Posts Tagged ‘Sir Alex Ferguson’

CT3oKm2XIAA-XFw

Not only is it a one-way street but, for the most part, it is cordoned off at one end and emblazoned with “No Entry” signs!

In recent years there have been a few players leave Manchester United for Real Madrid yet, in return, only one has ventured the wrong way up that one-way street.

Is this just coincidence or is there more to it than that?

Manchester United, during the Sir Alex Ferguson era, sold four players to Madrid. They were; Ruud van Nistelrooy, David Beckham, Gabriel Heinze and Cristiano Ronaldo. (more…)

20090405-PHIL0118

What do the following have in common;-

Arséne Wenger, David Moyes, Sam Allardyce, Marouane Fellaini and Claudio Bravo?

The answer is that they were all, at one stage or another, unwanted by the supporters of their club and some still are.

There are others too numerous to mention but these five are probably of the highest profile at present.

ARSÉNE WENGER

ArsĂ©ne Wenger is now at the point where he is tolerated by the fans and this only because he awarded himself a new two year contract recently. Most Arsenal fans would have preferred if he had left or moved upstairs at the end of last season but not ArsĂ©ne. He is deluded enough to place his own self -importance above the wishes of the majority of the supporters and stay where he is. (more…)

3467942_gallery

Ed Woodward, apart from having the same name as a late actor who used to portray, amongst others, a character known as “The Equalizer“, (yes, it was an American series, although the actor was English), has nothing else whatsoever in common with that persona.

A man who spent his waking hours righting wrongs, looking after the poor people who couldn’t afford protection and didn’t trust the police, he was a mixture of Robin Hood and the A-Team and always came out on top. (more…)

IMG_1748

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…)

IMG_1628

The short answer is yes, it would be and for the following long reasons.

Leaving aside Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who is now no longer an option, Manchester United had nobody reaching double figures in the goalscoring charts last season.

That was one of the reasons  United didn’t challenge for the title and, in the end, didn’t even really challenge for the top four. Too many games were drawn at home and the annoying aspect of those draws was that the majority of them were 1-1 results where United had led the games for lengthy periods, with the obvious exception being the Liverpool game where they actually managed to come back and draw in the last minute. (more…)

115621997_3_ferguso_352052c

The feeling at Old Trafford when David Moyes took over was, generally, one of apprehensive expectation. The problem was that nobody knew of what they were apprehensively expectant!

Moyes was untried at this level and, despite relative success at Everton, (which was keeping them in the Premier League’s top ten for years), he had won nothing of any note. (more…)

1475763485214

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 JosĂ© 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…)

IMG_1494

Judging by the amount of money with which JosĂ© 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 ÂŁ150 million in the last Summer window and is likely to spend anything between ÂŁ100 and ÂŁ200 million this time, maybe even a little more. (more…)

IMG_1424

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…)

IMG_1421

If we were an average Premier League footballer, coming to the end of our playing career but pocketing a massive ÂŁ250-300k per week, depending upon who you believe, we would probably want to stay where we are as well.

Emitting the occasional “we would like to play more games“, and, “we do everything we can to help the team, on and off the pitch“, we just hope that we are making the right noises in order not to be sold to a club where we will have to take a very large pay cut, particularly if that club is one we supposedly love and support. A clear example of how greed is a much more powerful emotion than love. (more…)