Mount's curler reclaims lead for Manchester United
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Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Analyzing preseason friendlies is maddening, but right now it's all we have
Glory for Manchester United, who lifted the Premier League summer series on Sunday despite twice being pegged back by Everton to draw 2-2 in Atlanta. A degree of relief for West Ham, who beat Bournemouth to finish second in the competition despite all the gloomy prognostications about their campaign to come. In Seoul, meanwhile, there was a very Tottenham moment as they followed the glee of last week's 1-0 win over Arsenal with a 1-1 draw against Newcastle in which James Maddison was stretchered off with a knee injury described by his manager Thomas Frank as 'bad'. It all looks real, it sounds real and yet everybody knows it isn't real. That even now, in this age of data and minute analysis, there remains an element of randomness, is one of soccer's great joys as a sport. But that tendency is magnified in pre-season. Related: Tottenham fans will only appreciate me when I am gone, says Daniel Levy The Premier League has been away for 10 weeks now. For those hooked on its soap opera, the wait is intolerable. The Club World Cup, the England men's team being dreadful in June as they so often are, the Under-21s continuing their unfamiliar excellence, even the women's Euros … none of it quite offers the same hit. Obsessing over transfers suffices only for so long; eventually there is a need to see them play. And so there are pre-season games, and there is is analysis. The best of it is skeptical, acknowledging the absurdity of making judgements on 45 minutes. The worst of it is breathlessly insistent – of Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha, the two senior players United have managed to sign, appearing together against Everton. What does it mean that Rasmus Højlund was only on the bench? Does that mean Benjamin Šeško is more likely to sign? The front three, with Mbeumo dropping deep and Cunha and Bruno Fernandes at times running beyond him, looked fluent. Fernandes and Mbuemo set up Amad Diallo, overlapping from wing-back to score the opener. This is the way Ruben Amorim's 3-4-3 is supposed to work. In that, at least, there is a sense of something tangible, a United that is, at last, able to execute their manager's attacking plan. But Ayden Heaven's own goal was a reminder that United remain as self-destructive as ever. Perhaps more significant was the equaliser conceded after Manuel Ugarte lost possession, the lack of urgency to get back. Did this happen because it was only a friendly and United are nowhere near peak fitness yet? Or because this is an irredeemably feckless bunch of players? This is smoke on a foggy day. Will any of it be relevant when the season begins for real? United fans will remember ruefully just how good they looked in pre-season under Louis van Gaal in 2014, only for the season itself to prove anticlimactic. The problem with assessing pre-season games is that different sides are at different stages of readiness. Some expect to hit the ground running from week one; others are building to peak in March or April, the differences magnified two weeks before the opening day. Some managers are working on specific plans and are less bothered by the whole, some are just hoping to get semi-competitive minutes into their players' legs. Related: Fifa facing multibillion-pound compensation claim from former players In the old days, before Premier League teams went on foreign tours and everybody was desperately promoting themselves to a global audience, pre-season was about team bonding as much as anything else: the team that drinks together wins together, as the adage had it. The stories are legion: the Everton winger Peter Beagrie driving a motorbike through a plateglass window in San Sebastián; Sunderland's diminutive but extremely tough full-back John Kay terrifying a much larger local who had threatened him by casually eating the antiseptic cubes from a urinal in Bristol; Arsenal's French midfielder Gilles Grimandi joining five of his English teammates on a night out in Switzerland where the first round comprised 35 pints of lager and a dry white wine. Many managers, you suspect, would quite relish a return to the days, if not of booze, then at least of pre-season being a largely private affair rather than a projection of the club to the world. Very occasionally something consequential happens, such as Chelsea conceding four in the second half to an experimental New York Red Bulls led by Jesse Marsch in the summer of 2015, the first sign that something had gone badly wrong for José Mourinho's side since winning the Premier League two months earlier; within five months, Mourinho had been sacked. (It was also the debut first-team appearance for Bournemouth and US national team midfielder Tyler Adams, then 16 years old.) Pre-season is very much the phoney war, the jockeying, the probing. It matters to the clubs, but to outsiders it is essentially like watching an artist mix his paints. There's anticipation and a vague technical interest, but it means nothing until it starts being applied to the canvas. This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@ and he'll answer the best in a future edition.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Yoro wants 'revenge' for last season
Manchester United defender Leny Yoro says his team-mates are determined to prove the doubters wrong. United are unbeaten during their pre-season programme so far, with Sunday's 2-2 draw with Everton in Atlanta proving enough to secure silverware in the form of the Premier League Summer Series trophy. However, after their unprecedented 15th-placed finish last season, Yoro knows it will take more than that to convince anyone life at Old Trafford will be better this time around. Indeed, many are willing the situation to get even worse. "There are a lot of people that want us to fail, we know that," said Yoro. "But there are also a lot of people that want us to do great things. "We don't care about what they say outside - the media, everyone. "I understand that because we didn't do well. "I think what they did last season was a mistake for us. When you're Manchester United, you cannot be at this position. The fans know it - everyone knows it. We understand this. This season will be different. It will be like a revenge from last season."
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Manchester United: André Onana sends a warning to the Premier League for next season!
The Red Devils' goalkeeper delivers a message to all Manchester United's rivals ahead of the coming season. André Onana After a rollercoaster season at Manchester United, André Onana appears determined to bounce back. The Cameroonian shot-stopper, speaking to Sky Sports, didn't mince his words. It's time for the Red Devils to lift their heads and put last season's disappointments behind them. "We know how much we suffered last season. It was tough for us, and we're going to do everything necessary to make sure it doesn't happen again," declared the former Inter Milan goalkeeper. A powerful message aimed at the competition in the Premier League and beyond. Onana makes no secret of his ambitions, but above all, he highlights the resurgence of a squad now united around a shared goal. "We're working hard, we enjoy training together. When we're united, we'll be tough to beat this season," he added confidently. This renewed enthusiasm and collective spirit could well be the key to a fresh start for Manchester United. With a strengthened squad and a hunger for redemption, the Manchester club is aiming to return to the top. And if André Onana embodies this new determination, Red Devils supporters might just have good reason to believe again.
