Our lack of Kane caused us to draw games. Yes, that's probably true.Son played in the fecking Olympics and Janssen was an inexperienced punt. Dele and Christian Eriksen had slow starts to the season. Having lost out to Leicester because we drew too many early season games it wasn't a tactic to do it again. United have ibrahimovic, Rashford, Martial, Rooney to play up front with untold options everywhere else. Spurs drew games because we lacked options to change games. Mourinho's belief is that 'not losing' is preferable to trying to win and failing. He goes into games against Liverpool, Arsenal, Citeh, etc. intending not to lose. In doing that he is the only manager of a club trying to get CL who employs such a tactic. If you think that we do because we struggled to score in the early part of the season, then I suggest you reconsider as It's trite logic and way off base. Spurs go out to win, sometimes to our detriment.
To be fair i probably should have highlighted the part that i was giving it back to spurs about, the going unbeaten for 25 or whatever it is games that you mentioned. I purely meant that United were doing the same as spurs. I agree though that its Mourinhos tactics that doesn't help and isn't the same as poch.. Can't say it's all him though as they have had a lot of chances in the games they have drawn against **** sides and his players just haven't put them away. I would also say that Rooney doesn't really count he's been **** for years.
Unfortunately, we also need the £50m that CL football brings to pay for the stadium. When we played a weakened side away at Monaco it was obvious that it's more important to qualify for that tournament than to try and win it . I hope that the cost of the stadium doesn't hold us back too badly and truly hope ENIC can bring in fresh investment to the club to reflect its status having massively increased and to launch it towards financial parity with the clubs below us.
Mourinho hinted at making the EL his priority a few weeks ago. So expect a weakened Utd team to come to Spurs next week. But he's not daft. He knows Utd are not competitive yet in terms of winning the PL or CL. Utd aren't even good enough to qualify for the CL. Winning two trophies and getting into the CL by a back door route is as much as he could ever have hoped to achieve in his first season. And it's two more trophies to add to his haul - which is obviously important to him personally. All his efforts will be directed towards two further games in the EL and winning those. Nothing else.
I don't want to be like Arsenal. I want to try to win it, or anything for that matter. If we accept it as fans then it seeps into the ethos of the club. We won't have a very good team for long if we don't get with the nature of the beast. The moral victories are getting on my nerves. We are the closest to dominating the league bar the sugar daddy clubs and those without wage structures....but we aren't going for the kill..as if there is a perfect moment for it. There isn't. Enic are doing great but they can do better. Got the money, just need to stop wasting it on showers of ****. Amazingly we would end up with a top notch player instead of ****soko for 30 mill and as much as I love him, a striker that can't strike a cows arse with a banjo...that's 48 mill there...ohh there is money...just some stupid ****s investing in it.
I'm actually a little disappointed by Mourinhos efforts. I know he normally does okay but not outstanding generally in his first season in charge but i think he could have made more out of your squad. You have a couple of excellent players and are overstacked in a few positions but it's still a big squad that is solid throughout. Strikers - Rashford, Ibra, Martial and at a push Rooney is a very decent front line Wingers/Number 10 - Mata, Mkhitaryan, Lingard, Martial, Young - Again that is pretty decent CMs - Herrara, Carrick, Pogba, Felleini. - Pretty decent, enough to beat most teams. Pogba still needs to settle but has had flashes, I think Herrera is underrated for the work he does. Defenders - can't be bothered to list but none that are world class but all solid and dependable ala Gary Cahill. Maybe the 1 weak point is LB Keeper - De Gea - World Class I'm surprised you think that Man U do not have the players to get top 4 when you compare that to Liverpool who really only have 2 outstanding players and City who are very top heavy (okay that ones more 50/50). As for Mourinho, he generally knows what he's doing but maybe the psychological impact of last years run at Chelsea has affected him. Only Spurs and Chelsea have shown any consistency and Liverpool, City and Arsenal are all limping over the line so you can't even say these teams are overachieving. All season, those 3 + United have handing the top 4 to each other and even now everyone is still not taking advantage of each others failures. However if Mourinho does win the CL (he should), then it will have been a successful season so he should be given credit for it if that happens. If he doesn't get top 4 or win the Europey, then it would be a pretty disappointed season for you guys in my book
In ENIC I totally trust on this one. New WHL IMHO will be fully funded without having to leech money away from on-pitch revenues. There will not be any Goon-esque whining about the cost of new WHL impacting on transfer/wage fees etc.
Their defence has been standard Jose, but the attack for all the on-paper promise has been dire. As others have said, so resemblant of Spurs 2013-14 season play, but better with at least one trophy to show for it (and still a chance of league qualification for the CL) .
Yep, star man out for all that time and others suspended/injured during it, just shows what other teams have to put up with too doesn't it "Never did and never will" - Diego, 2017
I want us to win something. Mostly the PL. Winning the League Cup in 2008 didn't stop Berbatov or Keane ****ing off that summer. We need a trophy and CL qualification. Chelsea have won the title with no European football. When cannot afford that luxury. We're walking a tight rope in a way that no other of the Top 6 can understand. Arsenal paid for a stadium by constantly qualifying with little competition. What we've done in the last 2 years is extraordinary. If MP can deliver trophies as well, it'll be close to a miracle on our budget. We're far nearer to Everton than anyone above us in financial terms. We've built a great team. Three really good additions would get us over the line. Can we afford them?
There's a lot of good players not achieving their potential at United. Too much Ibrahimovic and Fellaini, not enough Rashford and Martial. Liverpool are **** without Mane but his pace transforms them. Everyone knew that United lacked a key man in defence. Bailly was never that player. Take De Gea out of that side and you'd be competing with Everton. United and Liverpool are in a similar state but Liverpool have gone for it more. More defeats but more wins. That is modern football and United and Mourinho seem not to be attempting to address it this season. On the basis that he won't last there.....and he won't, he needs to transform that team and outdo Chelsea, Citeh, Spurs, Liverpool.....and Arsenal if Wenger retires. I just don't see it.
I can imagine that is the exact question Daniel Levy is putting to the board right now. Question is... what's their response going to be?
The recurring dilemma with the CL is that realistically, only 4-5 teams on the planet have the squads and favourable enough domestic leagues to compete on both fronts. And by 'compete', I don't mean the half-arsed rent-a-crowd we see from Arsenal and City every year, I mean reaching the QF and SF on an annual basis. Barca, Real, Bayern, Juve and maybe PSG (I say maybe because they only managed this for a few years but have now been usurped on both stages by Monaco). That really is it. Most PL managers,including Poch, understand this. Pep and Conte have throughout this season (as much as we may deride them, especially Pep, they have enough experience to sit up and pay attention to them) highlighted how taken aback they were by the intensity and difficulty of even the most run of the mill PL game. This is the first big-name foreign manager has come out and spoken about what we've basically known for years. The last time a PL made it to the final was 5 years ago, and they didn't come close to challenging for the PL. There was a period of around 8 years, starting with Pool's incredible comeback against Milan, where there was a PL finalist in all but one season (2009-10). What has changed since then? TV money has flooded the PL and made it the most competitive league in the world. Not in the sense that a Leicester will now win the league every season, rather in the sense that both Pep and Conte have stressed: it is much harder for Chelsea to beat a Crystal Palace than it is for a Barca to beat a Leganes. The cricket scores seen regularly in Spain and Germany just don't exist here. When they do, it is almost invariably in games between mid-table sides (Everton v B'mouth). Bottom line is, it is getting harder by the year for PL sides to reach the latter stages of the CL. Poch realises this. He threw the EL last year to focus on the PL and did more or less the same thing this year with the CL. In all honesty, what is the point in forcing most of your first team to play two strenuous games per week if one of them is basically meaningless? Enrique and Zidane can play their first team in a midweek CL game, rest 6 players at the weekend against some cattle fodder team and still win 5-0 with change to spare. That just doesn't happen here. If any of the current top 4 were to rest more than 3 players, they'd be pushed to the limit even by relegation candidates. The CL is definitely at risk of being reduced to a money-spinning exercise in the eyes of most PL clubs now. Why did Leicester do better than anyone else this season? Because they were playing full-strength sides in the CL and couldn't care less about the PL. They went into the tournament knowing it would be a one-off and wanted to enjoy the adventure. The two main problems this season has highlighted are without question: poor and ill-advised recruitment, and poor decision-making by the manager in terms of how and when to rotate his squad. Had even one of Sissoko/Janssen/GKN turned out as good as Wanyama, we wouldn't be having this discussion as we would probably be home and dry at the top of the PL. The margins this high up the summit really are that fine. As it is, only one of our summer signings was worth the paper and ink, and we simply couldn't last the distance in both competitions.
With the PL being so cash rich, for PL clubs the CL is effectively becoming beyond the easy TV money merely a PR campaign to increase merchandising revenues overseas. The money flooding into the PL is money UEFA have long coveted and hoped they would get with their insulting/greedy league competition format.
Actually this isn't entirely true, considering Atletico and Dortmund are regulars in the quarter final stages these days - although the reason for this is, with the title race being a closed shop in their respective leagues, both of these clubs can go into the competition with a very important safety net: they know that, barring a catastrophic season such as the one Dortmund had a few years back, they are more than good enough to qualify for next season's competition via their domestic results, which allows them to balance domestic and CL football. It's not a coincidence that you saw Premier League teams make the latter stages of the Champions League at the time where the Premier League's top four places were a closed shop, because the odds of those same four teams missing out on CL qualification the following season was minimal - but as soon as City were given the funds to compete the situation changed, as suddenly there were four places available for five teams, and that meant that teams who had spent years coasting their way into the Champions League suddenly those teams were now having to balance domestic and European football far more effectively, and things were already falling apart for some of those teams before Spurs had nudged themselves into the conversation. Liverpool are the most obvious example of this, as their current pattern looks like this... Season One: Qualify for the Champions League by finishing in the top four Season Two: Finish outside the European places due to an inability to balance domestic and European football Season Three: Without the additional European fixtures, focus on the league to qualify for the Champions League by finishing in the top four Season Four: See Season Two Season Five: See Season Three Arsenal certainly look like they're falling into this rut too: the stage was set for them to potentially win the title last season as Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool and Man Utd all conspired to have poor seasons for various reasons, be it failing to balance domestic and European football, failing to see how unmotivated the players will be if you publicly tell the world that the manager'll be off at the end of the season no matter what or failing to have any reason to listen to the instructions from the gobshite in the dugout who bullied the club's medical staff out of the door, and yet they never came close to mounting a credible challenge - and with Chelsea and Liverpool recovering (as neither were burdened with European football) while Spurs and City remained consistent on last season, suddenly they find themselves staring into the abyss that is a glut of Thursday night matches in the far-flung wastes of European football.
