I won't go into hypothetical discussions based on his body language. The simple fact is, any player would look better in the German team than in the Utd team last year simply because of how shit we were. It's not unique to BFS and if we went by that criteria, we'd be buying almost an entire new team bar DDG, Smalling, Martial and blind. Whether it be Herrera, Fellaini, Valencia or Mata, everyone looks a new player this year. It's not a coincidence.
I was referring to actual running.
However come to think of it. That’s a pretty simplistic way of seeing things. I think that there are three major players in this story ie Manchester United, Mourinho and Bastian. So let’s focus on them separately.
Manchester United: The prime accusation concerning United is that we want him out. We’ve just bought a new toy and we want to get rid of Bastian to balance the books. There again that argument is weak on two counts (actually 3-4). First of all we’re a money generating machine. This year we were able to spend 157m in 1 summer window and that despite being out of the CL. We can afford 30 Bastians if we want to. That leads us to the second point ie we’re not that type of club. Throughout decades we closed an eye to players overstaying irrespective if they were former world class legends (Keane, Robson, Giggs etc), simply legends (Fletcher, Gaz etc) or neither legend nor world class (ex Anderson).
We’re also the sort of club who pride in not messing in the ‘football’ side of things. Something, we’re popular for (the Italians call managers who work beyond the restraints of a director of football as un allenatore ala Ferguson, ie coach like SAF). Even if we suddenly decided to go against the manager’s decision and force Bastian out, then we’re doing that with the wrong manager. Mourinho was able to stand up against Moratti whose got a long history of micromanaging. He specifically added that in his contract at Inter and told Branca (ie Moratti’s best buddy) to back off. So seriously, that accusation is ridiculous
Mourinho: Which leads us to the second person in this story ie Mourinho. The accusation thrown on his part is that Bastian doesn’t fit his philosophy and was therefore pushed out of the squad. However from what we’ve seen till now as United’s manager, that’s really out of Mou’s nature. The man had given Carrick (whose legs are gone) a 1 year contract. He reassured Moyes love child Fellaini and someone many fans hate that he’s got a place in his team and he re-invented a role for him that he’s good at. Mou did the same with LVG’s other lovechild Blind by sticking to LVG’s philosophy of playing him as CB. Not to forget that not only he kept Mata (a player he had previously kicked out of a club) but he’s playing him as a first teamer and ahead of his new signing Mkhitaryan. Why would someone who went to such great extent to accommodate everybody, single out Bastian? That doesn’t make sense
Bastian: Which leads us to the third part of our story ie Bastian. In the past 5 years the club Bastian played in clubs who constantly added CMs in their team. In 2013-2014 Bayern signed Thiago and Kirchhoff. In 2014-2015 they brought Alonso and Rode. In 2015-2016 they brought Vidal and Kimmich which possibly triggered Bastian’s reluctance to stay there and move to our team and this summer United went big by turning Pogba into a record buy. That doesn’t look like a vote of confidence on the player’s current capabilities doesn’t it? His controversial move to our reserves has caused a shock throughout the world especially in the Bayern’s camp and yet, till the time of writing, Bayern has yet to bid for him. That despite he’s still being'rated' as a top quality player by them and such deal would be pretty easy to make (he’s on the transfer list).
His performances with Manchester United are open to everyone’s interpretation. Some may think he did relatively well while others think he somehow lacked the fighting spirit of old. However you must admit that him vanishing into the treatment room for a crucial part of our season only to return for Germany and play the best football he ever played throughout the season is somehow a bit controversial especially since he spent most of his treatment watching his gf play tennis. Maybe that's the reason why United has acted so tough on him?
. Don't really care whether he stays or leaves though given he's clearly not going to play. That's why some of the posts in this thread are weird for me.