supercrystal7 said:
Prestwich_Blue said:
Let me tell you about this squad that is as good as any in the PL. Around Christmas time I was talking to a journalist who covers the Manchester clubs for one of the big papers. I've known this guy for some time and our families go back even further. Him (and some other journalists) had been briefed by club insiders about Moyes' plans for the squad. Of that established squad, there were 6 names considered not good enough.
Obviously Anderson was one, along with Valencia, Young & Nani. At the back Smalling and Jones were considered too limited and hadn't developed sufficiently. Moyes and Ferdinand don't speak after Rio lost his rag with Moyes, who told him he should aspire to be Phil Jagielka. Camelgob reeled off what he'd won and said to Moyes "Now - what the fuck have you & Phil Jagielka won?" In addition, Cleverley has been given another season to prove himself or he's out the door as well.
Of the new players Zaha simply didn't train well enough so they fucked him off and then there's Fellaini. When they train, they have two 'keep ball' circles with the technically better players in one and the others in the second. Fellaini apparently can't even reach the standard of the latter circle he is so poor technically. And that's what they paid £27.5m for (which is more than we paid for Silva, Nasri or Yaya). Evra would like to stay but there's no word one way or the other from the club.
So this squad now seems to consist of Rafael, Evans, Buttner, possibly Evra, Varela (who hasn't played), Carrick, Fletcher, Fellaini, Cleverley (who's on a last chance), Kagawa, Mata, Rooney, Januzaj, Welbeck, Hernadez and RVP.
And of those, Kagawa, Hernandez and van Persie are very unhappy, particularly the latter. That's your squad of "champions".
This just shows the lack of class and professionalism that Moyes has. A manager should not be briefing journalist information like that and either should the club. It should all be kept in house.
That's not the way things work though in practice. For years, politicians have leaked stuff and briefed journalists to ensure various outcomes, be that trailing policy announcements, talking themselves up or sticking the knife in their enemies.
From a football club's point of view, they manage the media for various reasons. In this case, it sets the agenda for a clear-out and prepares the fans so that they expect it when it actually happens. It also protects Moyes' back to a degree as it tries to imply that he's inherited a squad that isn't good enough and that's why it's underperforming. And mostly people have bought that, with very few questioning the fact it's the same squad that won the title last season. And the media tend to run this stuff because they know that if they play ball, they'll get more good stuff. No one actually reported it like that. some names were mentioned, such as Nani and Young but they weren't exactly surprises.
I know that, at City for example, we had to sell SWP in 2005 as he was the only saleable asset we had and we were skint. Almost as soon as the 2004/5 season drew to a close, the stories started about Chelsea's interest. These came from the club, in order to prepare the ground for his sale so by the time it happened, most fans were expecting it. I believe they were also briefing that he'd been advised to move by his dad. I'm no fan of Ian Wright but he was actaully telling him to stay another season so he's be sure of getting in the World Cup squad.
Something else they used to do was that any story involving the then CEO, had the words "...highly regarded Chief Executive...". This was to build uop his image in the press as he knew Thaksin wanted rid of him. This also led to loads of stories disparaging Thaksin.
