Jesse paints a picture…
If you watched Donny Van de Beek toil against West Ham United (and he did toil) and thought ‘well, he’s no improvement on Jesse Lingard’ then congratulations, for you are Duncan Wright of The Sun.
‘IF there was a signing that arguably spelled the end of Jesse Lingard’s time at Manchester United it was that of Donny van de Beek.’
Nope. It was that of Bruno Fernandes. After his arrival in the final days of January 2020, Lingard did not start another Premier League game for United. Not one. In fact, he played just 43 minutes of the final 14 games of the Premier League season. His goose was cooked.
‘A forward-thinking player with an eye for goal is how you could sum Lingard up as a player, and that is what United thought they were getting when they snapped up the much-hyped Van de Beek.
‘But the longer the season goes on, the more you wonder just whether the 23-year-old is actually much of an improvement on the player they had nurtured from academy to first team regular.’
You might wonder that. If you thought for a second that Van de Beek and Lingard were the same kind of player. And if you had not been paying attention while Van de Beek was helping Ajax to the Champions League semi-finals two years ago.
‘He offered nothing more than Lingard would have done. In fact, you could argue with his extra pace, the England star would have posed more of a threat for Solskjaer’s team.’
Because pace is a massive asset against an eight-man defence, right?
‘Instead he was present in the stands watching his new side West Ham, having been forced out into the cold at Old Trafford by Van de Beek’s arrival.’
Except he wasn’t; he was ‘forced out into the cold at Old Trafford’ by the arrival of Bruno Fernandes – 43 minutes of football in 14 Premier League games, remember.
‘Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.’
Oh wow. Now he’s gone all Big Yellow Taxi on our arses. Silly, silly Manchester United, trying to move on from a player who had scored one Premier League goal in two years.
Show and tell
Obviously, for the inside information on what is going on with Donny ‘not as good as Jesse Lingard’ Van de Beek, we need to go to the Manchester Evening News:
‘Solskjaer chat with Van de Beek shows why he is not starting for Manchester United’
Alternatively, Bruno Fernandes shows why he is not starting for Manchester United.
Spot!
And then there’s this on the Mirror website:
‘Donny van de Beek’s facial expression spotted after Ole Gunnar Solskjaer hooked him’
Spotted? It was on the sodding telly.
Model behaviour
But the prize for the most shameless eking-out of Donny Van de Beek traffic goes to the Money-Saving and Shopping section of the Manchester Evening News. In some ways, it’s cheering to Mediawatch that it’s not just football journalism which is absolutely shit and largely fuelled by social media.
‘Manchester United fans notice sad detail about Donny van de Beek as he models new kit’
A detail, you say? A ‘small feature of something that you only notice when you look carefully’? What is this ‘detail’?
Well if you look very, very carefully – this is like one of those games on Facebook…
Posted by Manchester United on Thursday, 14 January 2021
…you will notice that Van De Beek is wearing a nice jumper. Which is banter because he is always on the bench, you see.
And if you look even closer, you will see that this ‘new kit launch’ was actually a month ago. But still…clicks, eh?
Chain reaction
One man boy who did not get on the Old Trafford pitch was Amad Diallo. He really must have been terribly annoyed to be snubbed so cruelly by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. How can we find out if he was terribly annoyed? Oh here we are on the Mirror website:
‘Amad’s reaction to missing out on making Man Utd debut against West Ham’
And here it is – every single word of his ‘reaction to missing out on making Man Utd debut’:
well done guys
pic.twitter.com/n1Jn7bfOhv
— Amad
(@Amaddiallo_19) February 9, 2021
Hmmm. Looks awfully like a reaction to Manchester United winning a game to our admittedly untrained eye.
Warn out
Only five Manchester City players have played more than Phil Foden’s 1924 minutes this season. That’s more than Riyad Mahrez, Ilkay Gundogan, Bernardo Silva, new signing Ferran Torres and even only-fit-striker Gabriel Jesus. And yet when Pep Guardiola quite rightly says that Foden will play some games but not others – LIKE EVERY OTHER MEMBER OF HIS SQUAD – this makes the actual back page of The Sun:
‘PEP GUARDIOLA warned Phil Foden not to think he has cracked it after his Anfield masterclass.
‘The England ace starred in Manchester City’s 4-1 win at Liverpool. But boss Guardiola has told the midfielder (is he?) not to expect to start every week on the back of it.’
Pesky fact: Only Ederson, Ruben Dias and Rodri can realistically expect to start every week. It’s called rotation. And it’s not a bloody ‘warning’.
Bedtime stories
Football365 are in bed with certain bookmakers; we have a mutually satisfying arrangement; we are firm but gentle lovers. But what we don’t do is pretend that we are not in bed with bookmakers. What we do not do is claim to be delivering ‘Man Utd transfer news’ and promise ‘The FIVE most likely defensive signings as Solskjaer makes new defender decision’ while all we are actually doing is bringing a list of ‘the FIVE most likely defensive additions this summer, according to odds supplied by’ certain bookmakers. We leave that kind of shenanigans to The Sun.
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