Arena "The Beautiful Game" - The Official JCC Football (Soccer) Thread.

Fine. Then sit him down, give him an ultimatum and, if he doesn't hit that target, tell him to find a new club. In private.

Not this. This is exactly how narcissism and bullying becomes acceptable. People focus on accuracy behind the opinion being voiced rather than the very public humiliation of another person. So while Mourinho's underlying opinion of Shaw might not be wrong, that isn't what anybody is discussing. It is why he always seems to have someone to bully wherever he goes. Now it is Shaw. If it wasn't, it would be Jones. Or the physio. Or the security guy on the front gate. It would be someone.

When I say staff, I include playing staff because they're...staff. Did Ferguson do it a lot?

 

Not in public.
But that wasn't his style.

He did everything possible to blame everything & everyone else when his team failed, apart from his team.
It's how he kept the winning mentality going. It's not their fault they lost it was the referee/the pitch/the kit/the weather/the opposition diving too much/a conspiracy etc

That worked for him.

Mourinho has a different approach.
It might not always work, but maybe he's tried everything else with Shaw & got no improvement.
Tough love sometimes is necessary.

 

"Now it is Shaw. If it wasn't, it would be Jones. Or the physio. Or the security guy on the front gate. It would be someone."

 

He has also (indirectly) criticized Smalling for his sideways passing.
Mourinho likes a CB that is good on the ball & will deliver it forward or venture out with it.
Smalling is a cautious defender, he tends to pass to either of the full backs when he has the ball or his CB partner. That doesn't help attacks progress well.

 

This is a wonderful piece by Brian Reade. And curse this international break.

Manchester United whipping-boy Luke Shaw far from the first casualty of Jose Mourinho's huge desire for self-glorification
There IS light at the end of the tunnel — his classless manager didn't rate Kevin de Bruyne or Mo Salah either

Throughout a dull first-half the wide man was getting constantly barked at by his manager Jose Mourinho.

At half-time, he tore a strip off him in the home dressing-room, reportedly ordering him to “return as a footballer” in time for next season, then subbed him, leaving the young player confused, embarrassed and crest-fallen.

No, it wasn’t Luke Shaw during Manchester United’s game against Brighton last Saturday but Mo Salah, playing for Chelsea in May 2014 against Norwich.

The near 22-year-old only played three more league games under Mourinho and was shown the door eight months later.

Jose Mourinho is "destroying" Luke Shaw, says leading Sky Sports pundit
If Shaw is searching for light at the end of the dark tunnel he finds himself trapped in then Salah might offer some.

After all, he hasn’t done too badly since.

Neither has Kevin De Bruyne, another 22-year-old cast adrift by Mourinho because he couldn’t instantly turn his immense promise into proven maturity.


He and Salah are now favourites for Footballer Of The Year, while the man who tossed them aside claims his Man United team is bereft of “personality, class and desire.” Who’s fault is that?




Everything Mourinho has said about Shaw as defender's United career hangs in the balance
When United fell 12 points behind Manchester City in December, Mourinho claimed the £300million he’d spent in two summers at Old Trafford was not enough to be competitive; then persuaded his board to sign Alexis Sanchez in a deal that could eventually cost £180m because the 29-year-old brings “maturity and class.”

Two months on, that personality, class and desire Mourinho seeks is still absent.

Mention that The Special One joined United the same month Pep Guardiola joined City and his apologists will say he inherited a worse squad.

And he did.



Interesting theory as to why Mourinho has a big problem with Shaw emerges
Yet Guardiola has massively improved City, and not just by spending but by improving individuals such as Raheem Sterling, who has scored 20 goals so far this season — double what he scored last time, having played ten fewer games.

Would Mourinho have coached that improvement out of him? Or demanded an instant upgrade last summer because he didn’t have the time to wait for the 22-year-old to mature?

That’s what he did with Salah.

He didn’t trust him defensively, so loaned him to Fiorentina as part of a £27m deal to bring in Juan Cuadrado, who also made little impact under Mourinho and was soon discarded. To win back-to-back Serie A titles with new club Juventus.


Shaw doing extra training sessions in bid to prove a point to boss Mourinho
Salah, meanwhile, flourished — especially under Luciano Spalletti at Roma, who worked on his defensive game, nurtured and praised him.

Before one game, Spalletti showed the assembled media a clip of Salah from their previous match against Palermo, sprinting the length of the pitch to defend, after scoring twice, when Roma led 4-0.

“He has fantastic, brilliant habits. If every player applied the same level, we’ll once again have a team with a united core,” Spalletti told the press.



STAN COLLYMORE: Is Jose playing chicken with Man United? One thing is for certain, he is not a coward
Contrast that with how Shaw is being treated by Mourinho and how Salah was at Chelsea.

The modest Egyptian has said little about his time under him, other than “we didn’t talk much.”

The disinterest says it all.

The truth is, Mourinho is hardly every interested in coaching raw talent to the next level. He believes that is someone else’s job, while his is to use a rich club’s money to buy players who are the finished product.

Like a CEO who sees their company’s annual results as the only figures that matter as it determines their performance and bonus, his is a short-term mentality based around how he will be perceived.

With players, it’s about how good they can make him look in that moment.

He rarely cares about polishing a gem the club has invested millions in or persisting with a prospect who is having a bad patch, in the belief it will pay off down the line.

If this Manchester United side is lacking in personality, class and desire, might it be because its manager lacks two of those traits and only has a desire for self-glorification?

 

Shaw should have been loaned out in January if José had no plans to use him.
At least then someone else can work with him & he'll come back to United better.

He's done the same with Andreas Pereira.

 

@Diggy posts more about United than any United fan and certainly more than Liverpool

classic hater

be a lover digs, not a hater <3

 

What can I say, I’m a big comedy fan!

 

Manchester City title stroll should not distract from strength of competition

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...city-title-stroll-competition-premier-league?


"although the Premier League has not had much of a title race (in terms of it being tight all the way to the end) since Brendan Rodgers’s Liverpool made their doomed pursuit of City in 2013-14, it has been different sides running away with it: José Mourinho’s Chelsea, Claudio Ranieri’s Leicester and Antonio Conte’s Chelsea.

It is not Barcelona and Real Madrid wrestling for the title every year and it is not Bayern Munich winning with a crushing inevitability. It may be that City go on to win the title next season and perhaps beyond but if they do, their domination will not be for the same reasons. The wealth of Abu Dhabi distorts the picture but the latest Deloitte report into football finance shows that they are not the Premier League club with the highest annual revenue: Manchester United’s is 28% higher than City’s and there are three other Premier League clubs in the world’s top 10, and 10 Premier League sides in total in the top 20 (two of them, slightly oddly, could yet be relegated this season: West Ham and Southampton).

Bayern’s revenues, by contrast, are 77% higher than the next highest Bundesliga club, Borussia Dortmund. Barça’s revenues are slightly lower than Real Madrid’s but still 138% higher than those of the third La Liga team, Atlético Madrid. That is not just domination but hegemony. This is not a case of a good manager and a good group of players coinciding so a team stay on top for a while; it is structural.

In that sense, the Premier League is by some way the most competitive major league. But that is not the only measure of competiveness. The Premier League has had four different champions in the past five seasons, more than any of the other top four leagues in Europe. The Bundesliga and Serie A have both had one. Trace that back over a decade and a slightly more complex picture emerges. The Premier League has still had four champions while Ligue 1, which has had two champions in the past five years, has had seven. The picture in France is clear, of an evenly balanced league rendered one-sided by unprecedented investment in one club"

 

I hope we lose today (England) fed up of these terrible squad selections

 

Normally we would, if the Dutch weren't terrible

 

Tremendous test between Germany and Spain, both with A team,on pitch, and the two best keepers in the world probing their stature to boot.

 

Is Neuer playing?

 

TerStegen. Neuer scheduled to start training with Bayern this week, but Barca's number one is making it easy to forget him.

Edit : small bit on Neuer in Kicker today, basically saying that if he isn't careful with his comeback, his career would be threatened or even over. Pretty scary.

 

The Netherlands are clearly pretty far from being what they once were.
No real high quality stars to make something happen.

 

It annoys me that Welbeck got called up for diving but Murray didn't.

 

I saw Liverpool Legends Vs Bayern Munich Legends.

Fun game, finished 5-5.

Liverpool in typical fashion threw away a 3-0 lead, but ended up drawing late on.

Some nice goals, 8 in the first half.

 

Reports in Germany that Thomas Tuchel has turned down Bayern so that he can take over Arsenal next season. Get your lols in while you still can.

 

He will be perfect for them. If he can get Mhki back to his Dortmund form, too...

 

Yeah. That'd be a crazy good fire for Arsenal. Makes so much sense, it's hard to believe they'd do it.

Stunning, though, as I think everyone has him to Bayern

 

Maybe he wants a challenge.

Too easy to win BL with Bayern, and always progress far in CL.

Turning Arsenal into a side that can rival Man City would be something.

 

Alonso looked great/

 

Meanwhile in Columbus, the team has ten points in four games to start the year. Won yesterday without two of their four most important players (international call up), and seem to have both a primary scorer and a variety on attack.

And yet. It's hard to get excited for a season that feels like a funeral march

 

I wonder if he isnt scared off of Bayern by Hoeneß presence. Tuchel didn't get along with his superiors at Dortmund, Hoeneß is a whole other level. I think he likes the idea of having more say about personnel in England.

 

He probably would at Arsenal anyway