After several days of intensified rumors that he could leave Man United for the Chinese Super League as soon as this month, Wayne Rooney has announced that he’s staying put. Rooney took the unusual step of making an official statement through Man United’s website that reads as follows:
“Despite the interest which has been shown from other clubs, for which I’m grateful, I want to end recent speculation and say that I am staying at Manchester United,” declared the Reds’ record goalscorer.
“I hope I will play a full part in helping the team in its fight for success on four fronts.
“It’s an exciting time at the club and I want to remain a part of it.”
So what convinced Rooney to stay? Well, this video of him celebrating the Chinese New Year at famed Manchester restaurant Wings could hold the answer.
Since Wayne doesn’t have a very good poker face, we’re able to pinpoint his exact thoughts throughout the making of this video.
0:16—“I’d have to learn a new calendar?”
1:10—“There’s paper cutting involved?”
2:35—“These questions are just as bad as the ones from the English press.”
4:58—“Did someone slip LSD in my drink?”
5:21—“That lion spat lettuce on me.”
5:30—“I’m never leaving the house again, let alone going to China.”
Bastian Schweinsteiger was a forgotten specter at Old Trafford—an unwanted old shoe that Jose Mourinho hoped would wander away if he was ignored long enough. He was left out of the team photo and forced to train alone simply for committing the crime of being surplus to requirements. But throughout his year of being ignored, Schweinsteiger remained unflappably upbeat and determined to prove himself. And on Sunday his perseverance paid off.
Mourinho decided to throw Schweinsteiger a bone and give him his first start in over a year in Man United’s FA Cup match against Wigan. The former Germany captain made good on this rare opportunity to actually play football by notching an assist and scoring the final goal of the 4–0 win, earning Man of the Match honors for himself. And to cap off the day, Mourinho told reporters that Schweinsteiger will be allowed to stay with the club and will even be added to the Europa League squad.
A great evening with a fantastic win in front of our fans! Thanks to everyone for the great support! ?? #mufcpic.twitter.com/0HIHuxsgXA
This is a series of events that likely has Schweinsteiger thinking that he died of loneliness and crossed over to a heavenly afterlife at the end of last year. It’s a remarkable reversal for a player who was consistently treated like a contagious disease for so long and it has to be incredibly satisfying for him to have his determination (or stubbornness, depending on how you look at it) pay off like this.
That said, I hope no one ruins his euphoria by telling him how much he could be making if he had moved to China.
It’s amazing what a difference a few wins can make
Just a few short months ago, Jose Mourinho was getting sent off for kicking water bottles and replicating the misery of the David Moyes era at Manchester United. He was feeling confined in his luxury hotel room as his uncharacteristic inability to get results, which began the year before at Chelsea, sapped him of his vibrancy.
But now it’s 2017 and Man United have turned things around. They’ve won nine matches in a row and they’ve gone unbeaten in their last 15. Mourinho’s sense of humor appears to have returned with this vindication, as evidenced by his decision to answer the phone of a journalist when it rang during his Friday press conference.
Three months ago, Mourinho likely would have smashed the offending device with his bare hands while cursing at the assembled reporters in a language of his own creation, but now that some of the pressure has subsided, he can laugh again. And the way things are going, he will soon be able to Arsene Wenger again, too.
If there was a giant hornet’s nest coming straight for you at 100 mph, would you stick your foot in it? No. If you are a sane person, you would get out of its way and be thankful that you narrowly avoided disaster.
Well, West Ham goalkeeper Adrian is not a sane person. With the giant hornet’s nest that is Zlatan Ibrahimovic coming at him, he planted his studs right in Zlatan’s kneecap like a person who does not value their life whatsoever.
But did Zlatan grind Adrian into a fine powder and sprinkle him atop a latte right then and there? No. While Zlatan is most definitely a vengeful god, he is also a patient one. He waits for the right moment to strike in order to inflict maximum devastation. This is what he did to Adrian.
With Man United up 3–1 deep into injury time, Zlatan scored his second goal of the night, then stood over Adrian’s downed carcass with his arms held aloft, reveling in the crowd’s adulation that stung Adrian all over like a thousand hornets.
Mourinho pays tribute to his personal hero, Arsene Wenger
(SportsJoe.ie)
Jose Mourinho was sent off for the second time this season after he kicked a water bottle when Paul Pogba was booked for diving in the first half of Man United’s 1–1 draw with West Ham. In fairness to Mourinho, it definitely could have looked like a bookable challenge from his angle on the touchline, but it wasn’t and now he’s been sent off at Old Trafford as many times as he’s won there this season.
The action that got Mourinho sent off this time, however, might have been inspired by his favorite person in the world, Arsene Wenger. Back in 2009, Wenger was also famously punished for kicking a water bottle at Old Trafford. Surely this was just Mourinho’s latest attempt to be more like the man he once labeled an “expert in failure.” It would certainly explain the last two seasons of his career.
Mourinho has now fallen behind a pace that got David Moyes sacked in April of his first and only season in charge at Man United. Under Mourinho, the Red Devils are currently sixth in the Premier League and closer to 18th-place Hull City (nine points ahead) than first-place Chelsea (11 points back).
Mourinho 2 points worse than Moyes was at this point in the season and United have spent $615m since they fired DM. Yikes.
On the bright side, Man United are undefeated when Mourinho gets sent to the stands (they drew 0–0 with Burnley in October the first time it happened). So maybe he should do this more often?
A bad idea is proven to be even worse than you might’ve thought
These Blair Witch movies keep getting worse
Many people have had the idea, but few have actually tried it. To go on a inexpensive stadium tour the day before a big match and hide in the bathroom overnight, then emerge before kickoff and laugh at all the rubes who paid over the odds to attend. It’s the kind of thing you half-jokingly discuss over a few beers, but never actually put serious thought into how it would work.
Well, a couple of YouTubers have given it a go—at Old Trafford, no less—and the documentation of their miserable experience should be enough to dissuade anyone else from trying it.
At nearly 20 minutes, their video is tough to watch all the way through, but if you skip around you’ll get a good enough idea of what happened. Basically, they paid to go on an Old Trafford stadium tour the day before Man United-Arsenal and when the time was right, they slipped away from the group and successfully evaded staff before ducking into one of the concourse bathrooms and each taking up residence in a toilet stall.
Now, this where two of their major planning errors became evident.
They chose to carry out this plan in November. It gets cold in November. And this makes sitting on a stadium toilet all night even more of an endurance test (one guy tried stuffing toilet paper into his coat for warmth, but it didn’t help). They should’ve done this in either August/September or April/May.
They didn’t bring enough food. I mean, come on now. If you’re going to sit on a toilet all night, you might as well pack a feast.
Frozen and starved, the two stadium stowaways successfully navigated a couple of hilarious and panicky conversations with stewards through the toilet stall doors the next morning before finally emerging a few hours before kickoff. It seemed they had pulled it off, but after the match began, the authorities caught on (presumably because they didn’t have seats) and the jig was up.
After admitting what they did and complying with a few rounds of interrogations, they missed the game but got away without any serious repercussions. And a terrible experience in the name of Internet notoriety came to an end.
If we learn anything from this caper, it’s that paying 10 times the face of tickets for a big match is so much better than quietly sitting in a frigid stadium bathroom all night and then being laughed at by the police (it would’ve been great to see their faces when they unzipped his coat and all that toilet paper insulation floated to the ground) instead of getting to see the game.
The phrase “For a greater Britain” next to that image of Rooney is too perfect
Following England’s 3–0 win over Scotland on Friday, Wayne Rooney was photographed at a wedding party that happened to be taking place at the hotel used by the England team. Still wearing his team gear, Rooney was photographed looking sloppier than usual with wine stained lips. The Sun published these photos and Rooney was held out of England’s 2–2 draw with Spain, supposedly for unrelated reasons.
If you’re going to set a precedent for apologizing every time you’re caught doing something embarrassing on camera, you’re going to be a busy man, Wayne. Then again, this could be a more productive use of your time than actually playing football.
It’s been a trying start to Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s time with Manchester United. He endured his longest goal drought since 2006 and Jose Mourinho has struggled to pull the club above the middle of the table. It seems all this has taken a mental toll on Zlatan, as evidenced by his interview in the December issue of Inside United magazine.
In that interview, Zlatan says:
“I heard a lot of things that the city is this, the city is that, the weather is like this and the weather is like that but, so far, everything has been good. The city is the best city so far.”
Two things:
It’s only early November. The weather will get worse.
Even people from Manchester might be surprised to see someone who has played and lived in the likes of Amsterdam, Turin, Milan, Barcelona, and Paris say that. It might sound like pandering given that he told this to the club’s official magazine, but the rest of the quote reveals a deeper issue might be at play.
“I come from Sweden, I don’t have big expectations when it comes to… how do you say it… outside football. I’m pretty simple, I’m a family guy. For me, they come in the first phase, the rest is less important. For example, when I was living in Paris, in four years I didn’t go to see the Eiffel Tower once — I wanted them to change the Eiffel for my statue but they didn’t do it! Maybe if they do it now, I will go to visit!” [Smiles]
Perhaps Zlatan’s extreme lack of awareness of his immediate surroundings impeded him from fully appreciating all that the other cities he’s played in have to offer. Or maybe he’s already taken one too many Marouane Fellaini elbows to the head during training.
The true feelings of the Man United players turned pundits are revealed
Fenerbahce beat Manchester United 2–1 in the Europa League, adding to the woe of a Jose Mourinho side that is now off to a worse start than David Moyes or Louis van Gaal managed. Former Man United players Paul Scholes and Michael Owen worked the match for BT Sport and used their copies of the team sheet to express their feelings on their former club’s fortunes, as revealed by colleague Jake Humphrey.
First, the furious scribbles of Paul Scholes:
What immediately jumps out here is the pen-mashing rage evident in the hurricane of swirls at the top of the page. The circular motions clearly symbolize Man United’s fortunes going down the toilet in recent years. Beneath that is what could be a sketch of a prison cell, representing the team’s stifled play and inability to escape their poor form.
Perhaps most telling is the fact that he put a box around Jose Mourinho’s name and then crossed it out. Though Scholes stated during the broadcast that he believes Man United should stick with Mourinho for “the next couple of years at least,” it seems the 11-time Premier League champion is losing patience with the Portuguese.
So that’s a snapshot of Scholes’ tortured emotions. Now how about Michael Owen?
His own initials printed in big block letters (and spiced up with an exclamation point), a magic wand, a banana, the phonetic spelling of Kjaer, a stitched up wound and a cartoon face.
If I had to guess what this all means, I’d say that Owen believes he could be scoring more goals than Zlatan Ibrahimovic right now, that Man United need a magic spell to get the best out of Paul Pogba, that he doesn’t know how to pronounce conjoined letters, that bananas are yummy, that it would be funny if a piece of paper had a paper cut, and that Mr. Parenthesis Head is going to be Britain’s next great children’s cartoon.
Two sad men shake hands in the saddest way possible.
Jose Mourinho and David Moyes are arguably the two saddest managers in the Premier League right now. Mourinho was sent to the stands as his Man United only managed a 0–0 draw with Burnley, leaving them in eighth place while Moyes’ Sunderland remain winless and at the bottom of the table through 10 matches.
Seems that José Mourinho, who was sent to the stands, wasn't the only one whose acca was screwed by Manchester United. pic.twitter.com/34oTJOBDL7
As both men have recently revealed, their workplace troubles have bled into their personal lives, creating an unwanted competition to see who’s sadder.
Mourinho, who is living an isolated existence in a Manchester hotel (perhaps unsure whether he’ll be around long enough to make buying a home worthwhile) while the rest of his family remains in London, told Sky Sports:
“For me, it’s a bit of a disaster because I want sometimes to walk a little bit and I can’t. I just want to cross the bridge and go to a restaurant. I can’t, so it is really bad.
“But I have my apps and I can ask for food to also be delivered, which I do sometimes.”
Meanwhile, David Moyes told reporters that his team’s record has him in a more literally dark place. From Reuters:
“It’s damning, I agree,” Moyes added. “It does make me feel lousy, and I do. I don’t feel good about it but you’ve got to take it. I probably spend Saturday night, and quite often, in a darkened room somewhere.
“Sunday gets a wee bit better, but not much, and hopefully by the time Monday morning comes, you are ready to go again.
“You’ve got to get it out of the system and you are up and running again. And I’ll do that again on Monday.”
It was just a few short years ago that Mourinho said he felt sorry for Moyes in the midst of a brief and terrible spell at Man United that is turning out to be remarkably similar to what Mourinho himself is experiencing there right now.
(Bleacher Report)
Given their shared misery, they should reach out to one another and no longer suffer in solitude. Help each other through this difficult period. Maybe they could silently Facetime while sitting alone their respective darkened rooms, each occasionally muttering Marouane Fellaini’s name. Or they could make plans to start a new football club together. One without owners who will sack you or players who will let you down. One that never loses and exists wherever your family wants to live. It could revolutionize the game! Then the names Mourinho and Moyes will be beloved and synonymous with success once more! Think how wonderful it will be! And then pay the food delivery guy, apologize for holding him up, and close the door before he can ask why there aren’t any lights on and “Mad World” by Tears for Fears keeps playing on repeat.
