Part 1 of a 3-Part Series on Taking A Deeper Look At The Manchester United Conundrum
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer says Pogba won’t be sold in January. Doesn’t that somehow sound familiar?
In fact the only song Solskjaer’s been repeatedly crooning all this while with insufferable platitude hearkens back to this same refrain – that Pogba is recovering from new injuries – and the chorus – that Paul will never be sold nor leaving Old Trafford for greener, more challenging horizons! And everyone’s beginning to get damned sick of hearing the same thing being played over and over again like a piece of warped vinyl spinning on a wobbly turntable.
Paul Pogba may be sidelined with injuries but he stands in the hot orb of attention at Manchester United and it’s probably about time we take a deeper look at the multiple plots and sub-plots, if any, complicating the issues that seem to surround this incredibly talented player with the proven credentials anywhere he’s played on this vast green earth.
The on-going plethora of unaswered questions hovering in most curious minds focuses on the controversy of whether Pogba is happily resigned to stay back and commit himself fully to be a concerted, integral part of the United team dynamics or are his wandering eyes, more so his heart and spirit, looking elsewhere to call home.
The feedback from all the relevant parties involved do not seem to correspond but are rather at a tangent to each other.
The manager has his own views, the super agent holds his own and, alas, mystifyinly, the star player himself has remained strangely reticent about the whole thing. Although currently nursing an ankle injury, the headlines continue to buzz like a hornet’s nest.
His agent, Raiola, took the hype a notch up in his recent interview with Sky Sports News, in which he said Pogba is happy at the club, but added that he told the Italian media he himself would not send any of his other clients to Old Trafford. Sounds oddly paradoxical or is that blunt admission a hint at something possibly askew behind the United barricades?
Jason Burt, the Telegraph’s chief football correspondent, came to the conclusion after a one-on-one session with Raiola at the end of last year that the super agent does indeed have Pogba’s best interests at heart despite public perception to the contrary that Raiola is only all about the money.
However, Raiola isn’t convinced a return to United was the best move for the midfielder in the first place. But why is Old Trafford not the right place for Pogba then?
“Now he thinks possibly part of the problem at Manchester United isn’t Paul Pogba or Manchester United, it’s not the right fit for both of them. Why did they buy him in the first place, did they really need him? He talked about the lack of identity at Manchester United.” (To be continued in Part 2)