Manchester United Midfielder Juan Mata has been publishing his thoughts on the season via his blog on the official team website. As you know it was a very up-and-down year. It started quite slowly with Louis van Gaal drawing a ton of David Moyes comparisons in early-to-mid season.
MK Dons and Leicester City were undoubtedly the low points. But then February-April, the team got red hot, and the season sweep over arch-rivals Liverpool gave us some high points.
Photo: Juan Mata in Manchester with two girls last night [via @AlexLever]: pic.twitter.com/TKxPI4ugn6
— utdreport (@utdreport) May 25, 2015
Finishing with just one win in the final six games was rather blah, but the late season surge was plenty enough to meet the goal of getting United back into Champions League. A top 4 finish makes the season a success. It was a lot better than the 7th place finish Moyes “accomplished.”
So what did Juan Mata have to say in his final blog entry? Here’s an excerpt:
In some stages we played very good football, being very competitive especially against our main rivals, and we enjoyed some important wins; on the other hand, there were periods when we were not consistent enough to fight for the title, or suffered some painful defeats. In general terms, we reached the main goal of the club this season: to have the chance to play the Champions League (we still have to earn it in the play-off round), but this team has to fight for trophies, and we will put all our efforts into that after the summer. That’s what you deserve.
We finished the season with a draw at Hull that also meant the local team was relegated. It’s not nice to experience something like that on-site, unfortunately this is not the first time I have seen it. As I said, we approached this game in the most professional way, trying to win. At the end, our draw, plus Newcastle’s victory, left Hull in the relegation zone. I send my support to their fans – we hope to see you back in the Premier League soon. By the way, Jonás Gutiérrez’s goal for Newcastle tells us a lot about life and the way to overcome the real problems.
Read all of the Juan Mata blog at this link.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes to the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. He also appears regularly on numerous sports talk radio stations all across the country.
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