The decline of Wayne Rooney as a footballing force isn’t confined to this season; his form has been in freefall for at least three years now. While he may be England’s all-time leading scorer, and just three shy of holding the same record for Manchester United, Wayne Rooney is a shadow of the manchild who arrived at Old Trafford back in 2004.
For Manchester United’s 659 million fans, it’s a chance to dream. They’re just one step away from an appearance in the English Football League Cup quarterfinals. It’ll take another performance like the spirited one that saw off the mighty Cobblers of Northampton Town, but things are looking up following a week that consisted of one fresh hell after another.
Week five of the English Premier League is now behind us, and the ‘club in crisis’ tag can already be firmly affixed to Manchester United. After starting the season with three successive victories, things have quickly come undone over a brief period of eight days for Jose Mourinho and his charges.
The sensational Kevin De Bruyne and 19-year-old forward Kelechi Iheanacho put Manchester City up 2-0 by the 36th minute of Saturday’s Manchester derby. Zlatan Ibrahimovic pulled one back for United in the 42nd minute, but City went on claim all three points with a 2-1 victory in the Manchester derby.
Pep Guardiola’s Premier League record with Manchester City now reads played four, won four. It’s been a dream start for Guardiola and City, doubly so now that the Spanish manager has emerged victorious from his first visit to Old Trafford.
We love a good manager tiff, and no two managers in soccer have been more consistently tiff-some in the last few years than Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger. Their long and storied history of passive-aggressive sniping is a shining example for those of us who count being petty as a hobby.
There was that time Mourinho called Wenger a "specialist in failure" and refused to apologize, that time Wenger said Mourinho was afraid of failure and that time Mourinho called Wenger a "voyeur."
And now there is a new entry into the pair's long lesson in managerial grudge-holding.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s signing for Manchester United is the final big European stop for a man who has found success in the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and France. The questions surrounding his ability to succeed in the Premier League, while undoubtedly a media creation, still seem to fuel his desire to stay at the top of his game at 34 years of age.
For many, Bastian Schweinsteiger will always be synonymous with the new German side that dazzled at the 2006 World Cup with childlike enthusiasm. The 21-year-old's performance, along with the likes of Philipp Lahm and Lukas Podolski, foreshadowed a period of German brilliance that would reach its zenith at the 2014 World Cup.
"Before winning the 2012-13 league title, we were getting ready to play against Lyon," Marco Verratti said. "Carlo Ancelotti was a bit tense, so Ibra approached him and asked him if he believed in Jesus. Ancelotti said yes, so Ibra told him: 'Good, so you believe in me. You can relax!' Zlatan is like this.”
Verratti’s little story is as good as any when used to describe the kind of figure that Zlatan Ibrahimovic is.
Jose Mourinho has unleashed a clear dig at Arsene Wenger and Jurgen Klopp by reacting to their comments surrounding Manchester United’s signing of Paul Pogba for an excess of £100 million.
As FourFourTwo set about compiling a list of the top 50 managers in world football, one of their resident experts, former Dutch international Pierre van Hooijdonk, revealed the difficulty in ranking such a role: “If you changed all the managers in the league for cats, there would still be a champion.