Mediawatch: What’s Ibrahimovic ever done?

Daniel Storey

And so it begins…

‘Mourinho’s hands-off role stuns players’ – The Times.

Manchester United’s squad continues to be a leaky colander. At least the poor bairns stuck it out until December under Louis van Gaal before throwing their toys out the pram.

 

What a difference seven weeks (and then six days) makes…

Jose Mourinho has turned Manchester United around to become the force of old in just three months’ – Neil Custis, The Sun, September 6.

‘But what is Mourinho’s United? Certainly it is better than under Louis van Gaal, even if the Dutchman – bizarrely – had a better record at this stage last season.Mourinho always likes to go into clubs and make sure the team stops conceding goals first and then build. In that sense you can see progress. This looks like a solid back four with the best goalkeeper on the planet.’ – Neil Custis, The Sun, October 19.

‘Jose Mourinho needs to make big changes to shake Manchester United out of their slumber. Because, right now, with Pep Guardiola and Manchester City visiting in the EFL Cup tomorrow, we are entering David Moyes territory’ – Neil Custis, The Sun, October 25.

It really was a pumping at Stamford Bridge.

 

That Zlat
Things are not going well right now for Zlatan Ibrahimovic, but Mediawatch can’t quite stomach Ian Wright’s dismissal of the striker in his column for The Sun. Scratch that, it made us a bit angry.

‘United need Zlatan to stand up and be counted,’ Wright writes. ‘He’s 35 and must realise there will be no easy games in England like there were in France or Italy, where you can be something of a flat-track bully. Here, you need more than just a five-minute flash of brilliance when you feel like it.’

That’s 398 club goals, 62 international goals (44 of them in competitive matches), 13 league titles, four selections in UEFA’s team of the year, five golden boots and six domestic Player of the Year awards and the sixth highest scorer in Champions League history diminished to ‘just a five-minute flash of brilliance when you feel like it’. Glorious.

 

Irrelevant (when it suits?)
Mediawatch normally enjoys Rob Smyth’s work, and his latest Guardian column on why Jose Mourinho may be stirred by Sunday’s Stamford Bridge debacle holds some merit.

That said, we couldn’t help but raise both eyebrows at one line in his staunch defence of Manchester United’s manager.

‘It could be Mourinho is past his best, that the dressing-room politics of Madrid and Chelsea have wearied him, and that age has diminished his chutzpah,’ Smyth writes. ‘To extrapolate all that from the evidence of nine Premier League games at United and an irrelevant half-season at Chelsea is not just irrational; it is idiotic.’

Woah there. You can argue that casting judgement on the nine games at United is foolish but to dismiss Chelsea’s 2015/16 slump as ‘irrelevant’ is more than a little one-eyed.

Mourinho oversaw the worst start to a season by the league champions in 50 years. The only teams he beat in his final six months were Arsenal, West Brom, Maccabi Tel Aviv (twice), Walsall, Aston Villa, Dinamo Kiev, Norwich City and Porto. He scapegoated his medical staff publicly to the point that one of them sued the club for constructive dismissal. He hung key players out to dry so much that even supporters turned against them; all of those are now performing at a higher level under a new manager.

If that half-season had truly not been relevant then Mourinho would not be the Manchester United manager; he’d still be at Chelsea.

 

Sterling has crashed

‘That’s a lot of Sterling! £180,000-a-week England flop Raheem shows off blinging house he bought for his mum – complete with jewel-encrusted bathroom – hours after flying home in disgrace from Euro 2016’ – MailOnline, June 30.

‘Manchester City star Raheem Sterling earns £200,000-a-week… but takes £80 easyJet flight back from holiday’ – MailOnline, October 24.

Damned if you do and damned if you don’t when you’re young, rich and black. When will Sterling learn to buy everything at the exact price the tabloid media considers appropriate?

Still, bet he paid extra for priority boarding, the bling b*stard.

 

Show-off
‘Paul Pogba shows off personalised trainers outside the Lowry Hotel,’ reads the Daily Express’ headline on Tuesday morning.

If your cameraman has to use a zoom lens to take the photo, and you have to then blow up that picture even further to show the reader that Pogba’s initials are indeed embroidered on the trainers, he isn’t ‘showing them off’; you’re waiting outside his hotel until he appears.

‘Pogba has never been shy when it comes to fashion, but this is a new level even for him,’ the piece reads. Touché.

 

Spot the odd one out

‘At least they’ll have plenty in common to chat about over a glass of red in the Old Trafford manager’s office on Wednesday.

‘A 4-0 thrashing in a stadium where they were once worshipped.

‘A miserable run of Premier League form.

‘Controversy over a senior England player frozen out.

‘A hapless young England centre-half giving goals away.

‘A world-class midfield powerhouse who has disappeared from view. Although Yaya Toure, unlike Paul Pogba, at least had the decency not to have been selected…’ – Dave Kidd, Daily Mirror.

Yes, 23-year-old Paul Pogba’s difficulties in finding consistency after suffering from a virtually non-existent preseason are exactly the same as 33-year-old Yaya Toure not being in Pep Guardiola’s plans.

It was all going so well until then.

 

Man’s best friend

‘Diego Costa may be a menace on the pitch – but he shows his cuddly side as he hugs his dog’ – The Sun‘s football homepage.

Instagram: Deserving a cut of football news traffic since 2014.

Still, it could be worse. MailOnline went for ‘Football’s most deadly duo – Costa and Didier Dogba!’

Wow.

 

Feel the power
Sunderland supporters probably don’t need another reason to feel glum, but Sky Sports provides one with their latest Power Rankings.

Regular readers will remember that this uses 32 different measurements to determine the Premier League’s most in-form player. Xherdan Shaqiri is that man now, with 9,915 points.

Sky Sports produce a list of the top 50 players, ending with Heurelho Gomes on 5,206 points, but also provide the most in-form player for each club. So how many points has Sunderland’s best player accrued? 579. Five hundred and seventy-nine.

The player in question is Jason Denayer, who has played 90 league minutes in the last month and missed both of Sunderland’s last two games. Makes sense, actually…

 

Bold statement of the day

‘£159m invested in players yet United are going backwards… now EFL Cup has gone from low priority to must-win, if Jose is to prove he’s not a busted flush’ – David McDonnell, Daily Mirror.

Yes that’s right. If Manchester United are knocked out by Manchester City on Wednesday, Mourinho is done for. There’s definitely no way back from that.

 

Recommended reading of the day
David Squires on Gary Lineker vs The Sun

Michael Yokhin on IFK Mariehamm, the Finnish Leicester

Adam Bate on Daniel Sturridge.