Is Michael Laudrup a potential replacement for David Moyes?

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Joe Bookbinder

Manchester United fan Joe Bookbinder makes the case for a quick return to management for Michael Laudrup…

Before I start, I should state that I believe David Moyes should be given more time before proper judgement can be passed. As a United fan I have far from enjoyed the majority of this season, and have largely tried to avoid thinking about the worrying situation.

Despite a considerable list of things that have gone wrong this season, despite the wry smiles, I firmly believe Moyes knows how to turn it around. After all, if he’s good enough for Sir Alex and Sir Bobby, that’s more than enough for me.

Barring an unbelievable end to the season, 4^th looks to be a bridge too far as does the impossibility of United winning the Champions League. Dumped out of the domestic competitions by bottom half sides, United’s season is effectively over in mid-February. In terms of Moyes’ future I’d like to see Woodward and the Glazers properly back their man. Moyes is a much better operator in the transfer market than is currently being portrayed – Fellaini could still come good (think of all the United players that had slow starts to life at Old Trafford) and in Mata he signed one of the most gifted players in the league. His record at Everton was impressive – Cahill, Arteta, Baines, Jagielka, Coleman to name a few. Just don’t mention Darron Gibson, in any context. Continue reading →

Mesut Ozil and Wayne Rooney: the Opposite of Opposites?

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Simon Smith

In the fifth instalment of ‘Tacticle Your Fancy’, Simon Smith compares the style and roles of Mesut Ozil and Wayne Rooney…

The recent debate about what’s wrong with Mesut Ozil has really captured my imagination, perhaps almost as much as his unlikely summer transfer itself did. Everyone seems to agree that there’s something wrong with the way he is playing at the moment, and yet there seems to be so much inconsistency in the reports. Sure, we can agree that he has a tendency to ghost in and out of games and perhaps it is fair to see he isn’t the most proactive player off the ball. The jump I find hard to make is how we get from this very general observation to the very niche and specific problem of why he is out of form: surely this is how he plays always, when in form as well as out?

The excellent two minute debate about whether he should be left out of the starting XI to face Manchester United by Sky Sports News was simply thrilling, in that while the panel managed to point out some home truths about the player, they all seemed to miss the point somewhat. It was a brilliant display of how big generalisations about players lead to a misinterpretation of specifics in games. Continue reading →

The Truth About Wayne Rooney

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Rob Brown

TFN’s Rob Brown on the enigmatic Wayne Rooney…

There is a bizarre nostalgia that affects people when they discuss Wayne Rooney. The prevalent view seems to be that he had all the talent in the world, demonstrated it with carefree abandon during his teenage years and then got spoiled by necessary on-pitch self-sacrifice and voluntary off-pitch self-sabotage. Now he is seen merely as a good player – not a genuinely great one, and certainly not the one we thought he would be.

This sudden about-turn in public opinion does not really tally up with what has been written and said about him up until now. Throughout his Manchester United career his performances have received glowing write-ups in the press and when he has underperformed – and it has happened repeatedly, sometimes for months on end – his industry and work-rate have seen him bundle in goals and escape the harshest criticism.

Perhaps it is a British journalism thing – “build ‘em up to knock ‘em down” and all that – but the idea that Rooney has not fulfilled his potential is quite ridiculous. As a conclusion, it is simply unfair. Sure, he has never hit the heights expected of him and his contribution to football pales in comparison to those of era-defining freaks Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, but the reality is that he was never going to match them.

The problem lies not with Rooney but with us, his viewers. It is not that he never made the most of himself but more that we overestimated his talent to begin with. Continue reading →

Manchester United and Twitter – a social media story

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Piers Barber

TFN’s Piers Barber takes a look at Manchester United’s experiments with social media…

For many, the moment that Juan Mata’s transfer to Manchester United became a believable reality was when the club’s new No.8 logged in to Twitter to alter his profile’s biography. “Official Twitter account of @ManUtd’s player” read @JuanMata8 by Saturday afternoon, an alteration which occurred almost in real time as the player was in the process of agreeing terms at Old Trafford.

By the end of the weekend, his profile had been fully optimised to affirm his identity as a fully fledged Old Trafford player. Whilst his new followers – the likes of Tom Cleverley and Alexander Büttner – may not bring the highest levels of entertainment to Juan’s new-look timeline, it is significant that Mata, and those representing him, placed significant importance on maintaining an efficient level of engagement via the social media channel.

The importance Mata placed on hastily evolving his Twitter profile says much about the role that footballers and football clubs are increasingly starting to play within the world of social media. It’s an area of football marketing which only seems set to grow and grow.

After all, Mata’s profile now contains links to not just the club’s official English account, but also its official Spanish language outlet @ManUtd_ES. United also have official accounts directed at their Malaysian, Indonesian, Japan, and Arabic audiences.

Yet wind the clock back half a year and the club’s clout on the micro-blogging site possessed a far different complexion: indeed, United were the last Premier League club to embrace the potential benefits of Twitter. “We were late into social media and were worried a lot about how to approach it as a football club,” United’s Head of Marketing Jonathan Rigby said in 2011. “There will be no official Twitter site until we have satisfied a role for Twitter.” Continue reading →

Stomach pumps and power drills: Football’s weirdest injuries

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Piers Barber

Piers Barber reminisces on some of the most peculiar injury setbacks to have befallen footballers in recent years.

The news that Jose Mourinho somehow managed to sustain a fracture to his elbow after Chelsea’s game with Manchester United last weekend is the latest in a long line of mysteriously bizarre footballing injuries. Indeed, the Beautiful Game is filled with a great canon of weird and wonderful physical misfortunes. Here is our top 10…

10. Phillipe Mexes

Pretty-boy Mexes clearly cares a lot about his appearance, although was clearly guilty of taking the obsession a bit too far last year after he was forced to sit out a game against Celtic after spending too long on a sun bed. His price for a creepy fake bronzed torso was a rather serious eye condition known as central serous retinopathy. Continue reading →

Where have all the leaders gone at Manchester United?

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Chris Francis

Chris Francis pinpoints the real issue behind Manchester United’s failings this season…

Forget the midfield deficiencies. Leave the questions regarding full backs. Ignore the limitations of a strike force shorn of Robin van Persie and Wayne Rooney. The biggest issue United have at present is leadership.

There is a distinct lack of the stuff at Old Trafford.

It sounds ridiculous to hold this up as a problem when you look at the experience of the players available to David Moyes. Nemanja Vidic, Rio Ferdinand, Ryan Giggs, and Patrice Evra have all got bucket loads of the stuff, and at different points in their careers in Manchester have show outstanding leadership skills. But Vidic looks unhappy and frustrated at the predicament in which his team currently find themselves, Ferdinand is rarely given a game, Giggs is no longer the influential figure he was, and Evra’s performances have been decidedly hit and miss for the first half of this season.

So where are the others? Continue reading →

Liverpool’s Dunkin Donuts and six other weird football sponsors

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Piers Barber

TFN’s Piers Barber takes a look at the wacky world of football sponsorships…

Thanks to Liverpool’s multi-million pound deal with Dunkin’ Donuts, staff at Anfield can now look forward to regularly indulging in the company’s finest baked goods, as well as the brand’s rather pitiful attempts at brewing coffee and tea.

Yet Liverpool is far from the first side to involve themselves in a wonderfully weird and out of context sponsorship deal. Here are some of the typical ways that the strange world of global capitalism has involved itself in the Beautiful Game… Continue reading →

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