PSG put Pogba back in firing line
fAIr play to Graeme souness. He called it right on Paul Pogba. January 14, against Tottenham, Pogba got away with a tackle on Dele Alli that souness insisted should have seen red. Quite a few — Jamie redknapp, and one here, to name two — disagreed. It was claimed Pogba was getting across the ball to protect it and caught Alli by accident. until Tuesday night — when he did the same to Dani Alves and was rightly sent off. The moral of this story? Never doubt souness’s knowledge of football’s darker arts. But there were lessons all over in Manchester united’s defeat by Paris saint-Germain. Certainly, any club facing united in the coming weeks will consider paying special attention to Pogba in midfield. Marquinhos did a quite magnificent job on him on Tuesday and by the end familiar flaws had resurfaced. Not only did Pogba not dominate the play as he has done in the Premier League in recent weeks, he had lost his head. Not all clubs have a player of Marquinhos’s quality to stand guard but quite a few of the better ones — Chelsea, Liverpool, even Manchester City — do. Moussa sissoko was carrying out that job well for Tottenham last month, too, and it was only after he went off injured that Pogba played the pass of the match to Marcus rashford to win the game. equally interesting was Ole Gunnar solskjaer’s announcement that he could not help Alexis sanchez recover his form. ‘I’m not the one,’ solskjaer said. ‘I can’t do anything. ‘When he plays, he needs to finds himself because we know there’s a quality player there.’ Yes, we do — but isn’t it the job of a coach to bring that out? Put it like this: If Jose Mourinho had been so dismissive about one of united’s marquee names, it would not have been casually ignored.