This game is a proper dead rubber but as always, I will watch every minute of it.
It’s fair enough that Mourinho is apparently giving starts to Fred and Pereira in this game but I still am not satisfied with his overall man management at the end of the day. Pereira was looking very good and was bedding into the side before he had a mare at Huddersfield – Mourinho immediately removed him at halftime and cast him away to the reserves.
Fred comes in for the good part of 60m pounds and he also can’t get a game because Mourinho is unwilling to allow him to make mistakes while adjusting – he always goes for the safety first donkeys who are “reliable” (another word for predictable) like Fellaini, Matic, and Herrera (to a lessor extent, I think he is a good player to have in any top squad). Mourinho has to start putting faith in his signings and the younger players to build a team with them. Our results are rubbish anyways so I don’t understand why he continues to allow players like Fellaini, Young, Valencia, Smalling, Jones etc. to stink the place out instead of playing the younger players we have invested in and allowing them to “sink or swim”.
In any case, I hope Pogba, Fred, and Pereira manage to move the ball quickly and control tempo. I also hope Lukaku plays 90mins because he needs to do some cardio to work off the pudding under the skin. A clean sheet would be the biggest positive if we can manage it.