If Manchester United were in Glengarry Glen Ross, they would get no coffee on Thursday, because like that timeless story tells us “coffee is for closers.” No idea what the Red Devils were doing at the end of their 1-1 draw at Anderlecht in the Europa League Quarter-final, but it certainly wasn’t closing.
United did pick up an away goal, and those are crucial, towards advancing in the UEL competition, but it was still embarrassing that they let a win slip away from them.
In the post match press conference United Manager Jose Mourinho blamed his forwards.
Jose Mourinho said: “In my poor English I cannot find a better word [than sloppy]. You have to play more seriously.”
Put the performance of two or three of our attacking players together and you squeeze not much juice out of it.
“[Marcus] Rashford, [Jesse] Lingard, [ Zlatan ] Ibrahimovic, [Anthony] Martial. They were very similar.”
Damn. Mourinho called out all four of the attacking players by name. Harsh. However, at least it’s not as hard as he’s been on Luke Shaw this year.
It’s difficult to justify being harsh on Zlatan Ibrahimovic, as he’s been the team’s only true scoring threat this season.
He’s been so stellar that he made the PFA Player of the Year Award short list. However, Zlatan Ibrahimovic is a veteran, with leadership skills (as he conveyed when he gave his teammates instructions in the middle of the post goal celebration)
Ibrahimovic showed leadership, and class, when he accepted Mourinho’s medicine, and also offered an explanation as to why he was subpar. Zlatan told The Telegraph
“I think he is right in this matter because I was not feeling good in the sense of I was feeling tired,”
“But it is not an excuse because I still have to do well, I still have to do much more and much better than I did. I speak for myself and [Anderlecht] was not a good performance.”
“We have one month to go, it is many games we play. I have been playing almost all the games.”
“But we are still grinding, we are still pushing because we have the Europa League and the end of the Premier League. We fight for it.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times and NBC Chicago.com, contributes to Chicago Tribune.com, Bold, WGN CLTV and KOZN.
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