Following our recent article suggesting four players who would benefit from being sold and the interest it created, we are moved to follow up with another three who should join them on the transfer list.
As José Mourinho reads this, in between scanning the transfer rumours and trying to remember whether he paid his tax in Spain or not, he will no doubt be thinking how much sense it would make to rid his club of the following, if at all possible: (more…)
Judging by the amount of money with which José Mourinho has been entrusted to buy players during this transfer window, Manchester United seem pretty confident that he is the right man for the job medium to long-term. Bear in mind, he spent around £150 million in the last Summer window and is likely to spend anything between £100 and £200 million this time, maybe even a little more. (more…)
Antonio Valencia is a survivor if nothing else. He arrived, largely unannounced and with very little fanfare, from Wigan back in 2009 and has seen the “arrival” of four managers and the departure of four managers during his time at Old Trafford! In fairness, the manager experience has happened entirely within the last four years.
Many thought that Valencia would be surplus to requirements as, following the temporary employment of Ryan Giggs, first David Moyes and then Louis van Gaal came through the door, presumably with their own ideas of what they wanted from the team. Their problem was a simple one. It did not appear as though the team was either sure or convinced about what they wanted and, consequently, neither of them kept the chair warm for very long. (more…)
The main reason Manchester United have never won the Europa League before is because it is a competition in which they have rarely been involved and, when they have been, they haven’t taken it particularly seriously.
Even under it’s previous incarnation as the UEFA Cup, it was a trophy only flirted with on four occasions since Sir Alex Ferguson took over in 1986. On those four occasions they lost to what can only be described as mediocre opponents. (more…)
Counting chickens before they are hatched is easy when all of your eggs are in the same basket. José Mourinho has already counted the chickens and has decided that he will gamble on them all hatching.
Just to prove how confident he is in this he is also trying his hand at juggling with them! He doesn’t have another basket to hand, just in case a fox comes to steal the first one. He has decided that guarding the basket by concentrating all his efforts on it’s safety is the way forward. (more…)
(Top four or Europa League? Why not both? José ponders the obvious!)
José Mourinho loves the Europa League. Not that he has much choice as it is the only European competition in which Manchester United are competing this season.
He didn’t appear to love it at the start of the season and it was only when he was reminded that it offered automatic Champion’s League qualification that his feelings towards it grew in a dramatic fashion. (more…)
He had taken Porto as far as he could so moved on to Chelsea. The only trophy to elude him at Stamford Bridge was the Champion’s League but, when he left, he was still young enough to be able to return one day to win it, (or so he probably thought).
Inter Milan proved to be a relatively easy challenge during which he even managed to come up with a way of beating Barcelona over two legs in the Champion’s League and go on to win it. This was when Barcelona were the best team in the world. (more…)
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…………”
And so it goes on. This extract, as learned readers will know, is taken from “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens. In some ways, it describes quite well the period between Louis van Gaal being told to do one and José Mourinho being welcomed into the spider’s web which masquerades as the manager’s office at Manchester United. (more…)
Sir Alex Ferguson retired. David Moyes came in. Hailed as the “Chosen One” he rather quickly became the “Frozen One” as results started to go against him. He also managed to break some unwanted records in his time and the list is as follows:-
1 – United suffered their first defeat to Newcastle at Old Trafford in 41 years.
2 – Everton’s victory at Old Trafford confirmed their first league double over the Reds since 1970.
3 – As a result of that defeat, United had won just one of their 12 meetings with the Premier League’s top eight sides that season. (more…)
We here at WSA recently had a spare five minutes which we filled by playing the Daily Mirror top six predictor game, (it’s here if you want to try it out).
It’s quite simple really, all you do is enter whether you think the top six will win, lose or draw their remaining games and the widget calculates the rest. Our final table had Chelsea as champions, Manchester City second and Manchester United third. Tottenham edged out Arsenal and Liverpool for the fourth spot. (more…)
