’t have
to sell, that does not for one second mean that we won’t. A hypothetical figure of £60 million was put
on Virgil van Dijk and Ralph said that we could turn that down. There’s a big difference between ‘could’ and
‘would’. We ‘could’ turn down £100
million but it doesn’t mean we ‘would’.
The bottom line that if the player wants to go and enough money is
offered then he will go. Also, if we got
offered an incredible deal, for example a cash plaus player deal then we’d sell
for ‘football’ reasons.
By £60 million being quoted in the interview, it kind of
tells you that any article with ‘£50m’ in it was made up bollocks, as if you
didn’t know that anyway. What also
caught my eye is that as with most players, Virgil uses Twitter. The hard working and insightful have been
looking down his list of ‘likes’ and making news out of it. He like a few tweets regarding Chelsea
winning the league and also one by Gini Wijnaldum (Liverpool and Holland) so
the same robots writing for these clubs both carried stories saying that van
Dijk had indicated via Twitter that he was joining them. If that’s true then he’s also signing for
Feyenoord because of Dirk Kuyt, Swansea (Leroy Fer) and Everton (Honest Ron
Koeman), Juventus (Bonucci), Spurs (Wanyama) and Celtic (former club). So, when it comes to Twitter, Virgil sprays
it around. If I was going out of the
Twitter like profile, it would have to be Chelsea or Juventus as everything
else is covered by the Dutch friend, former team mate / club angle.
Ralph was non-committal about Claude’s future – dropping the
shoulder big time and giving a politicians answer saying he wasn’t involved in
the football side. Yes Ralph, I know Les
Reed is the main man on the football but you’re the man he reports to.
To tonights game and I’ve got 0-0 in the family score
prediction. I went first and nabbed it
and after I had, no one else bothered to predict a score. So, my stance on Claude had softened a bit
after Boro but then I saw tonight’s team.
FUCK OFF…. Having one our first game in five, the players that made the
difference were on the bench again as Claude went back to the line up he’d
obviously planned weeks ago. Tadic and
Davis were back having done absolutely nothing to deserve starting. Likewise Clasie and J-Rod were binned. Caceres and Pied were out but that was easier
to understand after both playing their first games for months on Saturday. In short – no one got rewarded for playing
well on Saturday. One other change was
Matt Targett starting his first game in months in place of the presumably
injured Ryan Bertrand. To make matters
worse with Claude’s selection, as we lined up for the kick off, it was obvious
we were returning to the 4-3-3 formation where no one gets forward from
midfield and the striker has half of the pitch to himself as the wingers don’t
get close enough to him either. The ‘desperately’
weakened United team had internationals from Argentina in goal, Ivory Coast,
England x2 and Italy in defence, Belgium, Spain and one kid in midfield and
France, Armenia and England’s record goalscorer up front. Tough life – that side probably cost about five
times what ours cost.
As the game is about to start I notice that there’s a couple
of new people next to me (possibly United fans) and the 20 or so seats the other
side of them to the aisle are all empty.
The game is about to start, the fucking My Way abomination has finished
and there are empty seats all over the place.
Not good.
There is the unmistakable smell of ‘end of season’ about the
game as Saints dominate the early exchanges with United not looking to get out
of second gear. Targett has a ball break
to his right foot on the edge of the box and lashes it into Row Z. The game is ‘OK’ without being anything
special and then an aimless kind of ball is punted diagonally from our right to
left by Cedric and no one is near it apart from Eric Bailly and for no reason
whatsoever, he brings the ball down with his arm. For the other end where I am it just looks
bizarre and then the ref takes a second and points to the spot. Bloody hell, what a gift, oh shit, who’s
gonna take this? I’m expecting JWP but
it’s Gabbiadini who has the ball. Hmmm,
Italy are traditionally not very good at penalties and images are in my head of
Graziano making a knob of himself at the Euro’s. Up he steps, stutters, left foot to bottom
left corner but Romero has read it and got down well to push it away. For fuck sake. It’s not a great penalty, similar to the
Tadic miss against Hull. Balls. During the next break in play I get a text
from a mate watching at home “Never a penalty – outside the box”. Justice is done then… hurrah!
United are just sitting in a holding pattern but then Redmond
takes a poor touch and loses the ball to Bailly. He rumbles forward from right back and cuts
in and manages to dummy both Yoshida and Stephens out of the way. It looks for all the world like he’s going to
walk it into the net but he shoots and Fraser stands tall and sticks out a big
arm to save. There’s another chance for
United as a big boom out of defence is wonderfully brought down by Rooney as it
drops out of the sky over his shoulder and he spins and plays Martial in but he
shanks it wide in piss poor fashion. It’s
a reminder of how good Rooney used to be.
The last 20 of the first half is instantly forgettable, the
closes to a goal not being very close at all as we get a free kick to the left
of centre about 25 yards out and free kick expert – sorry, free kick taker JWP
curls it over the wall and wide in shit fashion. It started outside the line of the post and
curled wider. Never going in. Rubbish.
Christ this is fucking boring again. At half time there’s a video played on the big
screen which has J-Rod and Steve Davis showing some kids how to take a
penalty. Irony overload as we’ve missed
our last three. There are some kids on
the pitch raising money for the Scope Charity by scoring penalties and they all
score. Maybe that’s the secret – get the
players practicing against a mascot dog.
There is a bit more life to the start of the second half,
from us anyway with Cedric bursting onto a loose ball and getting cynically
taken out by jones on the edge of the box.
JWP knocks the free kick to Tadic and he blasts it well but pretty much straight
at Romero who fists it away. A minute
later a ball in from the left is met by a sidefoot from Romeu but again it’s
straight at the keeper and comfortably pushed away but Romero has to earn his
money staright after with JWP trying a curler from the edge of the box which is
towards the top corner but the keeper sees it all the way, takes off and pushes
it wide.
For once, Gabbiadini being removed doesn’t cause too much
protest and J-Rod is on. It’s a straight
swap of course and Smalling charges up the right and crosses it. There’s a complete shambles from Stephens as
he stops the ball but keeps on running and Rooney picks it up, laboriously
plays it to Mata to lashes well over.
Cedric has been kicked all over the place, finally gives up
and it off to be replaced with Pied which limits the tactical master strokes
that Claude will be able to pull with his last substitution as no doubt this
replacement wasn’t on his fucking spreadsheet that he wrote a month ago. Stephens is getting all Beckenbauer as he
brings the ball out from the back and he finds Redmond on the left wh pisses
past Bailly and JWP’s volley is blocked and loops up in the air for Romero to
catch.
I’m beginning to think that we’re going to get done 1-0 here
and it nearly comes true as Fellaini and Martial play 1-2’s through our
midfield before Martial opens hi body up and curls round Fraser and it bounces
off the far post. The last throw from us
is to being Boufal on for JWP and the crowd boos the decision by Claude. I’ve seen it written that Boufal was booed –
that’s utter shit. It’s nice to see that
the recent examples of us falling apart when this substitution was made, do not
happen again and Boufal causes lots of problems but there’s no end product,
there never seems to be any fucking end product with us in home games. The one final chance is created by Romeu
poking a ball through to J-Rod. The
world seems to stop waiting for an offside but he turns and shoots wide of the
far post and the lino, who is clearly asleep, doesn’t give it. I wish we’d had this guy at Wembley.
Full time and another pretty dull 0-0. This time at least we had a go in the second
half but once again we leave with zero goals at home. In isolation, a 0-0 at home to United its not
a bad result and we were the better side so Saints fans would normally be happy
enough with that but a 4th home game in a row without scoring?
OK, it’s not Claude’s fault that no fucker can take a
penalty and it’s not his fault that the United goalkeeper had a good game and
it wasn’t his fault that he was stood too close when the ball slid off of
Bailly’s head and hit him in the face.
It is his fault that we reverted to the tried and failed 4-3-3 formation
where the striker is completely isolated and none of our midfielders get into
the box. It is his fault that he picked
the same old tired underperforming team again after winning the game when it
changed. Tadic had a semi-decent second
half but in the first he was dreadful and just slowed down every attack either
by checking back or just giving the ball away.
Steve Davis – another who didn’t really deserve to be starting, kept
giving the ball away and taking backwards as the default option. Claude obviously picks his teams for the next
three matches on paper and how people perform makes no difference. Hypothetically, If J-Rod played game 1 and
got a hat-trick, he’d be out for game 2 because it’s Shane Long’s turn to
play. A better, real world example is
that of Jordy Clasie, who has been left out for 3 months apart from 2 games –
the last 2 games that we won. I’m not
saying he was solely responsible but in the West Brom and Middlesbrough away
games, he was really good, scoring in the Baggies game and setting up a goal in
the Boro game and has been straight out of the side for the next game. Clasie isn’t my favourite player but based on
performances he deserved to start tonight.
If good performances are not rewarded then what’s the point?
I was wavering on the Claude question after the Boro game
because of the position in the league we are likely to finish in. However, I realised that 8th is
achievable, solely because of the crap standard outside the top 7 this
season. Last year, Liverpool came 8th
and got 60 points. Look at the points
compared to last season… last year we got 63, this year it’s 46-49, probably 47
after a 0-0 against Stoke. Last year we
were 3 points off a Champions League place, this year it’s 31. Last year we were 26 points off relegation,
this season it’s 18. Another blank at
home leaves me once again thinking that I couldn’t care less if he left. Ok, we got a point against a top 6 side which is a bit of rarity this season but come on, United rested loads and there's no way that those playing were giving it 100%.
Today there were good performances from a few like Stephens,
Romeu and JWP. Stephens looked really
composed again for 95% of the game and brought the ball out of defence well, a
sure sign that his confidence is rising.
A small caveat though is the fact that he was playing against a bloke in
a Wayne Rooney fat suit. There was some
good link up play from Rooney but it’s as if he can’t raise more than a
jog. There was an incident in the second
half when the ball was loose around the penalty spot and Rooney turned with the
speed of a 90 year old on a mobility scooter.
He used to be so dynamic and deadly but then you realise that that was
10 years ago.
Romeu was a tank in midfield again and JWP was having a
pretty decent game until he got substituted to his visible annoyance. Taking him off annoyed the crowd too. Not only has removing him been bad for us in
a couple of recent games (it wasn’t today oddly enough) but it’s baffling that
it always seems to be the player doing the most who gets taken off. Tadic had been diabolical in the first half
and only average in the second whereas Redmond had had a great first half but
was fading. As it happens, Boufal was
really good when he came on so that’s progress I guess. Like the team selection at the start, it’s
all done by numbers.
Gabbiadini up front had a shocker – missed the penalty after
5 minutes and then went downhill from there, though once again was suffering
from a chronic lack of support and decent service. Again, I thought that at half time Claude
could have stuck either J-Rod or Austin on with him and done a Mike Bassett and
gone 4-4-fucking-2. No – that would be a
bit too progressive.
So, one more home game to go on Sunday against Stoke. 0-0 anyone?
Ironically, that’ll probably mean we limp into an 8th place
finish but regardless of where we finish, the season, especially at home, has
been piss boring but then the summer starts and as a Saints fan, you know that
the summer is never, ever boring.
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