Never touched him. If he did, Hazard would still be rolling around in pain. In fact, hazard should have gotten a yellow to trying to grab Rojo's shoe.
You have followed Mourinho more than any other manager I am sure. Has there been any inclination during his Chelsea stints that he was going to rotate or develop players? The academy revamp after he came was that him that made it happen or more of an Abramovic thing? The rotation point will make or break our season.
Academy has f*ck all to do with Jose as far as I know. Rotation? The lack of it is what got him fired. All Hiddink had to do was drop a couple of underperformers and let the team breath and we were back in top 4-5 form. Jose refused to drop the likes of Ivanovic despite a ton of horrific performances. It was baffling. Same with Matic and a couple others. As soon as he couldn't use Hazard as an offensive crutch, our team was exposed for being totally uncreative and unable to score outside of Willian's free kicks (for a little while), own goals and set pieces. His insistence on the same starting 11 and same 4-2-3-1 was beyond frustrating. That along with the toxic environment he created, helped killed us and got him the axe.
Heres the thing. Its not so much sometimes you are allowed, and sometimes not. In England, at that threshold, You are allowed. 4 fouls (including one non foul) is never punished by a double yellow card and a sending off. Never. If we play Stoke next week and Pogba has 4 fouls against him, there is not going to be a sending off. Never. I would particulary mind if that was the standard and it was applied consistently. If anything that would be to our advantage. But the complete lack of anything approaching compentency or consistency, and the utter lack of interest to improve the Refereeing is frustrating.
Mourinho isn't big on youth players or rotation. He will occasionally play the youth, but it's rare, and it hasn't always turned out well (David Santon at Inter a notable example). On rotation, Mourinho notably likes a smaller side. I think that's relatively well known.
I won't go as far as you do with respect to Mourinho. He's got another summer to put the pieces together and we'll see what he comes up with. I think we'll see Jose use Pogba in a more advanced role next season although I wouldn't write off the possibility of him developing a credible defensive game but I don't want to see him hear too much responsibility in front of the back four. Paul may have been surprised at the drop in quality around him when he came to OT. Rooney, of course. Martial has been poor. Miki started badly. Even Ibra was spotty early in the season. He really had no one to play off of and hasn't gotten into a good rhythm even while the players around him raised their game, at least somewhat.
Everything comes to an end (even though as it's been pointed out, it's over a while back ). Was nice while it lasted and cold have been more effective in terms of actual wins. But here's the good news, we can hopefully get started on a new unbeaten run, one that hopefully can stretch as long as the remainder of the season. Not going to be easy, considering how shaky the team has looked as of late (and with other well noted challenges), but with a little good fortune ad a couple of the right breaks, why not?
We could go unbeaten till the end of the season and yet get knocked out of the Europa League on Thursday and finish 7th in the Premier League, football, bloody hell
We need to stop thinking about "unbeaten" runs. Every draw keeps an unbeaten run alive but means two more dropped points. As for defeat to Chelsea, in the end it was a good thing. The fixture list ahead of us is crowded enough and the real goal ahead of us top 4 or winning the EL.
No arguments there, and I'll agree that ultimately, this run was really good from a defensive standpoint. Would have to look up the stats to be precise, but it's been pretty evident that the defense has been solid overall, not conceding a lot of goals during that time. The next step is to increase the offensive output from the team, which has been the team's biggest problem all season and will convert a lot of draws into wins. The margins between draws and wins, albeit vital, have been pretty minimal and hopefully can see some improvement in that department until the end of the season.
Let's hope we can make up for the two points we dropped in Russia last week against Rostov on Thursday night
I was so pissed at the meek surrender, and it was a meek surrender against Chelsea on Monday night that the long unbeaten run(hi Hull) didn't enter my head until the next day.... We definitely had Chelsea's number up right up until the sending-off so we're not that far short despite all the doom'n'gloom, one or two tweaks in the Summer and we'll be fine.
This is the attitude among some United fans I really don't understand. Before the sending off your game plan was basically to kick Hazard and you already had given up two really good chances (which required two great saves by DeGea) without creating much yourselves. So I don't understand what you mean by "having Chelsea's number". It was close, but you certainly weren't dominating or controlling the game.
It's pretty simple. Before the sending off..We were the slightly better team for the first 15 mins...Chelsea were slightly the better team in the second 15 minutes...so you could say that Chelsea were on an up curve (to be expected as the home team)..but it was still tight. Our gameplan was to use Miki and Rashfords pace, while being tight on the players and closing down. There was no gameplan to "kick" Hazard...just to stay very tight on him and restrict his chance to pick up a run. He's a tricky player, so he won a few fouls. Conte's comments about fearing for Hazard's safety were a disgrace...he was not involved in a single injury threatening challenge. The few fouls he won were everyday fouls you see in every match.
Yes, there was. Jose has done this before (I've seen him do it at Chelsea!), pretty much the entire media agrees that was the case (they can't all be ABUs) and the referee certainly thought so, to the point of telling the captain to stop fouling Hazard on rotation. I won't say anything more on the subject. The only people who think Mourinho did not do a thing Mourinho has clearly done in the past are United fans. I find that notable.
You are blinkered. I'm not going to blame you for that..that's the nature of 90% of fans. I fall into the other 10%...I call it as I see it. Jones was told to go tight on Hazard..and he was overzealous on 2 occassions. Their was no malice...it was more comical when he bungled into him. There were many occassions where this tight marking forced Hazard to pass or lost the ball because of this pressure...totally a fair tactic. You and the agenda squad make it sound as if Hazard couldn't touch the ball without getting a foul..untrue. I've proved it in the time line written by Journos..at no point do they mention a concerted effort by Man Utd to target Hazard during those first 33 mins...in fact they say it is a facinating tactical battle. Only when the ref fcks up is it twisted into a hack job. Go on tell me of these injury threatening tackled that were bestowed on Hazard that Conte was talking about? One. Hazard is fouled multiple times in many matches (most fouled player in the league), not because he's 'targeted' because he's a clever player. It's only been twisted because a) the ref completely fecked up b) it's Man Utd.
There is a difference between targeting a good player for tight marking...and some sort of orders to hack him down. Guess what happens when a good player gets tightly marked...he wins a few fouls over the 90 mins. Mind...blown.