DE GEA, SMALLING SET FOR EXIT AS JOSE EYES KEANE
DAVID de Gea could have played his last game for Manchester United in the 2-1 loss to Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane, after he was left out of the United squad for the last two Premier League matches against Crystal Palace and Southampton.
Kieran O’Hara and Joel Pereira deputised for Sergio Romero in the last two league games.
This has cast further doubt over De Gea’s future at United as Real Madrid prepare to make a bid in excess of £60 million (R988m) for the 26-year-old Spain international.
Mourinho stuck with Romero for the Europa League final win over Ajax. The manager started with the Argentinian against Southampton and gave 20-year-old Pereira his debut against Crystal Palace in the final two Premier League fixtures.
The Daily Mail understands that De Gea was aggrieved by Mourinho’s decision to keep Romero in goal for the Europa League final.
The Spaniard is also believed to have been left dispirited by the team’s defence and poor displays in the defeats to Arsenal and Tottenham, both effectively dead rubber games after Mourinho gave up on the race for a top-four finish.
De Gea’s future at the club could hinge on the fact that United have now qualified for the Champions League. The goalkeeper’s camp know that Real Madrid have made him their top target, two years after his deadline day move to the Bernabeu collapsed because the paperwork was not submitted in time.
Real are prepared to offer a world-record fee for a goalkeeper to take De Gea back to Madrid where he played for rivals Atletico before joining United for £18.9m in 2011.
While De Gea’s time at United appears to be nearing an end, Michael Keane looks set to return to the club after leaving Old Trafford for just £2m during Louis van Gaal’s reign.
Keane, 24, has become one of the Premier League’s most highly-rated defenders under Sean Dyche at Burnley, and United are set to spend £25m to prise the academy product away from Turf Moor.
Keane’s arrival may lead to Chris Smalling’s departure with the England defender becoming increasingly disillusioned over Mourinho’s comments. The defender has been singled out in public by his manager for not making more of an effort to play when he was injured.
Meanwhile, Michael Carrick has extended his stay at United for another year. The central midfielder claimed he did not want to sign fresh terms “for the sake of it”, but has played a key part in Mourinho’s first season.
Not since the 1990-91 campaign have a United team finished so far behind the champions as the 24 points that separated them from Chelsea.
For those who like to look for omens, meanwhile, there is some encouragement to be found in symmetry. Back in 1991, Ferguson’s team did finish 24 points behind champions Arsenal.
United, it must be said, have rarely looked less like United than they have recently. Treading water in games against Southampton, Tottenham and Arsenal that their manager effectively said they could not win, United’s soporific football has left Mourinho open to suggestions that he is betraying club traditions. It has also left United with their fewest number of wins ever in a Premier League season.
Struggling for form is one thing, looking like you are not at full throttle is quite another – as United closed their season in sixth place.
One surrounds Mourinho’s persistent bleating about fixture congestion and his claim that it was impossible for his team to push for progress in the Premier League and in Europe at the same time. The other refers to the nature of United’s play throughout the whole campaign, one that saw his team boast a poorer home record than relegated Hull City.
Certainly, his complaining about fixtures is tiresome. Once he feels a grievance, the Portuguese rarely undersells it and last season he reverted to type.
Big teams have often found themselves stretched as they chased trophies at the back end of a season. Some have cracked it while others have merely cracked, but it is worth noting here that when Ferguson’s team won the treble in 1999, they played more games than Mourinho’s United had this season.
Ferguson was no stranger to complaints about fixture congestion himself. Prior to a Premier League game against Everton in 2013, he suggested he would like his team “not to turn up” rather than damage their chances in a game against Real Madrid that followed. But during that incredible surge towards glory in 1999, Ferguson always made it clear he felt the monotony of game after game helped his players.
One of those players, defender Wes Brown, said: “If you keep winning, everyone’s playing well and there’s a good team spirit, it just carries on and carries on. It just keeps ticking. That’s what happened for us.”
Mourinho sees it differently. He believes the Premier League should help United by moving domestic fixtures to maximise rest before European ties and he is not alone in this.
But he also believes – or claims to believe – that players can’t cope physically and mentally with what has recently been put before them.
The cynical will say the United manager has effectively thrown recent Premier League games because he knew he had no chance of catching Liverpool for the final top-four place. If you are going to lose out to your greatest rivals you may as well do it by pretending not to try.
Whatever the case, the sight of United drifting aimlessly through recent league games has been strange and just about unprecedented.
United looked a decent bet for a surge into the top four when they won well at Burnley on April 24, but subsequently have tailed off so badly that their matches have resembled training matches. It is this that takes Mourinho into dangerous territory more than any general accusations about style or tactics.
United managers are simply hired to win trophies.
Though many will tell you otherwise, those of us who sat through the second half of Ferguson’s reign at Old Trafford will testify that it was not all champagne and roses.
There was plenty of very good football and then there were long stretches when United managed to win seemingly out of habit and sheer will alone.
Ferguson was committed to attacking football, Mourinho less so. But United knew that when they hired him. As last season drew to a close under the broken figure of Van Gaal, United needed Mourinho more than even he needed them.
So why should he change? Admittedly, he has delivered a Community Shield, League Cup and Europa League. Already, he has kept a good chunk of his part of the bargain while other, supposedly more progressive clubs, such as Liverpool and Tottenham, have won precisely two major trophies between them in the last 11 years.
Mourinho did not come to Manchester to turn the world’s most famous football club into the Harlem Globetrotters. He came to mend what was broken, rebuild an identity and ease a brokendown first-team squad back into a forward gear. To a large degree, he has done this.
Mourinho’s recent behaviour has been complicated to say the least and he definitely needed to come away from Stockholm with the big prize for the ends to have justified the means.
But this is what you get with the 54-year-old. Mourinho was never going to mould himself to Manchester United. It was always going to be the other way round.
And for those who like to look at history for comfort and reassurance, it is worth noting that in 1993, two years after trailing in so far behind champions Arsenal, Manchester United won the Premier League. – Daily Mail