Mails: F*** off Rooney, Rashford dived and…

To the point
Thanks for the memories Wayne, but can you kindly f*ck off now.
Dan, Ireland MUFC

 

Unbeaten? What’s the point?
Unbeaten since November. Crap since October.
Edwin Ambrose

 

On the dive. And it was a dive
So, what about the blue eyed boy’s dive then?
Adam, LFC, Belfast

 

…If a foreign had dived like Rashford there would be outrage for a week talking about it being “a curse on the game” and how it “didn’t happen as much back in my day”. But because it’s England’s next great hope for a world class forward it’s “good attacking play” and “intelligent to draw the penalty”.

But of course it’s actually Fabianski’s fault for diving in and…Erm…Pull out of the tackle? How dare he!

There’ll be some minor contentious decision against United in the second half, Mourinho will not shut up about it and say how his team never get decisions, the media will lap it up (bar F365) and the dive will be forgotten.
Cian LFC (The bias is incredible)

 

…I do wonder if England’s next big hope, Marcus Rashford will be maligned for his blatant dive or if that is limited just to those bloody foreigns.
Sood CFC (I feel bad for Fabianski and that’s not nice)
Some pretty pessimistic conclusions
1. Anyone who didn’t see that result coming clearly hasn’t been paying attention to this season. United have spurned literally every opportunity to pass Liverpool this season, so it should come as no surprise whatsoever that we did so again.

2. This injury crisis is entirely of Jose’s own making. His refusal to buy a centre-back in January and his ostracism and subsequent sales of Schneiderlin and Schweinsteiger are all problems that needn’t occur.

3. So now we go into the crucial final stages of the season with zero centre-backs available. Any hope we had of either winning the Europa League or making the top four are hugely damaged.

3. The penalty should not have been given, but I would argue that it wasn’t a dive either. I didn’t see any signs of an appeal from Rashford himself, so that suggests he was just trying to avoid the ‘keeper. He isn’t even looking at the referee when the penalty is awarded, so it’s harsh to say he was playing for it.

4. But Fabianski created the problem himself. It was ill advised to come rushing out like that, whether he tried to pull out of the challenge or not.

5. What a free-kick from Sigurdsson though. They deserved at least a point and that was a fine way to achieve it.

6. One of the other mailboxes said imagine watching that every week, and it is truly starting to become infuriating. It’s the utter predictability of it all: we go in front, spurn a bundle of chances to increase our lead and then concede an avoidable goal to finish 1-1. While we are making some progress defensively, we are suffering from a serious goal scoring problem.

That was not a good performance by any stretch of the imagination, and there are literally no positives to be taken from the match for us. The result coupled with the two injuries makes it an absolute disaster, and one that jeopardises the rest of the season. Suddenly top six and the League Cup seems like as good as it’s going to get. Roll on summer.
Ted, Manchester

 

Is fatigue the theme of the Premier League?
As always in the past five seasons of CL disappointment, it’s time for the annual post mortem on the Premier League’s relative weakness. But looking at the past two seasons in particular, is the single most important factor to success in modern football simply management of fatigue?

The top three teams in terms of performance this year have been Chelsea, Spurs and Liverpool. Last season it was Spurs and Leicester. Common thread? No Europe (no Spurs fans, your ‘efforts’ don’t count). Chelsea look nigh on invincible, lose one defender for the first time in three months, suddenly the wheels fall off. Liverpool look a force til January, have to play more than once a week, wheels fall off. Spurs go out of Europe, wheels well and truly back on.

Not being an elite level athlete, it’s almost like playing football more than once a week appears to impact performance. Who’d of thought?

Oh that’s right, all the other giants of CL football. Because when Juve, Bayern, Real and Barca have important mid-week CL matches, they basically don’t bother with the league fixtures, as they don’t need to. (occasional Classico scheduling exempted).

Not sure what the answer is, but I’d wager the days of a Premier League team actually managing on 3/4 fronts is over.
Ryan

 

You can’t prepare for an injury crisis
This is the first time I am trying to contribute to the mailbox. Been a reader for over a dozen years now and your website was a big help when I was getting into football. I want to address the point people keep bringing up whenever an injury crisis happens in any rich club, which is that “oh, instead of spending £150 million on four players, you could have bought a dozen or so cheaper players instead and avoided this crisis happening.” How?

Each team has 11 players on the pitch, and has around 11 backups. So, 23 players (including third keeper) is what every team needs, but they normally have another 2-3 players on top of that. A club can’t have a lot more players than that because they won’t be able to satisfy them due to having to spread gametime over a bloated squad of players. So players will become unhappy (or unfit, or dropped from national squad, players’ sponsors angry, etc) and want to leave, like Schneiderlin (gone), Schweinsteiger (gone), Memphis (gone), McNair (gone), Young (asked to leave), Januzaj (loan), Pereira (loan), Varela (loan) and some more players that appear to be unhappy (based on interviews) because they aren’t first-choice starters (Martial, Darmian, etc).

United’s squad was already too big in June (Mourinho said so himself early in the season), and is still a little too big now despite sales. So, if so many players are unhappy now with insufficient gametime, imagine how many more unhappy players there would be and their impact on the ones that are playing enough, if instead of buying four top players last summer we bought 12+ average ones? How are you supposed to keep a big, bloated squad happy in real life, when it can’t even be kept happy in Football Manager (believe me I have tried).

Also, clubs can’t solve an injury crisis by saving money and spending it later. There is no point in buying four cheap players instead of four expensive ones, because if an injury crisis hits in February for example, the club can’t use the money saved to buy players because there are only two transfer windows.

When people make that idiotic argument that lead me to write this email, as a kid I used to think that this must be ‘adult bantz’ and I am too stupid/young to understand because I was a teenager. But now as an adult when I still see people being dead serious when saying it (especially mailbox comments section, which is sad), I realise so many football fans are idiots.
Khalid, Kingdom of Bahrain

 

Did United break Moyes permanently?
Watching Sunderland finally disappear into the drain that they have to be honest been circling for a while now, I can’t help but wonder if Moyes has been broken permanently by his United ordeal. This appointment seemed a perfect fit for him, albeit without much time in preseason to make any signings of significance.

The fire seems to have gone out and that’s definitely sad. From solid Premier League operator to a joke figure. I hope he can turn his career around but a broken manager at a broken club, doesn’t bode well.

Both may be better off parting ways.
Harry, Durban, South Africa

 

Laughing at Sunderland
I have waited since May 13th 2012 for this moment to come. On that day, I travelled to the Stadium of Darkness to watch Man Utd beat Sunderland 1-0 and for a few brief pre-Aguero moments began to believe that the impossible had happened and that City had slipped up against QPR. However my hopes were shattered as City scored their last-ditch winner, news which I heard through the raucous cheering and laughing from the Sunderland fans – mocking which continued after the game as we left the stadium and trudged away.

Therefore I would just like to say one thing….. ‘HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA’.

It’s taken a while, but Davey Moyes has finally given United fans something to cheer.

Good luck in the Championship.
Richard, Manchester

 

The real shame
The worst thing about Sunderland’s relegation is they’ll be gone before their turn for Hall of Shame. I don’t know why but I was really looking forward to that one.
Will Wymant, EFC