Friday night was supposed to be, what, the fourth coming of Paul Pogba?
Count them. There was the first, when he joined from Juventus in 2016 for a world record transfer fee.
He was the player who would fire the Jose Mourinho era at Manchester United. The powerhouse midfielder the club had been lacking since, well, the teenage prodigy Pogba left.
He was going to be the modern Patrick Vieira. Wayne Rooney spoke of the physical battle Pogba presented, even in training. He said tackling Pogba hurt, even when he didn’t intend it to.
Pogba could not quite deliver on those mighty expectations, so there was the second coming.
That was 2017, his next season, when it was thought he would build on strong performances in Europe by getting to grips with the demands of the Premier League slog.
It was pointed out Pogba hadn’t played at the top level in England before. It would have been as big a shock to him as to any foreign player. This year would be different. It wasn’t.
At times, he couldn’t get in ahead of Scott McTominay.
Then there was the third coming, in 2018, when Pogba was made captain. He lost that role, fell out with the doomed Mourinho and, despite a brief resurgence under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, ended the campaign in conflict with fans as United lost at home to Cardiff.
And so to this, the fourth occasion Pogba has been depicted as United’s saviour, except this time even his manager does not appear wholly convinced.
The trailers had a now-fit Pogba and Bruno Fernandes paired in a dream midfield, but by Thursday it seemed likelier Solskjaer would stick with his team pre-lockdown.
Pogba would be a substitute with the official explanation that Solskjaer, ever the decent fellow, intended showing loyalty to a group that had gone 11 games unbeaten before the season was put in mothballs.
If this sounds rather convenient, it is. A manager wouldn’t start a new season faithful to those who had done well last May and this is, at heart, a new campaign under the auspices of old. There is no question of Mourinho not using Harry Kane, who is also back fit.
If Pogba was so vital to United, he would be beside Fernandes and nobody would question it.
Could it be that players who were regarded as place-holders pending Pogba’s return continue outperforming the Frenchman in training, too?
Solskjaer is nice — but not so nice that he would be anything less than hard-nosed given what is at stake.
Maybe he shares wider reservations about his perfect midfield; that Pogba’s erratic discipline might unsettle Fernandes, in a way the much-improved Fred did not.
That Pogba’s casual approach to defence leaves his team-mates with an increased workload that could inhibit Fernandes’s style.
Of course, Pogba has not started a game since September 30 and Solskjaer may wish to ease his path back.
Yet, increasingly, it is becoming harder to invest in claims of his transformative qualities. United seemed to be doing quite well without him before the virus intervened. Maybe they simply don’t need saving any more.
Labour can’t claim this goal
Labour attempted to take credit for the Government’s U-turn over free school meals, despite the role played by Marcus Rashford.
He’s a striker, so he knows the score.
A scramble of legs in the goalmouth, the ball goes in, and it’s always the centre forward who charges away confidently with an arm in the air. In politics, as in football, skulduggery goes with the territory.
Bit more of a cheek to try to claim one, however, when Manchester United’s No 10 was the only man in the opposing half, and somehow chipped the goalkeeper from 35 yards.
Christian Coleman, the fastest man in the world right now, says it would be overkill to ban him for two years for missing three drugs tests.
He wants to cut a deal for half that sentence, enabling him to run in the Olympics next summer. If he does, what should be the blue-riband event in Tokyo will be immediately tainted.
If the Athletics Integrity Unit is worthy of the name, Coleman does his two years if guilty and not a day less. There should be no deals around drug protocols, certainly none that serve to place a shadow across the podium.
Only thing Lineker is guilty of is a bad joke
Gary Lineker never tweets impulsively. Before he presses send, he reads the message through for potential misunderstandings, and he’s always sober.
He must have been rather surprised, then, that a harmless little aside on Wednesday turned so swiftly against him.
When Manchester City scored, Lineker joked that he had a tenner on Black Lives Matter for the first goal. The slogan was written on the back of every shirt. See? Lineker pretended he thought that was the name of the player.
Such fun. And, no, it wasn’t his best work. Not because it was racist, but because it was rather an obvious line. Still, there were a fair few out there just as predictably calling for him to be sacked, or cancelled, for casual racism.
Few, however, appeared to be black. One imagines black people are more understanding of the difference between actual racism and a joke. That’s why they were not out on the streets protesting repeats of Fawlty Towers or The Mighty Boosh.
Black Lives Matter was not intended as a grand cultural reckoning, led by the humourless. It was a push back, an angry howl against authoritarian violence, against structural disadvantage, against the absence of opportunity and social mobility.
These are higher motives. Yet when it now meets resistance — as it may, inevitably, because this nation intrinsically distrusts attacks on laughter — it is the black community whose issues will have been cheapened. Black Lives Matter; bad puns don’t.
Coutinho’s key role in Kop title push
Brendan Rodgers is right. Philippe Coutinho was a wonderful player for Liverpool. It didn’t work for him at Barcelona, and again on loan at Bayern Munich, and Liverpool thrived with a different system in his absence — but that shouldn’t negate his qualities.
This happened when Michael Owen left, too. He departed for Real Madrid, Liverpool won the Champions League, Owen never found his feet in Spain, and many gloried in this reversal of fortune.
Yet without Owen’s goals, Liverpool wouldn’t even have been in the Champions League in 2004-05. They were 30 points off the champions, Arsenal, in 2003-04, and 15 points behind Manchester United in third.
What got them into Europe’s major competition — by four points from Newcastle and Aston Villa — were 16 Premier League goals by Owen. He was the only Liverpool player to make it into double figures, the nearest being Emile Heskey and Harry Kewell, with seven each. So Owen wasn’t in Istanbul — but Liverpool wouldn’t have been either, without him.
It’s the same with Coutinho. He was huge for Liverpool the year they came close to the title under Rodgers and in the early years under Jurgen Klopp was considered essential.
Finally, by commanding such a huge fee, Coutinho enabled Klopp to complete the team he wanted — his sale financed the recruitments of Virgil van Dijk and Alisson. So it is harsh for that contribution to be forgotten and, at 28, for Coutinho to be assessed in the past tense. He may not carry the youthful appeal of Jadon Sancho or Erling Braut Haaland, but he could make a difference at a club with ambition.
It is a pity he would appear to be out of Rodgers’ price range at Leicester, because he would be perfect for them. Imagine Coutinho picking out passes to Jamie Vardy.
When we needed it most, VAR failed…
Technology in football became an inevitability after the 2010 World Cup, and was seen as the answer to a specific occurrence: a travesty of justice.
To reach South Africa, France required an obvious and deliberate handball by Thierry Henry to beat the Republic of Ireland. Then, in the last 16, what should have been an equaliser for England against Germany was missed by the Uruguayan officials. Lampard’s shot crossed the line by some distance and everyone knew it.
Football appeared antiquated, a hostage to human error. For the biggest tournament to be blighted this way made the game a laughing stock.
Fast forward 10 years and what began as a simple idea — make the game fairer, correct clear errors, restore credibility — has us drawing tracers from armpits to turf and identifying mistakes that could not be called with the naked eye. And then a travesty unfolds that is every bit as recognisable as Lampard’s goal in 2010 — and nothing gets done.
What frustrates most about Sheffield United’s ghost winner is that the mistake was so avoidable. It just needed VAR to do the job as envisaged by every fan — by shouting in Michael Oliver’s ear that a terrible error had occurred and the sport would look foolish unless it was corrected.
It is a surprise Hawk-Eye goal line technology is fallible, even once in over 9,000 matches, but there was still a human safety net at Stockley Park. Competently informed, Oliver could have stopped the game, looked at a pitch-side monitor and maintained football’s integrity.
Had he done this, the hated VAR system would also have been awarded much-needed merit points.
Instead, we are exactly where we were in 2010. If only we had the technology to stop this happening, we moaned; but we do now and it’s still no better.
Levy must cash in and rebuild squad
Many will dismiss it as brinkmanship, but Tottenham are insistent their biggest names are not for sale this summer. Harry Kane has hinted he might be open to offers and there would undoubtedly be interest in talents including Dele Alli and Son Heung-min.
Yet the worth of all players this summer will be affected by recession and Daniel Levy enjoys his reputation for driving the hardest of bargains. Why sell amid a crash?
It makes sense. Yet so would taking a hit that allows Jose Mourinho to freshen Mauricio Pochettino’s squad. If the former manager appeared jaded by the end, so did a number of his players. Maybe the place needs a change, some new ideas, a few new faces.
From the start of lockdown, when Levy furloughed non-playing staff and delivered a doomy address about football’s short-term finances, it seemed Tottenham’s plan was to stand still.
Mourinho may have had his difficulties with Tanguy Ndombele, for instance, but he looks to be stuck with him. Faced with taking a bath on his £65m investment, or telling Mourinho to work anew with the club’s record signing, we all know what Levy would prefer.
And while there is obvious spare at Tottenham in certain positions — full backs Danny Rose and Serge Aurier and centre half Toby Alderweireld, for instance — it is unlikely to raise enough for the changes Mourinho would ideally make. One major sale, however — although not Kane and certainly not to a Premier League rival such as Manchester United — could support rejuvenation.
That is what Tottenham need most of all — starting tonight, when victory over United is essential.
Mikel Arteta said Arsenal must make Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang feel valued if he is to renew his contract, which expires next summer.
Isn’t that what the club did with Mesut Ozil, by making him the highest-paid player in Arsenal’s history? And how has he rewarded them?
Aubameyang will be 32 when this contract expires — how much longer does he have at the very top? How many strikers are still in peak form at, say, 34?
At Manchester City, Aubameyang barely picked a foot up, particularly in any situation that required physical contact. It was as if his mind was elsewhere. If Arsenal then broke the bank to keep him, who is to say he wouldn’t end up like Ozil, believing he did the club a favour by staying?
Understandably, Arteta doesn’t want to lose one of his best players — but Arsenal have already tried throwing money at a marquee name and that didn’t even buy Ozil a place in their 20-man squad on Wednesday.
source:- allfootballapp
Share your thoughts