Pre-season media: ‘Desperate Man Utd in panic over full-back crisis’ as Arsenal ‘face questions’

Editor F365
Man Utd, Arsenal and their full-backs.
Man Utd, Arsenal and their full-backs.

Manchester United are getting ‘desperate’ despite having more full-back options than last season, while we LEARN about Arsenal left-back issues.

 

Lagging behind
Manchester United are embarking on a US tour and The Sun‘s Neil Custis’ mind has been blown by the concept of sports science. What happened to just having a few pints, a good sleep, a hearty breakfast and then writing some absolute nonsense playing football?

MANCHESTER UNITED are going to extraordinary lengths to ensure they get their players’ best performances on their tour of the USA.

Are they? Or are they doing what pretty much all elite athletes do after making a 12-hour flight?

Sir David Brailsford always emphasised the search for marginal gains in his successful time as the head of British cycling.

As United new part owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s right hand man, he is bringing that into Old Trafford – even if it is just to offset jet lag from a 12 hour flight from Manchester to Los Angeles.

Custis then details that ‘each player (has) being given a plan with designated sleep and meal windows’ and ‘bespoke meals have been designed by the performance chef and nutrition team’. This would only blow your mind if you had not been paying attention for the last 20 years.

A sports scientist at Everton told the Guardian over a decade ago: “We give them strategies on how to change their sleep and eating schedule, to get through the jet lag as quickly as possible. They have things to do on the plane to get increased circulation in the legs, more blood flowing, and other techniques to prevent soreness and stiffness. There are loads of things we give them nutritionally.”

Indeed, 15 years ago The Times were basically detailing exactly what Custis is now calling ‘extraordinary lengths’.

Maybe Custis should have followed some of the advice detailed above as he seems to be losing his mind in pursuit of newsworthy angles.

Here’s Thursday’s hot take:

Desperate Man Utd in panic over full-back crisis less than a month before new Premier League season begins

Sorry what? A ‘full-back crisis’? Haven’t we just seen Luke Shaw fit again at Euro 2024? If anything, their full-back situation is much improved on last season, when they fielded six different players in the left-back position.

MANCHESTER UNITED are in a panic over their full-back situation with less than a month to go to the start of the new season.

The club have flown out to Los Angeles without Luke Shaw, Diogo Dalot and Tyrell Malacia.

Are Liverpool in a panic about their centre-back situation as they have flown out to the US without Virgil van Dijk, Ibrahima Konate and Joe Gomez, or are they keeping oddly calm because players who reached the latter stages of the Euros or Copa America are not involved in early pre-season tours?

Custis does concede that ‘Shaw and Dalot are having extended breaks after taking part in the Euros’ and ‘as it stands, he (Dalot) will begin the season on the right with Shaw on the left’. Which is a massive improvement on last season.

But there is no recognised back-up on either side with the club trying to sell Wan-Bissaka, who is in the final year of his contract.

Is there a new law that says Manchester United would not be able to sign another right-back to replace him?

Does Mr Custis need somebody to tell him when to eat and drink? We think the jet lag might have got to him…

MORE ON MAN UTD FROM F365:
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👉 F36Skive: Can you name the 14 Frenchmen to play for Man Utd before Leny Yoro?

 

How do you solve a problem like left-back?
Mind you, he’s not the only one making nonsense from pre-season tours, with the Mail barking about ‘MARESCA’S MISERABLE START’ on the football homepage. FFS.

Oh and yet more full-back panic:

Gunners still face questions at left back, Smith Rowe inches towards the exit door and Timber returns: FIVE THINGS WE LEARNED from Arsenal’s 1-1 draw with Bournemouth

The clue is right there in the headline but the Mail need there to be an issue. You have to LEARN things from these entirely meaningless friendlies, after all.

The same pressing question from last season reoccurred: who is going to play at left back? A Jurrien Timber long-term injury left Takehiro Tomiyasu, Jakub Kiwior and Oleksandr Zinchenko to fill that spot in the previous campaign, to varied success.

Tomiyasu was the most assured, but he’s injured once again. Expected signing Riccardo Calafiori, who can play multiple positions across the backline, is not an Arsenal player just yet.

But he will be. And then there’s Timber, who only did not play at left-back v Bournemouth because he was playing at centre-back in the absence of Gabriel and William Saliba. In anything, they have too many options at left-back. That’s what we’ve LEARNED anyway.

 

Getting shirty
On Wednesday night somewhere in the United States, Chelsea’s Levi Colwill and Wrexham’s James McLean did that holding-shirts-without-ever-once-swinging-a-punch thing that is so beloved of footballers who want to be aggressive and manly but absolutely do not want to do anything that will earn them a red card. It’s basically stand-up wrestling and nobody could possibly get hurt.

So obviously in The Sun

Chelsea and Wrexham stars in huge bust-up just TWO MINUTES into pre-season draw before Colwill and McClean are split up

If that’s a ‘huge bust-up’ you have literally never visited the north of England.

Watch the video yourselves and spot the point this nonsense ‘sparked a mass brawl’ because all we can see is a mass of players trying to pull the two big dafties apart, presumably reminding them that they are only there at all because some very rich people wanted to become even more rich.

In MailOnline, it is described as ‘a huge scrap’, with Kieran Gill writing that ‘in the Premier League, you suspect both would have received red cards for the clash’. With all due respect…would they f***.