The coronavirus pandemic has brought all of world football down for the foreseeable future. Just today, the Premier League announced suspension of play until April 30, when they will re-evaluate. That said, there is still plenty of interesting Manchester United related news and notes to go over.
Let’s take a look at some of the news items trending in cyberspace right now during these very strange days and extremely uncertain times. Go here for the first edition of today’s MUFC news and notes. We start with a news item on manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and former striker Romelu Lukaku.
As one might logically deduce, OGS wanted to keep the big Belgian, but apparently he “didn’t have the energy” to stay, and had to move on to Inter Milan.
United acquire Lukaku for 75 million pounds from Everton in summer 2017. Lukaku opened up on his two year stay at the club and his decision to move on to Serie A.
“One bad year can happen to everybody in their career. It was just done for me. You know what happened behind the scenes, it was just done. For me it was done,” he said in a YouTube interview (transcript Sky Sports).
“It was a difficult situation where for myself I had to make a decision where I have to go somewhere where I can learn other aspects of my game and work with somebody that wanted me as well.”
“Ole wanted me to stay, but I told him I was over. I didn’t have the energy. All credit to him because he’s been a man and he helped me make the move away.”
United didn’t acquire anyone in the summer to replace Lukaku, and the final third has been up and down all season long.
However, Big Rom’s departure opened up opportunities for Mason Greenwood, and when leading scorer Marcus Rashford got hurt, the club went out and signed Odion Ighalo on loan, who’s been a revelation. So in the end it kind of worked out for everybody.
Moving on, central defender Chris Smalling, arguably one of the best outfield players on the team during the Louis van Gaal era, fell out of favor as his United career continued and finding an escape route was critical. He got in AS Roma, where he’s been quite impressive.
With a loan move that’s set to expire in the summer, he’s got a big decision to make. He won’t reportedly be short on suitors, both in England and Italy. 101 Great Goals has more at this link.
Finally, United club legend and Salford City co-owner Gary Neville is concerned about the clubs who could be casualties of the coronavirus pandemic. The big clubs, who get all the media coverage and have giant fan bases, they will be fine of course, but the smaller outfits, being forced to shutter for so long, they might not be able to subsist.
Ireland’s national network, RTE, has more at this link.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly appears on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
You can follow Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com on Twitter here and his cat on Instagram at this link.