Mourinho and Ferguson had an enormous pool of top quality players to pick from. Phelan has Will Keane and decided to throw a game to make a point. Brilliant management I agree.
To be honest I thought Phelan's interview was sad. Can you imagine Pearson or even Bruce being spoken to by Burnsey like that? He was getting hammered and it was all 'Yeah well you've got a point there'. What? And i'm sorry but the line 'At the moment we've gone with one striker and it seemed to work really well' is laughable. We were dogshit at Bournemouth and not much better against Stoke.
Dio was sort of left wing though wasn't he. That quote was pre-Stoke and he was talking about his decision to drop him at Bournemouth, so he meant before then. Obviously the first four games were when we were at our best.
He's looking increasingly out of his depth, it has to be said. Shouldve gone for Rudi Garcia before he went to Marseilles.
I distinctly remember Phelan after the Stoke game saying he thought Keane up front at Bournemouth worked well. It didn't and it's a stupid thing to say or believe.
That's a fair comment. McLean could never be accused of laziness, he was an excellent grafter and we do want that in our players, but he just wasn't anywhere near good enough. Who would everyone pick, McLean or Berbatov? Well the difference in effectiveness between those two and Abel and Keane is about right. Notice I was careful not put Keane and Abel.
Here we go what? Is this another occasion when I'l be made out to be some kind of dick by being correct?
I am ok with Phelan but i just cannot believe we have 20 goal striker on the bench when we are playing a home game against a team in the bottom half of the league.
Phelan would love to have a natural goalscorer on the pitch. Says a lot that something has convinced him not to.
