Posts Tagged ‘David De Gea’

 

image

Let’s start at the beginning, number one. It would seem that David De Gea is among the top three or four goalkeepers in the world and, as second choice, Mourinho has the Argentina number one in Sergio Romero, so that position seems pretty safe at present.

Action required: None

Next is the right full/wing back position. It is hard to say who is the current number one for this role. Van Gaal brought in Matteo Darmian who was the first choice for Italy. He suffered a loss of form after a bright start and was replaced by Guillermo Varela, then Cameron Borthwick-Jackson and, eventually, Antonio Valencia. Varela’s defending was a little naive at times, BJ is still very young but looks a great prospect and Valencia cannot defend as he frequently proved last season, getting caught out of position on many occasions and failing to play the offside with the rest of the defence. (more…)

image

When the teams were announced before the game and James Milner was going to be playing at left back for Liverpool, myself and Paul Scholes both thought the same thing: play Martial on the right to have a run at him.

What did van Gaal do? Played Mata on the right! Apart from being slow, very left-footed and useless as a winger this was a stupid move. He also played Lingard, who should be dropped, on the left and he looked completely clueless.

Another stupid move was playing Varela at right back when he has the Italian right back sat on the bench. Darmian has nineteen caps for Italy so surely he is good enough for this Manchester United team!

Fellaini was retained in midfield for no apparent reason and huffed and puffed without ever achieving anything. (more…)

image

To be honest, this was a very decent performance by Manchester United. Despite going a goal down in the first half and missing a penalty they played with enough purpose and resolve to score five good goals.

To add to the reasons for slight celebration, two of the goals were scored by Marcus Rashford, making his debut after Anthony Martial had decided that David De Gea shouldn’t have the monopoly on pulling up with an injury just before kick-off. What further added to the feel-good factor was the fact that Memphis Depay was the man-of-the-match.

To continue with the honesty, though, this was always a game that a Manchester United team should expect to win. They are in the Europa League playing teams who weren’t good enough for the Champion’s League. The fact that they have now fallen into this category is their own fault, but they should still be good enough to win it, even though they probably won’t.

Staying with “honesty is the best policy”, the young lads who won the game tonight were not playing because van Gaal gives young lads a chance, no, they were playing because injuries give young lads a chance. (more…)

image

Manchester United were so pathetic against Midtjylland that the fans who paid ÂŁ71 for their tickets only proved that the team, currently, are not worth the money. Their protests should be directed at Louis van Gaal for producing amateur football for which the fans have to pay professional prices for the very dubious “privilege” of being able to watch. Not to mention flying to Denmark and, probably, staying in a rip-off hotel overnight!

Before the game David De Gea pulled up with an injury which ruled him out and he was replaced by Sergio Romero. This brought United’s injury list up to 14 according to van Gaal. De Gea actually wasn’t missed as Romero had a very good game.

After the game van Gaal blamed Murphy’s law for losing a game they should have won. As we all know only too well van Gaal will blame anything or anybody rather than himself.

The bottom line here is that van Gaal, thanks to his disastrous transfer window, doesn’t have sufficient cover in various important positions and the players he is currently using are not good enough. Quoting the loss of Rooney for six weeks as a shock is an example of the lunacy currently presiding at Old Trafford. Only a matter of weeks ago the vast majority of fans wanted him dropped from the team. How come it suddenly makes such a difference when he is injured? He may have scored a couple of goals recently but he still wasn’t playing THAT well. (more…)

image

A win is a win, but don’t be fooled into thinking that this was a good performance from United. They were second best for 75% of this match and only Liverpool’s inability to finish kept the scoreline at 0-0 for so long.

Yet again van Gaal infuriated with his selection. Ashley Young, a winger, playing at wing back. Matteo Darmian, a right back, playing at left back and Daley Blind , a defensive midfielder, playing at centre back. Marouane Fellaini was selected, inexplicably , ahead of Juan Mata and he actually managed to last the ninety minutes.

If anybody wonders why this type of selection always annoys me then imagine Manchester City doing it. Jesus Navas playing at wing back, Fernandinho at centre back and Pablo Zabaleta as left back. Pellegrini would never play these players out of their natural positions which goes a long way to explaining why City are challenging for the title and United aren’t even in the top four!

United were totally disjointed and looked completely out of sorts for the vast majority of the game.

Daley Blind seemed to have his own game plan whereby he kept firing long high balls towards Wayne Rooney. As was to be expected every single one of these was easily won by either Sakho or Toure. (more…)

image

Thanks to the recent transfer embargo handed out to the two Madrid teams, it seems that David De Gea may be staying at Manchester United for a while longer.

It may be that, having signed a new deal at Old Trafford, he decided that he didn’t want to leave anyway. At the time there was no encouragement from the Real Madrid fans, (mainly because he used to play for Atletico), nor was there much forthcoming from the management. It appeared that the chief procrastinator in all this drama was, as usual, Florentino Perez. It was he who wanted De Gea.

The story goes that when he realised how against the move the fans were and how much they liked Keylor Navas, he conveniently messed up the paperwork which saved him from an embarrassing u-turn on the matter. Whatever the truth is, De Gea remains in Manchester with two of his three amigos.

Given Florentino Perez’ penchant for wanting everything HIS WAY because, as far as he is concerned, HIS WAY is what is best for Real Madrid irrespective of what anybody else may think, it is no surprise that they have fallen foul of some rule about wresting kids from the arms of their parents at a very young age. (more…)

Wayne Rooney

(Wazza can’t quite reach the nasty ankle to check for injury!)

Apparently Wayne Rooney has a nasty ankle. I don’t know which ankle, but one of them is not too nice an ankle.

Having scoured the newspapers I cannot discern which it is because the great British press don’t deem it important that we have this knowledge. Suffice to say that one of the ankles belonging to Wayne Rooney is nasty.

This is the headline that says it all: “Manchester United captain Wayne Rooney will miss West Ham and Wolfsburg with a ‘nasty ankle injury’ confirms van Gaal”. Not, you will notice, a nasty injury to his ankle. There is a world of difference!

Maybe we should be glad that the injury is to his nasty ankle, rather than his nice ankle, assuming that his other ankle actually IS nice.

Anyway, enough speculation. Whichever ankle it is and however nasty it is, the injury has arrived at a very opportune moment for Louis van Gaal. (more…)

image

Louis van Gaal is known as the “Iron Tulip” by some people. Quite what he is known as by others is probably unprintable.

For all the scholars of chemistry out there, as you will know, the chemical symbol for iron is FE. So, if we take the letters from tulip, add fe and scramble them around a little, we come up with the word puftile. At least, it should be a word but it probably isn’t. It is probably meaningless. If it is meaningless then I claim invention of the word and deem it to mean any kind of football which is, well……er……meaningless.

Using that brilliant example of logic as a starting point, a word which has no meaning is like Manchester United’s football, puftile. (Notice how this word bears an uncanny resemblance to futile).

Under van Gaal United have developed a possession game which usually terminates when they lose possession. This they do regularly because there are only so many times you can go sideways or backwards before the pitch ends. At this point the ball will either go out of play, or be rashly passed to an opponent. On the rare occasions that United go forward it is usually to find there is only one player in the opposition penalty area competing with four or five defenders. (more…)

image

Shortly before the transfer window officially opened Louis van Gaal told everyone who would listen that he wanted ALL his transfer business concluding before the pre-season tour to the US of A.

This makes sense in many ways. It gives any new signings the chance to get to know their new team mates on and off the pitch. It gives them the chance to get to know the club and the way it works. It also gives them the opportunity to play some games where the result doesn’t really matter. All of this culminating, hopefully, in a harmonious and reenergised team returning to the UK raring to go. (more…)