Premier League English

The Player, The Team, The Super Agent…Or The Manager? Part 2

(Part 2 of a 3-Part Series on Taking A Deeper Look At The Manchester United Conundrum)

Continuing from where we left off in Part 1, Jason Burt of the Telegraph further elaborated on his chat with Pogba’s agent, Raiola.

“The way he spoke about Pogba, he was very clear in the way he thought Pogba’s career should develop. He wasn’t sure about him going back to Manchester United in the first place but he said ‘the player wants to go there, he wants to go back’ and he said ‘he felt it was like going home’.”

Surprisingly, another football writer, Darren Lewis of the Mirror, resonates with Raiola’s suggestion that Pogba and Manchester United have proved to not be a good fit and argued that many top-class players would struggle to shine in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s current side. Ouchhh…!

Darren was scathingly blunt in slashing right across the clutter, “Lots of people see Pogba as the problem, the scapegoat but some of their worst performances this season have come without him in the team and he’s not been there to pin the blame on.” 

“If you look at the France side he won the World Cup with, he was surrounded by quality. The Juventus side he won the league with and got to the Champions League final with, he was surrounded by quality. This is an average Manchester United side. You can’t trust them from one game to the next.”

Whoa, what are we hearing here? Is this an ominous utterance from the oracles? 

“Pogba is being blamed for many of the problems at the club and maybe he’s better off out of there. At the moment you can bring any number of marquee players to Manchester United and they’d struggle, because of the problems that are at the club.”

These bold, brazen pronouncements could possibly strike much closer to home and hit a raw nerve than the powers that be at United would like to hear or be compelled to confront.

After all, one player does not a whole team make, no matter how brilliant he may be on the pitch. Nor should all hopes rest largely on his Herculean shoulders to deliver the goods.

The right chemistry that cohesively binds all is often that one vital component that’s crucial to getting the right formula. 

Yet another outspoken critic is Dominic King of the Daily Mail who’s also inclined to believe that Pogba and United’s destinies are tangential. In fact, he’s even taken it one big step further to assert that it may even come as a relief if and when the midfielder does finally decide to leave the Red Devils! 

King said, “It’s almost getting to the point where it’s distracting for him to be there. You could see Solskjaer’s reaction on Friday when the question came in; he tries to keep a level head but you saw the flicker in him where he puffed the cheeks.”