Will Harry Maguire ever emerge from the dusty dugout he calls home?
The curtain has risen on a brandnew season of the Premier League, yet already it’s apparent that many things are going to pan out in exactly the same manner as before. Chelsea continue to fling their dollars around like sailors on shore leave. Liverpool are still incapable of properly replacing Graeme Souness. And yet again, for what seems like the 1,000th Old Trafford evening in a row, Harry Maguire sits brooding in the stands with a slab on. Whatever must the po’ erstwhile Manchester United captain be thinking?! Once considered part of a proud lineage that includes Bobby Charlton, Bryan Robson and Roy Keane, he’s now worryingly close to the top of a list featuring David May, Marcos Rojo and William Prunier. Oh Harry! That it’s come to this! Still!
You have to feel for the big man. On Monday against Wolves, blow after metaphorical blow rained down on his statuesque noggin. First up, the starting XI, and more proof if any were needed that Erik ten Hag doesn’t trust him as much as a man who can’t be trusted to play more than 45 minutes without picking up two needless yellow cards. Then, when the gloriously reckless Lisandro Martínez was hooked during the break, Victor Lindelof was sent on in his stead, leaving Po’ Harry alone in a dusty corner of the dugout, all ignored in the dark and covered in cobwebs. The match dramatically culminated in Lindelof impotently watching a cross sail over his head and André Onana clumsily clattering into an opponent. Those used to be Harry’s jobs! Not any more.
Reluctantly realising the jig is up,
Maguire had been hoping to get regular clatter time with West Ham, and to this end a £30m deal was agreed between the two clubs. But even that plan has now gone awry, with the Hammers losing patience while waiting for Maguire to secure the £7m payoff he wants to leave Old Trafford. Add in concerns of some members of West Ham’s recruitment team that their money would be better spent on a defender who can run faster and turn more elegantly than a Ford Model T, and the deal has reportedly collapsed in the Keystone
Studios style.
United, meanwhile, are extremely reluctant to cough up all that cash to get Maguire off their wage bill, even though the player received a whopping salary increase as a result of United reaching Big Cup. And who can blame them? But given that Onana wasn’t penalised for his outrageous barge on Sasa Kalajdzic on Monday night – an oversight so egregious that Howard Webb has stood down the referee and VAR team responsible and apologised to Wolves – United may have concluded that it seems they can get away with
right now.
absolutely anything QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I’m so tired of crying championship tears. I don’t think people understand the energy and the passion that is behind this. It really sucks. We dreamed of a World Cup final” – the pain is real for Kosovare Asllani after a dramatic end to the Women’s World Cup semifinal in which Sweden equalised two minutes from the end of normal time only to watch Olga Carmona take a sledgehammer to their hopes a minute later as she shot Spain to a 2-1 victory and their first ever final. Ouch.
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