According to some press reports, José Mourinho will leave Manchester United in the summer. He will take his travelling roadshow to Paris where he will challenge for the Champion’s League.
It’s as simple as that.
The problem is that the reasons given for his wanting to leave United are that he can’t compete with Manchester City and doesn’t get enough backing from the board. That simply is not true.
So, if that is the case JosĂ©, then au revoir et bonne chance. (more…)
Is José Mourinho just flirting with PSG in order to get some attention from his current employers? It is reported that he has asked for a “massive” pay rise, whatever that is, in order to sign a new and extended contract with United and he could be using the fact that he is still able to command the top jobs in European football as leverage to get it.
He could also be seriously contemplating taking the PSG job, either at the end of this contract or the next one.
United fans need to remember that, for Mourinho, this may be his biggest job to date, but it is still just another in the line of big jobs he has already undertaken and doesn’t necessarily mean he is at the end of his nomadic wanderings. (more…)
Due to a shortage of actual, interesting transfers, Sky Sports News are treating the transfer of Neymar from Barcelona to PSG as though it was important to anybody not from one of the three locations directly affected. It isn’t, but we will now devote almost an entire article to that very subject.
Yes, there is a knock-on effect with the fee that PSG are paying for someone generally  regarded as being only the THIRD best player in the world because it will certainly drive up the fees for average players. But that alone does not make this particular transfer any more interesting to the average fan.
The average fan does not really care about how much a player is bought or sold for, he/she just cares about whether or not they can play football. (more…)
Two managers with no history whatsoever of wanting to stay at a club for more than two or three years. In fact no history, as managers, of actually staying at a club for more than two or three years. Yet there has been a dramatic u-turn by the pair of them and they have now both stated that they want to stay where they are for “a long time“. Why?
Take, for example, Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman. These are two managers who you would expect to crave longevity. They have both previously managed Southampton with very similar records of relative success. This has been a springboard to bigger things with Pochettino moving to Tottenham and Koeman to Everton. (more…)
PART ONE – ANTONIO CONTE, MAURICIO POCHETTINO & PEP GUARDIOLA
Probably not as bad as you may think. In fact, of the six, only Antonio Conte is deemed to have the temperament to walk away from a club at the merest hint of disagreement.
Here is what is being said about them individually.
Antonio Conte – Chelsea
As with others on this list, he has a habit of leaving clubs when least expected to do so. The first time was with Bari in Italy. He had just got them promoted to Serie A and had also just signed a new contract when he decided not to continue in the job any longer. (more…)
PART ONE
Dani Alves is going to PSG. This, reportedly, after verbally agreeing to join Pep Guardiola at Manchester City.
His reason? He wants to win a title. Surely this is as near as it gets to admitting that he thinks this will be a much easier task in France than it would be in England. Either that or he is being economical with the truth and couldn’t care less about a title as long as he gets paid lots of moolah.
Now we don’t want to be the ones to pour scorn on his reasoning, after all, it may be perfectly true. The facts, however, tend to disprove what he is saying. (more…)
We mere mortals can only speculate on what it must be like to have several million pounds available to spend. There is, however, a limit on how much of these several millions can actually be spent due to something called Financial Fair Play.
This was all the rage just a few short years ago and was tested out on Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain. Both of these clubs benefitted through being purchased by Middle-Eastern billionaires who immediately went about spending some of their wealth on improving the teams. (more…)
(Shhh! I made a mistake on my tax return but I think I got away with it!)
There is a very good chance that Cristiano Ronaldo will be playing his football at the Bernabeu again next season. Falling out with the Spanish tax authorities seems to be an occupational hazard when you are Him, Neymar or Lionel Messi.
The problem is that these players actually don’t know if they have done anything wrong or not. They employ accountants to save them money. They are probably kept informed about what is happening with their wealth although it is highly doubtful that many, if any of them, understand the intricacies of successful tax avoidance. (more…)
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…)
(Yet again Ronald Koeman has donned his Claudio Ranieri mask in order to slip under the radar!)
If you believe everything that you read, then yes, the Premier League is very open this season. The fact of the matter is though, that it isn’t really.
What do we mean by “open” anyway? There are twenty teams in the division. For the title race to be wide open, (as in “that result has blown the title race wide open“, a frequently heard phrase), then every one of the twenty needs to be in with a chance of winning it. (more…)
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 