Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during the season, The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s football.
This was a weekend when Arsenal gorged themselves on goals once more, Chelsea gave their fans more hope by holding Manchester City to a draw at the Etihad, Mohamed Salah returned with a casual goal and assist after more than a month away, and Sheffield United embarrassed themselves against Brighton.
Here, we will discuss whether anyone has any idea about Manchester United, whether David Moyes has a point when he snapped back at the West Ham United fans who want him out, and whether Jose Mourinho should reinvent himself as a deluxe firefighter and try to put out the blaze raging at Bayern Munich…
Can anyone explain Manchester United, please?
Manchester United are a deeply confusing football team.
Are they any good? Well, yes. But also, no.
They were brilliant in the first 10 minutes against Luton Town on Sunday, with sweeping attacks that would have done damage against teams much higher up the table than Rob Edwards’ fourth-bottom side. Rasmus Hojlund scored twice with finishes that indicate he is the real thing: the first a clinical, composed skip around goalkeeper Thomas Kaminski, the second a brilliant piece of improvisation as he directed Alejandro Garnacho’s effort into the net with a twitch of his left pec.
Their build-up play was also pretty good in the second half when they probably could/should have scored two or three more, with some wayward finishing and good saves from Kaminski keeping their tally down to two.
Their eventual 2-1 victory was their fourth win in a row in the league and so far in 2024 they have taken 19 points from seven games. United are just three points behind Tottenham Hotspur in fifth, which could be a Champions League spot this season, and five off Aston Villa in fourth, which definitely will be. They even crept back into positive goal difference for the first time since August.
And yet, after that initial 10-minute burst, Luton monstered them until the break, scoring once and creating enough openings to get plenty more. Had the in-form Elijah Adebayo been in the starting XI rather than the limited Cauley Woodrow (who, to be fair to him, was a very late call-up after Adebayo got injured in the warm-up), Luton may have even been ahead at the interval.
United were chronically lacking in control and were frazzled to the extent that two of their most expensive and experienced players, Casemiro and Harry Maguire, were both not only booked for clumsy/cynical fouls but had to be substituted at half-time to ensure they weren’t sent off. In Casemiro’s case, he was so rattled by a lucky escape from a second yellow he was pulling out of challenges by the end of that first half.
Casemiro was lucky to avoid a red card (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
It’s also not a good sign for the 75-cap Brazil international, a man who is supposed to be the grown-up in the United midfield to counterbalance the talented but inexperienced youth around him, that he looked significantly less composed than the 18-year-old Kobbie Mainoo.
You can throw Bruno Fernandes, the captain, into the ‘What are you doing? Aren’t you supposed to be a wise head?’ category, too, if only for the corner in stoppage time when all he needed to do was keep the ball out wide and away from Luton’s possession. Instead, he cut inside, shot from a truly stupid angle and simply donated the ball back to the hosts.
If you have a firm opinion on whether United are actually good or not, then congratulations, your certainty is to be admired. But for the rest of us, they remain a baffling mystery.
Jose the deluxe firefighter for… Bayern?
Bayern Munich hit rock Bochum on Sunday evening, when their defeat to the team who started the day just outside the Bundesliga relegation places left them a whopping eight points behind its imperious leaders Bayer Leverkusen.
Before we go any further, it’s worth saying that we have very much been here before in the ‘It’s inevitable someone other than Bayern will win the German title’ stakes in the past decade. Last season’s final-day choke by Borussia Dortmund was perhaps the most dramatic, but it only takes a wobbly couple of weeks for Xabi Alonso’s side to get sucked back into the pack.
Nevertheless, the defeat to Bochum means the chances of Thomas Tuchel continuing as Bayern manager are surely receding, whatever the club say in public. Presumably, the long-term plan is to recruit the very man currently vanquishing them, Alonso, but he won’t jump ship nowso they will need someone else to at the very least see out the season.
The most obvious, sensible and probably most likely choice is Hansi Flick, who did rather well the last time he was pressed into duty in this manner, winning seven trophies in 16 months, and has been kicking his heels since leaving the Germany job last September.
But may we present a slightly spicier meatball: Jose Mourinho.
Jose Mourinho would surely love a crack at Bayern (Isabella Bonotto/AFP via Getty Images)
There may have been a time when Mourinho wouldn’t lower himself to accepting a job mid-season and certainly not one with a limited timeframe, but his stock is lower these days, so perhaps he should reinvent himself as a high-end firefighter, a sort of deluxe Sam Allardyce or Neil Warnock, who can enjoy life in the first half of a season and then be parachuted in at whichever superclub is in crisis by January or February.
It makes sense: clubs will be reticent about giving him any sort of lengthy deal because the scorched-earth pattern in the third (sometimes second) season is well established by now.
Mourinho himself doesn’t have a huge amount to prove anymore having won basically everything, but this could be a relatively stress-free way of padding his Wikipedia ‘honours’ section with a few bonus trophies. He hasn’t managed a German team before, so that would be another territory ticked off. It could even suit his ego, being the man giants across Europe turn to in their hour of need.
This probably won’t happen. Mourinho almost certainly still views himself as a Plan A, not a Plan B. Bayern might be wary of his nature.
But Mein Herr, it would be fun.
GO DEEPER
Defensive, less pressing and no daily management – Mourinho is made for international football
David Moyes vs West Ham fans: Does he have a point?
“Maybe some fans want a change or maybe they’ve had managers who excite them more possibly… but the one who’s sitting here wins more.”
You don’t necessarily associate David Moyes with punchy public statements, maybe because the image of him looking like a little lost boy during his nine-month spell as Manchester United manager, over a decade ago now, is still quite difficult to shake.
But while his response to the increasing calls for him to be replaced at West Ham after their 2-0 defeat away to Nottingham Forest on Saturday was certainly bold, it’s hard not to sympathise with him.
Maybe he won’t be able to play the ‘I won the Europa Conference League’ card for too much longer, but that joyous night in Prague was only last May. Despite a recent run of poor form, West Ham are still ninth, a position they have finished higher than only three times since returning to the Premier League in 2012. And Moyes was their manager for two of those seasons.
Moyes has defended his record at West Ham (Eddie Keogh/Getty Images)
He might also note that they are without probably their best player, the injured Lucas Paqueta, which doesn’t help. The issue there being that it also feeds into some of the complaints: if the absence of a single player throws your team off to this extent, it’s a problem.
And while you can see Moyes’ point, you can definitely also understand the fans’ perspective. When results are going for you, you can rebrand his stodgy football as a stabilising force — no-frills stuff to keep everyone on the straight and narrow. But when you start losing, there’s no joy to be had and it’s very hard to see a way back.
West Ham haven’t won a game of any description since December 28 (although that was against Arsenal at the Emirates) and in that time have been knocked out of the FA Cup by mid-table Championship side Bristol City. They were bad against Forest but utterly pathetic in losing 6-0 to Arsenal last weekend. While the temptation is to join Moyes in telling the fans they’ve rarely had it so good, 2024 has been undoubtedly bleak for them so far.
The strongest argument for keeping Moyes in place rather than turning to someone sexier and more progressive is precedent, given they have been in exactly this situation before: then, they replaced Moyes with Manuel Pellegrini in summer 2018 and came crawling back 18 months later when the grass turned out not to be greener, so he would be justified in pointing out that they could just be making the same mistake twice.
This is one of those situations where both sides are right, but at the moment, neither is happy.
Coming up…
- This round of Premier League fixtures comes to a close on Monday with the beleaguered derby, as Crystal Palace (two wins since early November) visit Everton (no wins since mid-December), with the rather sad situation of Roy Hodgson probably having managed his last game for the London club and watching from afar after he was taken ill at the training ground on Friday.
- But that’s not your only Premier League action of the week, with a couple of rogue games chucked in for your enjoyment. Decent ones, too: on Tuesday, Manchester City can go within a point of the top should they beat visitors Brentford, but Liverpool might be able to re-extend that lead when they host Luton the following evening.
- Then comes the second, very much juicier, half of the Champions League’s last-16 fixtures: on Tuesday, last season’s defeated finalists Inter Milan face Atletico Madrid, while PSV Eindhoven host Borussia Dortmund.
- On Wednesday, Arsenal play their first Champions League knockout-phase game since 2017 as they travel to Porto, while Barcelona face Napoli in the other tie.
- Thursday sees the second legs of the Europa League and Conference League play-offs to decide who is in the next day’s round-of-16 draws. Plenty of them are very nicely poised, too, with Feyenoord vs Roma and Shakhtar Donetsk vs Marseille level, while Galatasaray and Sparta Prague will hopefully repeat their entertaining first-leg encounter, which featured five goals and two red cards.
- The inaugural Women’s Nations League finals are here, with a clutch of seven so-so promotion/relegation play-off first legs on Friday in the daytime, then the main course in the evening as France host Germany and Spain are home to the Netherlands in the two semis. England haven’t qualified, so face Austria on Friday in a friendly as part of a two-game, warm-weather trip to Spain.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
2024-02-19 05:46:57
#good #Manchester #United #Bayern #turn #Mourinho #Briefing
