In the doghouse or in the stands, Auba is no good to Gunners there
Striker is firing again for United but faces missing out on Southgate’s senior squad
ARSENAL do make me chuckle.
They’re an easy-on-the-eye team of perfectly nice kids but, as I’ve laboured on about for an age now, they are largely devoid of personality.
And when they do buy someone with a bit of zest in his locker – someone who comes replete with gaudy jewellery, holographic super cars and the sort of rascal clobber that would have made even Gianni Versace wince – they make him their highestpaid player and captain, and then drop him from a derby for tardiness.
It’s just rank idiocy. Arsenal knew what they were getting when they bought Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and, at his goalscoring best, of course they will have been willing to let any idiosyncratic behaviours slide.
But in an average team in an average position, with a manager yet to prove he’s anything but average, all of a sudden the striker’s behaviour is a problem that needs addressing.
I was late a couple of times at Nottingham Forest and Liverpool, only by a few minutes here or there, and never for anything other than traffic issues on the drive from Cannock.
“Fog in the tunnel?”, the late, great Ronnie Moran would quip. But nothing serious was ever said about it when I was in good form, only when I wasn’t.
It worked out OK for Mikel Arteta this time because Arsenal beat Tottenham, but why risk upsetting such an important player over something so trivial?
Aubameyang (top, in the stands at the Emirates on Sunday) made a mistake but, when Arsenal go on a bad run later this season or sometime next year and Arteta is under pressure, will he want to do everything he can to help his manager out? Arteta should have just had a word in private, asked if the club could send a car for him every day to make sure he’s never late, and chucked a fine his way while letting him play.
Because if he wasn’t so naughty that he couldn’t have come off the bench after 30 seconds, then he wasn’t naughty enough to be sanctioned in the first place.
There were a couple more issues from the north London derby, with Arsenal’s penalty for Davinson Sanchez’s tackle on Alex Lacazette one of them. We’ve now entered the Twilight
Zone in refereeing decisions with a penalty given, not for attempting to stop a player getting a shot off, but for a clumsy, afterthe-event
foul.
The whole point of a penalty is that someone has been denied an opportunity to score or shoot, which didn’t happen.
The officials should have looked at the monitor and concluded, ‘No penalty but a yellow card for a
– although that would have been too much common sense. Secondly, I’m not sure either about Jose Mourinho saying some of his big names were
“hiding”. I’d like to know what they were hiding from, because they didn’t hide when they got Tottenham to the Champions League final or finished second in the Premier League under Mauricio Pochettino. It wasn’t a good thing to say because, with modern players, you might get one or two who’ll say, ‘I’ll show him’, but five or six who go even further into their shells. The team’s performance was poor and so, too, was Mourinho’s.
MASON GREENWOOD is facing Euro heartbreak with England’s seniors after being included in the Under-21 squad instead.
The Manchester United striker will return to international duty for the first time since his Iceland meltdown.
But it will be with Aidy Boothroyd’s squad for this month’s U-21 European Championship group games in Slovenia.
Greenwood was axed by boss Gareth Southgate in September, along with Phil Foden, after being caught smuggling women into the team hotel in Reykjavik – and has been exiled ever since.
The knockout phase of the U-21 tournament is scheduled to take place in late May through to early June.
And his inclusion in Boothroyd’s squad is a clear sign he will not be considered for the senior side in the summer, barring an injury crisis.
Southgate gave Boothroyd permission to pick Greenwood, 19, who has been told he still has a lot to prove, as he continues his rehabilitation for club and country following his huge mistake.
Boothroyd (above) said: “Has he got something to prove? Every time he gets on the pitch there is an expectation of him because he’s a very good young player. But he is young, he needs guidance and help. I’ll speak to him to see how he is and see how we can get the most out of him.
“We’re talking about a player here who is nowhere near his potential. But he’s growing up, he’s learning about himself as a footballer and a person. We’re really looking forward to seeing what he can do on the big stage.”
Boothroyd believes the U-21 set-up is the best place for Greenwood and that his six-month exile from the international scene will have done him good.
He added: “We just felt, as an organisation, that Mason is going to be a key player in the future. We wanted to get him into this tournament, get some games into him and show him what it’s like to be at a tournament.
“We felt it was the right thing for him to come with us. We treat every player as an individual and we think very carefully when and where we pick them. Clearly, in Mason’s situation, it was right that he wasn’t right to play for his country and to stay where he was. That period of time has done him the world of good.
“It is a line in the sand but, until he gets on the pitch and shows what he’s all about, we’re going to be asked questions about him. What’s done is done, we move on and create some better memories of his time with England. “We all make mistakes, especially when you’re a young person. I’m not going to go on about it forever. I don’t think there will be any issues in getting Mason integrated back
with us. As soon as he gets through the door, he’ll become one of us again and we’ll start working towards our first game.”
Greenwood (with Foden, above left) has scored four goals in 37 appearances for United this season and Scott McTominay has ordered him to keep up the same impressive standards he showed in Sunday’s 1-0 win over West Ham.
He said: “Mason was brilliant, he was top drawer. He was so direct, he was very confident whenever he had the ball and, as I say every week, ‘Mason, now that’s the benchmark’.
“That’s got to be the standard now every single game, that workrate, that intensity – and I’m seeing it every single week, to be fair, from him. So long may it continue.”