Jose has United acting big again
WE ARE still in the first week of Wimbledon and already Manchester United have scored the first serious points of the new football season.
The forthcoming signing of Romelu Lukaku represents a perfect transfer in that it strengthens Jose Mourinho’s team where they need it most while at the same time depriving Premier League champions Chelsea of a player they hoped to sign.
It seems that, finally, United are learning to behave like a big club again. So many times recently they have been led up the garden path by big players only to have the door slammed in their face.
Cesc Fabregas, Sergio Ramos, Toni Kroos and Pedro all said they wanted to come to Old Trafford but none of them really meant it. United, naive under David Moyes and Louis van Gaal, were left looking foolish.
Now, with Mourinho driving executive chairman Ed Woodward relentlessly behind the scenes, it has been United playing all the games.
Michael Keane, once one of their own, was courted and then dumped at the last minute when United signed defender Victor Lindelof from Benfica. Keane, it turned out, was only ever second choice.
Now the Real Madrid centre forward Alvaro Morata knows what it feels like to be used. The Spaniard is a very good player but, for United, he has turned out to be just another stalking horse. While all the fuss and attention was on Morata, Woodward and Mourinho quietly set about wooing Lukaku, the striker they wanted to replace Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
If this sounds like a cruel game then that is because it is and United know because they have been on the wrong end of it many times since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013.
United’s transfer policy has suffered from a combination of naivety, hesitation, indecision and, in the case of players such as the costly loan signing Radamel Falcao, blind panic.
Last summer the acquisition of Paul Pogba for £89million and the gamble taken on the ageing Ibrahimovic at least found United prepared to talk and act big again. It was a start.
The move for Lukaku, however, is on a different level. The last time United pulled off a deal as seismic, ambitious and ballsy as this was in Ferguson’s last summer as boss. On August 15, 2012, United signed Robin van Persie from under the noses of Manchester City and it was a signing that won them the league.
Driven by a ferocious desire to win back his title from the neighbours, Ferguson whisked Van Persie to Old Trafford even though City had been working on a deal to sign the Dutch forward for months.
It was ruthless, brave and aggressive work from Ferguson and his chief executive David Gill. It has taken five years for United to rediscover that vital part of their DNA and one wonders now how far it will take them.