Has Mourinho buried that knife deep enough into McTominay?

Matt Stead

Nothing’s fine, I’m torn
‘ENGLAND STARS IN CASH RUCK’ screams a back-page exclusive for The Sun. Apparently, ‘Gareth Southgate’s England squad face being torn apart by a bitter wrangle over future commercial rights’.

This sounds really bloody serious. England did so well to cultivate a feelgood factor during the World Cup, built on a stable platform of a likeable squad who seemed like friends as much as colleagues. The different groups that formed in previous squads due to club rivalries were no more – this was a unified team for whom “togetherness” became something of a motto.

So for us now to be told that splits are potentially forming, and that ‘some stars fear they will be out of pocket under new proposals’ (spoiler: they really won’t be), is quite something. Harry Kane is leading a seven-strong committee of players placed in charge of negotiating commercial and image rights, and there are ‘concerns’ that ‘key players might be treated more favourably’ as a result.

What’s worse, one ‘football insider’ says that “this has all the makings of another Denmark”. That will be the team who had to call up lower-league and futsal players after their entire professional squad went on strike.

A full ten paragraphs after that claim, ‘there is no suggestion’ England will have to do the same, and the biggest potential damage is that ‘the dispute could handicap Southgate’s hopes of building on the feelgood factor of the World Cup’.

The Times do carry the same story, and play it with a much straighter bat. They say that ‘some members of the squad are unhappy with how the process is being handled’, and that ‘other players complain that their voices have not been heard and they have been kept in the dark’. But – and this is pretty important – those issues were ‘addressed’ at a meeting on Tuesday evening, and the FA is ‘working with the players to resolve the situation’.

Which is an awful long way from the squad ‘being torn apart’, guys. And an awfully obvious way of trying to sex up a story for an international week exclusive.

 

Mirror, Mirror
The Daily Mirror go down an entirely different route for their back page. They combine some banal quotes from Ross Barkley on Eden Hazard with the introduction of their new columnist, TV and radio presenter Seema Jaswal. She has written an enjoyable piece on Unai Emery.

Now, Mediawatch does not particularly wish to point fingers or make any accusations, but if their new columnist was a middle-aged bloke, would his picture be three times the size of the column’s actual subject on the back page?

We look forward to next week, when Stan Collymore’s picture will presumably be splashed all over the back page, accompanied with a tiny picture of Jose Mourinho in the corner.

 

Great Scott
The Daily Mail do not often carry articles written in their Scottish edition. But as soon as the MailOnline saw Scottish Daily Mail journalist John McGarry had accused Jose Mourinho of ‘throwing’ Scott McTominay ‘under the bus’, they could hardly resist. It is the second-highest story on their website on Wednesday lunchtime.

You see, Mourinho has become ‘yesterday’s man’, ‘his intransigence and permanent war footing’ creating fractures in his squad. And while his treatment of McTominay made the midfielder ‘feel 10 feet tall’ last season, he has had his ‘turn in the firing line’ this campaign.

‘You couldn’t possibly suggest that the Portuguese only played McTominay out of position at centre-half in a back three in the shambolic 3-1 defeat at West Ham because he missed out on Harry Maguire and Toby Alderweireld in the summer, of course,’ McGarry writes.

‘But when the manager takes a verbal flamethrower to the Scotland man when the same scenario unfolded in the Newcastle match, you do begin to wonder.’

That ‘verbal flamethrower’? “Maybe it was my wrong decision to play Marcus Rashford and Scott McTominay. They were not ready for this level of pressure that the man-hunting is bringing. I think they are not coping well with it and the way they start they were panicking. Scott McTominay was scared on the pitch.”

Scorching.

Now that is obviously a bit of a d*ck move from a manager towards a young player, but to say McTominay ‘is now pulling a dagger out of his back’ is a bit strong. He has started as many Premier League games as Juan Mata and Marcus Rashford this season, is 21 and, most importantly, was actually quite poor against Newcastle. Perhaps Mourinho shouldn’t have publicly mentioned him by name, but being substituted at half-time was an indication that he had not been great.

Of course, John McGarry would feel equally strong about this were Scott McTominay an Englishman. Definitely.

 

Scouting for goals
Mourinho is unlikely to read that column, for he is busy dropping a ‘hint’ over his Manchester United future ‘with gesture’. The Manchester Evening News say so.

What is this grand ‘gesture’? He has he finally moved out of that bloody hotel and into his own place in Manchester? Has he had his contract laminated? Has he pinky-swore with Ed Woodward that he’ll stick around?

Of course not. The ‘gesture’ in question is going to a match to potentially scout some United targets.

Give him the job for life.

 

Captain marvel
Elsewhere in the world of Jose…

Short answer: No.

Long answer: No. “I’ve never played in the France team to be captain, being here is already a big thing for me. You don’t have to be captain in order to speak, a leader is not someone who has the armband. As a leader you can talk on the pitch but I’ve seen leaders who didn’t necessarily talk,” is not a ‘fresh swipe’ at someone he isn’t talking about.

 

Riyadical, man
Dave Kidd has dedicated the majority of his column for The Sun to discussing whether Aston Villa are really wise to pursue Thierry Henry and John Terry as potential managers. But he breaks off from that thread to have a pop at Riyad Mahrez.

‘It was weird that Pep Guardiola wasn’t aware of Riyad Mahrez’s poor penalty record,’ he says. And it was, to be fair.

‘Manchester City’s record £60million signing had scored just four of his previous ten before he missed his spot-kick at Liverpool.

‘Yet it was stranger still that a man-manager as gifted as Guardiola didn’t seem to notice Mahrez looking horribly low on confidence all afternoon at Anfield.

‘The Algerian wanted his move to an elite club badly enough and for long enough.

‘Now the winger doesn’t look convinced he actually belongs there.’

And that is a fine lesson in how to extrapolate bloody loads from a single penalty miss.

What Kidd fails to mention is that Mahrez had the most shots (4) and the most shots on target (2) of any player, with Andrew Robertson the only player to complete more dribbles. If he was ‘looking horribly low on confidence all afternoon’, what does that say of everyone else?

 

Forced entry
Writes Neil Ashton in The Sun:

‘It is the James Maddison Show now, giving the country the chance to admire his self-assurance and marvel at some of the skills that forced Southgate to select him.

‘The Coventry-born starlet has also set up two goals this term, forcing Foxes boss Claude Puel to keep picking him.’

He’s just been playing well, Neil. He didn’t hold a gun against their heads or anything.

 

Explanation of the day
‘Wilson calls his gifted mate ‘Messy’ – but not because he reminds him of Barcelona magician Lionel Messi!’

Thanks to Phil Cadden of The Sun for pointing out that ‘messy’ is actually also a word, not just the surname of a footballer.

 

‘Please make it stop’ headline of the day
‘CHEEKYRITO Hernandez spanks girlfriend Sarah and brags to her million ‘jealous’ fans’ – The Sun.

 

Recommended reading of the day
Michael Cox on Arsenal.

Chris Young on Tim Howard buying Dagenham & Redbridge.

 

Mediawatch Jose Mourinho

Related Articles