Mourinho out
Jose Mourinho getting sacked by Manchester United has far-reaching effects, I can assure you. Yes, yes, people at Carrington might be smiling once again. Their shackles may well be off, they might even start looking forward to coming to work again.
But it’s not just about them, OK? What about the poor staff at the Lowry? They’ve lost one hell of a cash cow and you have to fear for the staff just before Christmas.
£600 a night Jose’s room cost. £600 a night! Considering he was in charge at United for 895 days that is a hotel bill of £537,000 (not including extras).
Granted, that is just a week’s work for one of Jose’s finest signings, Alexis Sanchez but still. How many businesses do you know that can lose a client worth that much to them and carry on as normal?
Think about that when you are saying what a good thing it is that the axe fell, eh?
Arsenal ‘bottle’ it
It wasn’t an axe falling at the Emirates last night, it was a bottle thrown by an Arsenal fan at Dele Alli. Alli was walking away from the touchline when the bottle hit him on the head. Fortunately for football, Alli wasn’t hurt so much that he was unable to respond in anything other than the classic way of reminding the Arsenal fans of the score.
2-0 to Spurs and Alli had been the best player on the park. Tottenham move on to the semi-finals and Arsenal might need to review more than just the CCTV footage of the idiot lobbing a missile on to the pitch.
Unai Emery went to great lengths to make it clear that Mesut Ozil was omitted once again for ‘tactical reasons’ and not because he has completely lost faith in him.
Hazard does Hazard things
Over at Stamford Bridge, Eden Hazard scored a late winner to break the hearts of Bournemouth who really could do with a win right now. Callum Wilson will probably be wishing he’d done a bit more on what could have been classed as an audition for a January move.
West Ham interested in ‘the next Pele’
Once upon a time in Brazil, there was a young talent that was going to be the next Pele or Neymar. He was a Football Manager legend. He scored goals for fun. He was packed off to Europe to be ‘the next big thing’.
There was only one flaw in his plan. He chose Inter. And Gabriel Barbosa has pretty much failed at Inter in the same way that Inter have pretty much failed at football.
And what happens if you are a failed Serie A footballer? You end up in the Premier League and you can bet your bottom dollar that West Ham United are sniffing around. £25m is the asking price.
Ole Ole Ole
Back at Old Trafford, United are hoping that the appointment of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will help David de Gea, Anthony Martial, and Paul Pogba forget that the last few months ever happened and sign new deals. I think they might want to know who the long-term solution might be, no?
Pogba, according to the S*n and that purveyor of complete tosh Neil Custis, celebrated Mourinho’s dismissal by celebrating in the changing room shouting ‘he f***ed with the wrong baller’ and claiming that Mourinho tried to ‘turn the players and fans against me’.
Michael Carrick, doing his one and only duty as the interim caretaker, apparently warned Pogba that the club would still get rid of any troublemakers before being unable to keep a straight face as he imagined Ed Woodward selling their biggest commercial asset regardless of how poor he’d been on the pitch.
Jose has refused to say anything bad about United ‘out of respect for the great club’. Respect for the great club? Respect for his £15m payoff which must have had some kind of gagging order in there.
You know it’s time to get worried when a Dejan Lovren quote hits the papers. The ‘best centre back in the world’ thinks Liverpool can go unbeaten this season. Cue defeat this weekend then.
