Posts Tagged ‘Old Trafford’

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Well folks, it’s that time of the year again! European competition has returned with the start of the knockout stages of both the Champion’s League and the Europa League.

This article was supposed to be a preview of the two tournaments BEFORE any of the games had been played but, thanks to missed deadlines due to oversleeping, is now published after the first round of them has finished.

Fortunately only Arsenal, out of the English contingent, have played their first leg game and everybody knew what was going to happen before a ball was even kicked. (more…)

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(Thanks to sportingintelligence for the graphic)

Whenever anything relating to Manchester United is published it is big news. Maybe not to everybody in the world but there are many who hang onto every word, written or spoken, about the reds.

There is talk of the stadium capacity being increased to around 80,000 in the near future and it will be full for almost every home game.

Do United do anything differently to the other top teams? They spend some of their close season touring far away places in order to give some of their fans the chance to see the players, (not to mention increasing the fanbase to make more money)! (more…)

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Bastian Schweinsteiger has managed to work his way back as far as the bench. Morgan Schneiderlin and Memphis Depay also reached that lofty height and Matteo Darmian has had a reasonable run in the first team, just not in his favoured position. That his best role has been filled by a winger who can’t defend says a lot about Darmian’s future in Mourinho’s team.

Marcos Rojo is almost a regular and Daley Blind flits in and out depending upon the opposition. Luke Shaw is yet to fully recover mentally from his injury and only time will tell if he is going to fulfill his potential and whether or not that will be at United. (more…)

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(Sir Bobby is horrified to see his goalscoring record broken by Wayne Rooney, of all people!)

So it’s finally gone. One of the longest standing records in football has been broken. At least it was a decent goal which did the dastardly deed.

Wayne Rooney, thanks to longevity rather than anything else, is now Manchester United’s record goalscorer. This fact will always divide opinion amongst genuine United fans never mind the hangers-on who only discovered the club after they became successful. (more…)

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Despite Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham all doing well in the Premier League this season the spotlight remains firmly on the Northwest, helped most certainly by the arrival of both José Mourinho and Pep Guardiola in Manchester.

The area provides the most interesting football and, generally speaking over the last forty years or so, the best and most successful football.

Last weekend a collective groan was to be heard at WSA when the live games were advertised as being all-London affairs. This was not because there would be no decent football on display, although that was a possibility, no it was because the feeling of boredom when no Northern team is involved is overwhelming. (more…)

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So the time is nearly upon us. The massively over-hyped games between Everton and Manchester City, followed by Manchester United and Liverpool are just around the corner.

The respective fields will be taken by multi-millionaires running round doing something they love whilst being watched by, in the main, poorer working class people who have managed to scrape together the cost of either a season ticket or a matchday ticket.

Higher in the stands will be Roy Keane’s favourite people. The prawn sandwich brigade who sometimes don’t even know which game they are attending. The score, or even who is victorious, is a complete irrelevance to these types. (more…)

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For a short period of time, a couple of years ago, Brendan Rodgers looked as though he may win the Premier League title with Liverpool. He certainly came closer than they have done for many a year and all the stupid cliches came babbling forth from the experts and the press. My favourite is, “they will never have a better chance of winning it than they did that year“.

That, of course, is complete nonsense as, under Jürgen Klopp, they may very well have their best chance of winning it, although it is yet to come. (more…)

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For the last few seasons Manchester United have lacked passion. They have lacked passion from the manager and they have lacked passion from the players. Only now, under José Mourinho, are they starting to show a little of the old commitment and desire.

David Moyes may have been a fiery Scot but he was overawed by the players at Manchester United because they had won much more than he had and there was little, if anything, he could teach them. (more…)

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At the beginning of the season there was belief. Belief that Manchester United were on the way back to being good at football.

They started off like an express train and were unstoppable until they were stopped. Unfortunately they were stopped by another unstoppable team at the time when Manchester City beat them at Old Trafford. City were to go on being unstoppable until they were stopped by Tottenham Hotspur who, whilst not being unstoppable, haven’t really been stopped by anybody yet, (unless you count a 1-0 defeat at Old Trafford as stopping them). (more…)

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What continually drives people like José Mourinho to succeed? It isn’t money. Alright, in the early days of their career it IS money but, after the initial successes have eliminated the need to ever work again, what becomes the motivating factor?

It is a question asked of many of the world’s richest people and, in a lot of cases, it is STILL money. The quest to be the richest in the world, the additional power that even more money brings with it. These are forces which have been known to propel the wealthy to even greater things.

Generally not, however, where top football managers are concerned. (more…)