Manchester United club legend Paul Scholes has consistently been as harsh a critic of his former team as any pundit out there. Sometimes his critiques trigger those involved with the club to respond, and when they do, they hit back hard. Today is certainly one of those times as Mino Raiola, the agent for Paul Pogba fired back at the former midfielder.
United are dealing with enough real problems and severe distractions right now, so yet another escalating war of words is the last thing they need right now. Coming off a pathetic showing at Brighton & Hove Albion on Sunday, in which the Red Devils fell 3-2 to a side that was only just promoted a couple years ago, scapegoats abound.
One of those scapegoats is Paul Pogba, the £89 million man who is wearing the captain’s arm band right now in place of the injured Antonio Valencia. Pogba had an awful game and after the fact he himself even admitted that his attitude wasn’t right for the match.
Scholes called out the player who is supposed to be United’s main leader in a tough but fair fashion.
“There’s a lack of leaders in the team,” said Scholes. “We thought Paul Pogba might be the ideal candidate to be that leader, but he wasn’t there today. He had another really poor game. He’s so inconsistent.”
“Pogba’s playing the ball out of play, he’s overhitting passes, he’s hitting passes short, he’s getting caught in possession.”
Raiola didn’t take too kindly to that, posting on Twitter (so you already know where this is going/going to go) to give some advice to Scholes. The super agent invoked Sir Winston Churchill when deriding Scholes’ leadership recognition abilities, and stated that Scholes should become Club Director and then advise Vice President Ed Woodward to sell Pogba.
He joked that Scholes’ shopping Pogba would lead to “sleepless nights.”
Paul Scholes should become sports director and advise Woodward to sell Pogba. Would be sleepless nights to find Pogba a new club @paulpogba
— RAIOLA (@MinoRaiola) August 21, 2018
Some people need to talk for fear of being forgotten. Paul Scholes wouldn’t recognize a leader if he was in front of Sir Winston Churchill. @paulpogba
— RAIOLA (@MinoRaiola) August 21, 2018
Obviously this inspired more people to jump in and give strong opinions, and more strong takes are inevitably on the way too. (Just wait to United manager Jose Mourinho weighs in on this).
Gary Neville and Mike Phelan, Scholes’ former teammate/member of the Class of ’92 and assistant manager, respectively, responded quickly to Raiola.
https://twitter.com/GNev2/status/1031799445728505856
There was a time when a players ability, consistency, attitude, record and application generated transfer activity
— Mike Phelan (@Mike_Phelan_1) August 21, 2018
Grab your popcorn because this situation is probably going to escalate before it de-escalates. If you’re a United supporter though, this has got to be very tough to watch, as the house on fire just had more lighter fluid added to it on Tuesday.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, is currently a regular contributor to SB Nation, WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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