MAN UNITED WILL SACK MOURINHO ON FEBRUARY 24: PREDICTION

Prediction: when Jose will be sacked

OK so running with the idea (surely certainty?) that ManU won’t sack Jose Mourinho before Top 4 is mathematically possible, due to it being hugely cheaper to pay him off, no doubt with a clause in his contract – or that he doesn’t go for gross misconduct etc, I am predicting the following:-

Assuming that the current top 4/5 teams between them continue to, on average, amass the same points per game as they are now, I can see a team needing approx 82 points to finish in the top 4 this season.

Further assuming that Man U continue to amass the same points per game as they are now, I can see them finishing on ~60 points, give or take 3 points either way.

Using those rates, the top 4 could be mathmatically impossible for Jose somewhere between 9th Feb and 2nd March (Fulham away, Liverpool at home, C.Palace away, Saints at home) – of course these fixtures could change dates and, a great CL and/or FA Cup run could give him a stay of execution….

All massive “ifs” but you never know, I might get a little bet on………Liverpool delivering a home defeat to Jose on Sat 23rd and him being sacked on Sunday 24th would make for a pretty sweet weekend for me JJ, LFC, Suffolk

Dier’s defence

Just on your worst players in the top five, I had to write a little note on Eric Dier.  I’m not disagreeing with anyone who’s saying he’s having a poor season, but I think he takes a lot of flak whether playing for Spurs or for England and I always find it’s a bit much.

I feel that Dier embodies Poch’s attitude on the pitch which is a symbol of the change from flaky Spurs (Gary Neville was right) to much more resilient Spurs under Poch.  Also to think how he’s been moved into midfield and slotted in brilliantly when we finished 3rd (that Leicester season), and then was also almost ever present when we finished 3rd again last season, he’s not really that bad a player.  Oh and the season we finished second behind Chelsea (easily the best I’ve seen Spurs play in my lifetime) we played a back three with Dier in the middle of defence and with his tactical awareness moving between defence and midfield it felt like we were playing with 12 men at times.  So saying he’s not “good enough to feature as regularly as he does for a team with genuine trophy aspirations” is in my opinion unfair.  And no we haven’t won any trophies with him in the team…but that logic applies to the rest of the team as well.

So yeah maybe as an individual player he’s not a world beater and yes maybe I should become president of the Eric Dier fan club, but he certainly plays an important role and brings a lot of those “intangibles” that you need in any team aiming to succeed.

Kevin G

Kovacic vs Loftus-Cheek

Firstly, congrats on retaining your FSF award – very highly deserved!

Secondly, I wanted to agree with the recent articles on Loftus-Cheek and Kovacic (rightly in the worst 10 players in the top 5 list). I just don’t see why Sarri prefers Kovacic to either Barkley or Loftus-Cheek. From all I’ve seen the midfield 3 should be Jorginho + Kante + one of Barkley or LC, with Fabregas the next option for any one of these roles. Kovacic is dead last in that group, yet seems to be Sarri’s preferred choice despite offering very little beyond lots of short passes back to Jorginho. The balance of the midfield needs a dynamic attacking midfielder, which means one of LC or Barkley has to start. Maybe in some games we play Kovacic/ Fabregas instead of Kante, but the Jorginho, Kante, Kovacic trio is asking Kante to do absolutely everything. I just don’t get it…

Loftus-Cheek should absolutely not go to Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, Newcastle, etc. That’s not his level, and would be a dead end. He *should* stay at Chelsea *and* break into the first team. Sarri is improving him and the only way to be an elite player is to play for an elite club. Chelsea is still his best chance to do that. But I do wish Sarri would play him more…

Tim Colyer, Chelsea fan, Jakarta

Is Firmino a clinical striker?

Reading Sarah’s piece on Klopp/Liverpool’s mature style, one point about Firmino got me thinking. The piece seemed to suggest Firmino is struggling with this new system which leads to my next point. Do Liverpool need a ‘clinical’ striker to take the next step? Is Firmino a clinical striker?

Now Firmino scored loads of goals last season, a few came out of nothing  (winner at stoke sticks out)  but I don’t get that warm fuzzy feeling I used to when watching Torres or Suarez tear teams a new one. Is Firmino good enough to lead the line?

Im not suggesting that Bobby is left out of the team, as we tend to press less effectively without him but Klopp may need to change his system to accomodate  a more natural finisher.  Playing Firmino a bit deeper, behind the front three could mean he is more effective and he would be relieved of the pressure to score as many goals as he is expected to. He already plays more like a midfielder dropping deep to receive the ball and creating space for the forwards. Could we get away with playing Firmino as a more advanced midfielder?(sloppy passes have to be cut out of his gane)  Im quite sure he would put in more tackles than Henderson currently does and his work rate is unquestionable. It feels like we need a better goal scorer (Sturridge?) but we also need Firmino in the team. Make it happen Kloppo.

Guo

O Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo

Interesting read from Tom Reed this morning about the point of football manager.

From a sporting point of view, he’s probably right. Only in football do we still have such omnipotent head coaches.

Rugby, US football, basketball… All these sports have moved from that organization and set up a more “modern team of coaches making the touchline decisions” (to quote the article).

But there is one thing Tom is missing in his analysis. Football, probably more than all other sports, is a show. Nothing more than a glorified theater play.

And in every good play, you need characters (as highlighted in this very article with the Lars Von Trier movie).

Mourinho is your pantomime villain, he’s basically Tybalt, the one everybody hates just because.

Hughes (and other PFMs) is Montague patriarch, outdated, mostly useless, accountable for the 20 years past.

Klopp is Romeo, young, lovable, idealist, makes people want to slap him the face sometimes, always dies in the finals...

Guardiola is Mercutio, highly skilled duelist, hates Tybalt, backs Romeo against the PFMs family, will eventually die to Mourinho’s hand etc…

You get the idea.

We need head coaches, for the sake of the show. I’ll always remember Domenech’s (great theater lover by the way) press conference in the infamous 2006 world cup for France, days before getting sacked. In front of a massive journalist crowd he opened his play with this line:

Effort – talent – the conundrum!

I am the grand old age of 60 and have worked in advertising for a long time. I would have to say that a lot of the time, people I have worked with have thought that I was not working “hard” enough. That is, I was not sitting at a desk, filling in sheets of paper and the computer screens with stuff and nonsense, just to prove that I was working. But then, we would get a brief for a pitch. The Ulster Bank, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, Belfast City Council Anti-Litter, and I would come up with a strategy, work closely with the creative team and do the presentation. And we won. Lots of business, paying for lots of employees, giving them lots of work to do. But still, I would get the looks and comments, I wasn’t working hard enough.

The killer pass was not enough for those that could not play one!So I left. I had enough, I stopped caring about the other people as they never gave me the credit for winning the pitches. Why? Because (and this was said to me more than once) I “found it easy”. Now it may have looked easy, but I happened to know more about how advertising worked because I had put time in at home, I read psychology books for fun, I watched the ads, and didn’t fast forward them, I read about great admen in the past. But that was not visible, That was “easy”.

What killed me was this lack of appreciation. And that is what will kill talented footballers. What point is there for Pogba to produce a great game against Southampton if his manager will only criticise him for something else. Why does Ozil lose interest, because those around him are not working on the right things, being trained to play in systems, not with freedom and fire?

Great managers give great players the right environment. They praise the little things as well as the spectacular. They appreciate that sometimes the killer pass will go astray (we didn’t win every pitch).

Creativity needs to be nurtured. Otherwise, the interest will die.

Tim McKane

Jose – getting closer to reality but not close enough

Jose Mourinho comments:

23/11 – “Manchester United will be in top 4 by end of December”.

3/12 – “The aim is to try to win as many points as possible and try almost a miracle to finish 4th in May”.

10 days and he has gone from top 4 by end of 2018, to not even getting there by May.

Finally, he is admitting what everybody could see. Now all we need is for him to accept some blame for it! Maybe I’m expecting too much on that front! It’s all the players fault, isn’t it Jose?!

The Arsenal game tomorrow will be 15/15 Premier League games Utd are outsprinted, outrun and outfought and out-thought. The buck stops with the manager for stats like that.

Gary B (Is he still here?)

Ballon d’Or sexism

For a sport that has become a major global international entertainment industry in it’s own right how on Earth is football so tone deaf when it comes to it’s treatment of women? Seriously, a mere 62 years into it’s existance the Ballon D’or creates parity with the men’s game, only for it’s first female winner to be asked if she can ‘twerk’.

Is anyone doing PR for the global custodians of the most popular sport in the world? Or is asking of the presenters “think: would I ask Luka that question? If not, don’t ask Ada” so obvious it wasn’t felt necessary?

Please, please, please can we retire off all the privileged old white men running the game early?

Daniel (an aspirating privileged old white man), London

Recruitment is the main issue at United

I just wanted to add another angle to the current debate on Pogba & Mourinho merrry go round. Recently I read the 2013 autobiography of the main man himself Sir Alex and a few things stand out even more in light of the current shambles of the current recruitment process.

Alex talked about the difficulty of letting players like Phil Neville and Nicky Butt leave the club because of there deep rooted loyalty they had for the shirt and of course they would never ask to leave the club but not playing them every week was hurting them more and he had the difficult decision of asking them to leave for their own good. He talked fondly about players loyalty and their desire to play for the club and it made me think long and hard about the players we have at the moment and i can’t think of many of the team that wouldn’t leave for more money if it were offered to them. Valencia maybe? De Gea hopefully? Ashley young i think has shown he is a loyal player. Names like Mata, Smalling, Jones pop into mind but i think their enormous pay slips keep them at the club more than loyalty.

Is this a united thing or a football thing these days? I don’t have the answer but what i do know is that a loyal player who is deep rooted into the club is a vital part of any team and a first eleven without those types of players is a soulless collection of individuals playing for themselves or their “status” sound familiar?

The second thing i wanted to mention was the recruitment process itself ” He had two fine feet. All the individual attributes were there, which brought us round to the old question: what type of boy was he? Answer: a good one, quiet, could speak English reasonably well, never caused any problems” What type of boy was he? do they even ask this question anymore? do they even consider the personality of the player now? Manchester united have turned down many fantastic footballers over the years because they are not “that type” of player who fits in, plays for the club and not himself but these days it seems our recruitment is based on likes, follows, you tube highlight reels and commercial viability.

No longer is it “what type of boy was he?” but how many shirts will they sell? will they get the front cover of a computer game anytime soon?

Our recruitment is a shambles so perhaps it’s time to start asking the question again of our scouts.

Just my thoughts.

Bahney, Hull (that quote from the book was about Nani)

Some clarification…

Can’t believe my email was published the day after two ridiculous derbies!

Hopefully you will allow me a clarification and response.

Paul, you made me laugh! I’ve never been taken for a United fan before! I heartily detest the club. And I believe Pogba should be blamed for his own ridiculous inconsistency, and his many moments of laziness on the pitch. He should have more pride and professionalism, without a doubt. That’s on Pogba, not Mourinho. But…Mourinho is an easy target, because he’s really just doing an awful job. Personally, I hope he signs a contract extension ASAP.

Gough, LFC, I completely agree, and thank you for the kind words. I think part of the issue though is that Pogba acts like he’s the best player in the world, but doesn’t live up to it either by his professionalism or by his performances (for the most part). It’s true though; why do we judge sportsmenandwomen so harshly?

Jack, fair play, when I wrote in I thought “hmmm, wonder what the actual numbers are, i could be miles off”, but I had to run out the door and so didn’t check. I was being nitpicky, and I actually agree with you that footballers have lots of time that they should be able to spend doing what they want!

But my point wasn’t just about the number of hours in training (which I figured would be between 2-5 hours a day depending on the day of the week), but more about the fact that being a professional athlete is not a normal “job” where you clock in and out. To be anywhere near Premier League level, it has to be a lifestyle, you have to sleep enough, you have to recover, you can’t simply go and live a normal life for the remaining 20 hours a day, if you want to be a great player (at least, not anymore!). Ronaldo’s daily life is centered on his profession, and on being the best, and it shows. Pogba’s life clearly isn’t, and it also shows.

And when you argue about focus, I should clarify. My point about Pogba, is that everything else he does (haircuts, social media, whatever) are all intrinsically fine. He can do what he wants in his (abundant) free time. But, given his extremely erratic performances, isn’t it suggestive that even while his performances suffer and completely fail to reach his potential level of performance, he still is willing to make such consistent effort in regards to new haircuts, etc, while also being ridiculously arrogant on the pitch? The social media etc isn’t actually the issue with Pogba, but it suggest the real problem, which is that Pogba is less concerned with working hard and being the best player he can be, than he is with his own celebrity.

Henry, Köln (LFC and Juve, for the record)

Mesut Ozil – system man

When we signed Mesut F****** Ozil, I literally couldn’t believe it. This was one of the greatest attacking midfielders of our generation. A world cup winner with Germany and a Galactico supplying Ronaldo with goal after goal, was coming to North London.

The numbers speak for themselves. In 149 appearances, he has scored 35 goals and assisted 60. He is involved in a goal every other game in the Premier League. His best season, 2012/2013, he scored 8 goals and assisted 19 more. He averages nearly 3 key passes per game since he joined.

This season however, its not clicked for Ozil. You have to wonder why, because his style of play doesn’t rely on speed or power, so it isn’t an age thing. The opposition, generally speaking, isn’t suddenly miles better. And, as far as we can tell, he has a better manager and the whole team is playing better.

So what’s happening? For me I think it is all in the system and style of play he is now asked to be part of. Ozil excels in 2 scenarios. 1) Teams sit back and allow pressure onto themselves and 2) Counter-attacking through the middle scenarios. In these situations, Ozils ability to see and pick a pass is nearly unrivaled and he can devastate teams single handedly.

The new Arsenal don’t play in a ponderous manner, keeping possession and countering from their defensive line. They try to win the ball higher up the pitch and break quickly through the forwards and wing play, not through the middle. This means the ball rarely finds itself nestled in the middle where Ozil would typically operate at his best. I think the same thing has happened to Ramsey, who typically thrives when a midfield is overunning the opposition. Look at the Leicester game, where we easily overran them in midfield and Ozil dominated the game.

So I’m not sure I agree that Ozil is suddenly one of the worst players in the top 5. But he is definitely at the wrong club at the wrong time and while we play this system, both he and Ramsey are 300k a week we can’t afford.

Rob A (still love them both and they are amazing players) AFC