Manchester United have
had a bid, believed to be in the region of £37m, accepted by Chelsea for
Spanish midfielder Juan Mata.
The 25-year-old will have
a medical on Thursday before completing a move to the Premier League champions.
Mata is expected to sign
a four-and-a-half year deal at Old Trafford.
When you look at the time
United have had of it lately, out of the FA Cup, definitely out of the title
race despite Moyes and his delusional insistence that they aren’t, out of the
League Cup after the worst penalty shoot-out ever, only three out of ten were
scored, and to top it all off this morning they dropped out of the top three on
the football rich list for the first time since its inception. Oh how the
mighty hath fallen.
With all that in mind the
signing of Mata, if you’re a United fan, is surely something to raise spirits,
or is it? Think about it Mata is a number 10 and is most effective when playing
in the pocket just behind a striker, only if you look at United’s current squad
they already have a number 10 in Wayne Rooney who plays just off the striker and
despite his current injury has been their best player by miles this season,
where does that leave Mata?
United desperately need a
central midfielder in the Paul Scholes mould, someone who is comfortable on the
ball and who can push forward and score goals, and yet they’ve made no attempt
to sign anyone like that in this window, although they aren’t alone when it comes to clubs ignoring the
obvious, Barcelona for the last three years have been crying out for a centre back
and they’ve spent the whole time buying holding players and trying to convert
them which hasn’t worked, my club Arsenal need a real striker to back up Giroud
because Bendtner doesn’t count, and as always there’s plenty of talk and no
action.
It’s almost as if all the
top clubs have looked at their squads and identified the area they need to
strengthen most and then decided to deliberately not sign the players they need.
Anyway back to Mata,
while I’m sure he’ll be glad to leave Chelsea and get some first team football,
although I’m still not sure where he’s going to play, I think Mourinho has made
a massive mistake in freezing him out of the team and letting him go.
Clearly he prefers Oscar
and everyone seems to think he’s made the right decision, but is Oscar playing
to a higher level this season than Mata played to last season, for me he isn’t,
not that he’s not playing well it’s just he’s not playing as well as Mata did
last year and I believe would be playing this year had he been given the
opportunity.
If Mata had played as
many minutes as Oscar I believe he would have more goals and more assists and
surely that’s the point of choosing which attack minded player to play the one
who’s going to make the biggest difference in the final third, as much as I admire
Mourinho and am delighted to see him back in the Premier League he seems to
pick his attacking players based on their defensive attributes.
Of course players need to
work back and help out but it shouldn’t the main reason why they’re picked, and
I’m confident that if Mata had been first choice Chelsea would be top of the
league right now.
Reading some of the
articles written about Mata being sold many seem to view it as a masterstroke,
but I think, and have thought so since the start of the season, Mourinho is
making a big mistake.
No comments:
Post a Comment