Today’s tell-all intends to discover if Manchester’s finest are planning trips to Madrid outside of regular competition time!
The days of Manchester United scoring four goals every time they step onto a football pitch already seem to be long departed and the reason, despite United fans blaming everything from the weather to José Mourinho to Marouane Fellaini being crocked, is because Paul Pogba went and injured himself.
It is no coincidence, (actually, it is), that United stopped scoring multiple goals regularly as soon as Pogba was out of the team. He is not only the strength and power of the midfield but also the creative player who can make a telling pass. He was also contributing to the scoring charts so, all in all, he is a bigger miss than most people thought would be the case.
United are not in urgent need of new players just yet. They are still second in the Premier League and have won four games out of four in the Champion’s league.
The natives, however, are becoming restless with the style of play. It seems they would prefer a return to the days of our youth when Law, Best and Charlton thrilled the crowds every week. They didn’t win much, just a couple of league titles and a European Cup in many years of trying, but they filled grounds around the country.
The same can be said about the Tommy Docherty side which was relegated in the early 1970’s. They broke the attendance record at virtually every club they visited during their one season at the lower level and were promoted quite easily. Afterwards they only managed to win the FA Cup, but they were definitely entertainers.
United fans, ever the optimists, want Busby’s style with Ferguson’s success. Mourinho just wants success, for the moment, anyway.
Antoine Griezmann will be available for purchase in January. By now he probably regrets his decision to stay at Atlético Madrid through a misguided sense of loyalty. His team are, probably, about to swap the Champion’s League for the Europa League, they sit fourth in La Liga, eight points behind the leaders Barcelona, and Griezmann himself isn’t playing particularly well.
The question now is; will United buy him in the January transfer window? The answer is; yes, they probably will.
The reason is because José Mourinho doesn’t have a pacy, creative goal-scoring player in his midfield at present.
Juan Mata can be creative, but can never be described as pacy and he no longer scores that many goals. Henrikh Mkhitaryan can be both pacy and creative but, at present, is going through one of those spells where nothing he tries is working and he just spends his game time giving the ball away.
Jesse Lingard is not of United quality. He has pace but is not creative and can only score in the League Cup. He would not get in the team if United’s first choice midfield were fit.
Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial have pace to burn and both can be creative when they can be persuaded to pass the ball to a team mate. They are not the midfielders needed by United. They are more strikers/wingers and don’t like dropping deep to get the ball.
So the conclusion is that United will sign Griezmann in January.
On the other side of the city Pep Guardiola is being linked, by some anyway, with a move for Real Madrid’s Isco. Quite why Isco would choose to leave the club now that he is a regular in the first team is a little beyond the simple mind of this author, but what do we know?
Why would City buy him and why would he leave Madrid?
The only reason we can think of for City to buy him is as a long-term replacement for David Silva. He certainly wouldn’t get into the team ahead of Kevin De Bruyne and he isn’t the oxymoronic creative destroyer that is Fernandinho. Maybe he can play at left-back!
Whatever the reason, he is on Pep’s wish-list and in the top five to boot! How do we know? We don’t, but the Guardian’s Gregg Bakowski does, here’s a piece of his piece:
“Pep Guardiola is determined to make his Manchester City midfield the busiest creative offering since Jackson Pollock’s Convergence in 1952. To do so he’ll try to steal away Isco from Real Madrid using the power of his personality (and his club’s vast reservoir of Abu Dhabi cash, of course). Apparently, he’s on Guardiola’s ‘top-five’ footballers list, which presumably he has stuck on his fridge door at home. Isco recently signed a new contract at the Bernabéu until 2022 but we all know that means bugger all these days.”
Why would Isco leave Madrid? Money, if that is his main interest in life. We can think of no other reason.
This is a transfer we don’t see happening purely because it strikes us as one of those where Guardiola has probably been asked if he would like Isco in his team, to which he has answered in the affirmative, in much the same way as virtually any manager would if asked about Messi, for example.
In other words, the hypothetical has found it’s way onto the printed page which immediately makes it a fact.
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 