Mou vs Roo

it was fun when mark hughes became a defensive midfielder for the last two or three years of his career

Did that happen? Wtf I have no memory of that.

Trying to think of a decent striker-to-DM conversion. Dembele doesn't count because he was never much cop as a striker to begin with.

yeah i remember hughes as dm.

paul scholes sort of - he was a striker at the very start of his career.

i always used to wonder why full backs that can't defend weren't just made into wingers. like eg moreno, glen johnson etc.

rooney thing is so bizarre. hilarious but bizarre. i mean there's no way of knowing for sure obviously but i'm pretty certain that if pep had taken the utd job instead of going to city there's not a chance in hell rooney would be starting, he'd probably have been bombed out all together.

xp the few times i can remember glen johnson playing RW for lfc he was shite if i recall. i think that the skill set for a winger is different enough from a FB to make that transition difficult. just where they recieve the ball in realtion to the opposition, where they're facing, how much space they have etc

receive and relation that should be ffs

utd could do with a DM but a 3 of either carrick/blind(deep), pogba (leftish) derek/herrera (rightish) + zlatan, martial,rashford should be good enough i'd have thought.

I guess Mourinho did want to sign Rooney before, maybe he really loves him.

utd could do with a DM but a 3 of either carrick/blind(deep), pogba (leftish) derek/herrera (rightish) + zlatan, martial,rashford should be good enough i'd have thought.

Poor Mata.

Lol yes I forgot about Mata. Utd unbeaten this season with him in the line up. I've only seen one Utd game this season tbf and only saw 5 last season so what do I know. Find it hard to believe that pogba, mkhitaryan and zlatan arent their best 3 players by a distance so cobble together a system that suits those 3 would be a start. Totally forgot about schneiderlin and schweini as well. Oh and depay as well. By God there' s hundreds of em.

Mata played against Feyenoord tbh

If by November Utd are still playing a 4-2-3-1 and Rooney is the #10 rather than mkhitaryan or even Mata then Mourinho wants shooting.

Is it true that he's mocked and hated by all football fans? I bet there's still loads who want to believe in the Rooney of 2004 or 2009 or even 11/12.

There were, but yesterday felt like a tipping point. It's basically open revolt now

I'd be interested in hearing from huge ManU fans who still defend him playing tbh. Do they exist?

i know one or two who were defending him playing out of position for England at the start of the Euros but for some reason they seem to have come round to the "he's not a deep-lying mid" argument since the domestic season's started.

his few remaining supporters on the Utd side's argument basically boils down to "well who do we have that's better?"

they get given ammunition by games like Feyenoord where he doesn't play and the team is still shite, even though those occasions almost always feature thrown together second string sides

obviously the team has more problems than just Rooney but jesus christ getting rid of him solves so many of them in a single stroke

the whole thing is like a waking nightmare now. It defies all logic

Yeah just had a look over at redcafe.net and there's not much more on offer than "he's not the only one playing bad you know".

Never forget btw

Gerrard comparison is bizarrely illfitting

Giggs was shit for years FYI

It wasn't remotely the same and you know it

basically every paper has had a "drop Rooney" piece this week

It's all falling into place

Mourinho's played a blinder tbh

i want to believe

hmmm, I wonder who's been talking to his mates in the press tonight

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2016/09/20/manchester-united-manager-jose-mourinhos-criticism-of-players-na/

this whole campaign of luke shaw abuse over the years seems to have completely passed me by. handy limping labrador puppy for someone to hide behind tho i'd imagine

interesting story tho. i was thinking that, partly post-chelsea chastened but mostly carefully united-mythos-deferential given the charlton/fergie opposition, he'd been on his best behaviour biding his time for the moment. hard to believe he'd be miscalculating bollockings this early unless he's really lost the plot

Guardian have this story

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/sep/20/manchester-united-jose-mourinho-criticism-luke-shaw-efl-cup-northampton

Manchester United are not concerned about José Mourinho’s outspoken manner despite reports that Luke Shaw is unhappy at the criticism his manager levelled at him after the defeat at Watford on Sunday.

real cloak and dagger shit

is rooney starting as a forward tonight a sign of support or a sign he won't play vs leicester i wonder?

the latter. We're into the endgame here

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cs52mlTUEAAZw20.jpg

<3

ya

there'll be a belter of a Rooney compilation to come too

lol City in the next round

there'll be a belter of a Rooney compilation to come too

Hopefully featuring the bit where he 'controlled' the ball about ten yards off the pitch to break down an attacking move

^ somewhat mangled and ambiguous, but I know what I meant

this whole campaign of luke shaw abuse over the years seems to have completely passed me by. handy limping labrador puppy for someone to hide behind tho i'd imagine

Given the quote in the article, there aren't many Fergie-era remnants left in the squad - De Gea, Valencia, Carrick, TWP, Jones and Smalling. The first two strike me as unlikely, you'd think Rooney would be keeping his head down now, and the last two might still have a bit too much to lose. Has to be Carrick really.

Carrick is the other suspect alright. In the stories that came out about the players questioning LVG's methods last year it was notable that he and Rooney were the two players who supposedly staged some sort of intervention.

I still think it's Rooney though. He and Stretford are well known for courting the press. Took all the England hacks out for dinner prior to the Euros to get them onside

Also because Carrick doesn't seem a cunt

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"I think there was a Wayne before the Slovakia-England and a Wayne after the Slovakia-England," Mourinho said.

"I think it was too much but I still think, a big boy like he is, he has to face it in a strong way."

it's a bit early for the kind of paranoid pre-meltdown mourinho is already allowing himself to have.

Keeping an eye on Stormzy's YouTube channel for news of the Rooney benching. I think today might finally be the day.

I'm signing up for every conspiracy theory going if he starts today

(longtime lurker first time poster here):

this goes more to DGAF conspiracy than anything lizardy or contractual, but (post-brexit) isn't there like to be quite a potent impulse for someone like mourinho just thinking "ok i will give these pigheaded insular idiots EXACTLY what they are demanding, they deserve the consequences, it makes no real different to me now -- i will rub their stupid faces in their parochial stupidity"

he's in the downslope of his days as a manager; no one born outside these islands currently working in them can be finding themselves *more* patient and understanding of britishes delusion since june, surely

or is the football world just disconnected from that plane of politics?

DROPPED

kind of annoyed i am going to watch this game and was looking forward to some roo comedy.

when did neville become so overtly daily mail? he just said "i know it's not fashionable to talk about being mean to children nowadays..." before a "players are coddled" rant. i don't mind the latter so much but a seriously freakish intro.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/5df51f14cc6409ce3c026bfbdffd8c7db621aa0d/0_60_4675_2805/master/4675.jpg

or is the football world just disconnected from that plane of politics?

Mourinho's politics are somewhat to the right of Salazar fwiw.

for sure -- and my not-very-serious speculation was anyway been roundly exploded abt 1.3 seconds after i posted it -- but i guess i'm just interested in the degree to which the residual cultural sentiment of the football outlander ever breaks into these kinds of situations: there must be a BIT of mourinho just exasperated beyond bearing at the inward-looking idiocy of the world he's trying to establish some sort of professional success in

(of course the portuguese and the english are very long-time allies in terms of european politics -- still tied into the "oldest active treaty in the world", so there's that)

leicester aren't very good.

theme of the traitor and the he-roo

it was under our noses all along

there was a trail of lager leading to the old abandoned footballer's room

Rooney at Colonus: the Interior Life

Et mou b-roote

Jagz agreed to do it in return for an undisclosed % of profit on roo's fourth book, tentatively titled "Daddy what did you do in the world cup?"

answer: a shit