Jaysus the overreaction in here. Lads, we were without....
- De Gea
- Romero
- Smalling
- Jones
- Lindelof
- Rojo
- Valencia
- Young
- Shaw
- Dalot
- Matic
- Fellaini
- Pogba
- Lingard
- Rashford
- Martial
- Lukaku
Oh and Fred only had 2 days of training with his
new team and played just 15 mins to get a run-out. Technically without 18 first teamers.
So Mourinho was right when he said he had 2/3s of his squad missing. Which of course has an impact on the other 3rd as they have to play 75 mins of every friendly if the team is to maintain a semi -competent core through the match. These friendlies might be a good chance for some youngsters to mingle with the first team and try to impress, but as far as drawing conclusions about the first team go or preparing the team for the season... they are utterly useless.
I guess we couldn’t have known that England, France and Belgium would all play till the last weekend of the World Cup but we also have to question the wisdom of planning a US tour during a World Cup year with so many players potentially missing. PSG took an equally depleted squad to Singapore to get thrashed 5-1 by Arsenal. Equally pointless.
I understand the worries about our style of play or about the manager being a moany cnut. And I share them. But then we didn’t have a particular style with our first team last season (when we finished second) so expecting it from this cobbled together crew of mostly youngsters is kinda of unrealistic. And Mourinho will always be this dour, miserable, negative manager till the day he retires. We know that too.
Last year was an improvement on the year before, which itself was an improvement on LVGs last season. I’m pretty sure we all agreed on that. Let’s see if he can improve this team again this year, like he has done before. Judge him on the actual results and yes even the football played, but that of the first team. If the results and standard of football fall short then I’d be up for binning him too, seen as his demeanour is not exactly redeeming.
But we’ve not seen the first team yet or something different from Mourinho, in terms of attitude or tactics, that was unexpected. So chill the feck out.