Ed Woodward, as usual, is looking to sign a big name player for big money. Never mind that his dithering means it will probably require the whole of the transfer window to make that one signing! In his eyes it will improve the team and that’s all that matters.
After all look at how his other big money signings have markedly upped United’s stature as a club. (more…)
PART TWO – JÜRGEN KLOPP, ARSÉNE WENGER AND JOSÉ MOURINHO
Continuing to answer our question from yesterday when, in part one, we focused on Antonio Conte, Mauricio Pochettino and Pep Guardiola, today in part two we look at the remaining three of the top six managers and assess the likelihood of them staying with their current clubs.
Jürgen Klopp – Liverpool
Seems to be as loyal as they come nowadays and only left Borussia Dortmund because he couldn’t really take them any further and had ambitions to manage in the Premier League. (more…)
Czechoslovakia, Greece, Denmark and Portugal spring to mind as relatively recent winners of the European Championships. None of the four could be considered as serial winners of competitions.
Wales also stayed in the last competition for longer than England and even managed a 3-1 win over Belgium while England couldn’t even scrape a draw with Iceland and exited the tournament in their usual fashion, ie when there was still plenty of it left! (more…)
In contrast Louis van Gaal strengthened the midfield by finalising the purchase of Ander Herrera and buying Daley Blind, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Memphis Depay and Morgan Schneiderlin. These players were to add to Michael Carrick, Jesse Lingard, Adnan Januzaj, Marouane Fellaini and Juan Mata and anybody else I may have missed.
He also bought a full back, Matteo Darmian who, at the time, seemed a good acquisition as he was the Italian national team’s full back, a teenager called Anthony Martial who will probably turn out to be the best buy of the van Gaal era, Marcos Rojo and he rubber stamped the purchase of Luke Shaw although it is likely that any incoming manager would have done the same. (more…)
He was born in Yerevan, capital of Armenia, in 1989. When Henrikh was seven years old his father died of a brain tumour at the age of 33.
Football certainly played a prominent part in his family life as his dad has been a striker for FC Ararat Yerevan during the 1980’s, his mother is the head of the national team department in the Armenian football federation and his sister, Monica, works at UEFA headquarters.
In the early 1990’s the family moved to France to escape the Armenian mafia, where Henrikh played for ASOA Valence and helped them gain promotion to Ligue 2. The club no longer exists. (more…)
In the not too distant past the top clubs in Europe were the ones with the most money. This, to an extent, is still true today but the main difference is that a lot more clubs have the most money than previously.
Thinking back fifteen or twenty years ago there were the usual suspects in Real Madrid and Barcelona from Spain. Bayern Munich, at the time, were usually Germany’s sole representatives in the latter stages of any competition. Arsenal and Manchester United used to fight for the Premier League in England and the Milan clubs and Juventus usually offered Italian resistance. (more…)
This should not come as a major surprise to supporters of the two clubs. If they both stick to their original schedule Manchester United will have played five “warm-up” games and City three.
United will have faced Wigan Athletic, Borussia Dortmund, Galatasaray, Everton and Leicester City.
City will have played Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Arsenal.
In the past United have been known to organise another friendly prior to the start of the season, usually in the week leading up to the Community Shield. Given that their derby in China was cancelled they may still choose to fit in another game before the big kick off. It seems that United’s players have not yet reached the required level of fitness demanded by a Premier League title contender. (more…)
(The Jose Mourinho stall at Beijing market proves popular with the locals)
Manchester United and Manchester City flew to China. The idea being that they could take part in the International Champions Cup which would include two games each, one against each other and the remaining one against Borussia Dortmund.
In an eventful week for United they started by being hammered 4-1 by Dortmund before then taking two planes to fly to Beijing, one of which had to make an emergency landing in Tianjin due to bad weather. Quite why the weather was perfectly OK for the other plane to fly the remaining 66 miles or so to Beijing is anybody’s guess, but there you have it.
Next up in the comedy of errors was a Jose Mourinho press conference being held in the open air. This was because the room to be used was deemed as too hot. Obviously, in a massive modern stadium, air conditioning had not been considered necessary. What was ironic was that Pep Guardiola had given his press conference in the same room earlier in the day although, in fairness, he did sweat a lot. (more…)
The short answer is no, not at the moment. One or two further additions to the squad, however, may change things around somewhat.
The full back positions do not need urgent surgery as, with a fully fit Luke Shaw along with Darmian and Varela, there should be sufficient cover although Jose does not seem totally convinced about Darmian so don’t be too surprised to see a replacement brought in. I can’t see Mourinho persisting with Antonio Valencia at full back as he has proven, on a few occasions, that he can’t play the position and Ashley Young is nothing short of a joke at full back.
At present Mourinho has addressed one of the centre back positions by bringing in Eric Bailly. I assume this will mean that United will be listening to offers for Marcus Rojo, who hasn’t convinced at either centre back or left back. This does not solve the problem of the other centre back. (more…)
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 