On this International labour Day, let's spare a thought for Manchester United who have laboured to get through 9 games in April alone. Jose Mourinho has been quick to get in his excuses early, often pre-match and then ram them home in his post-match brief.
“We lost players and we lost points, so yes today was a bad day,”.
“We did not look tired and exhausted, we are tired and exhausted.
“You cannot isolate the performance out of the context. This is the ninth match of April, it is not human.''
---Jose MourinhoAs it is, the authority should be ashamed of itself for requiring United to play nine times in April! United do deserve the sympathy and a moment's silence their manager is asking for.
Perhaps while at it, we should factor in Real Madrid. And FC Barcelona. And FC Bayern Munchen. And Athletico Madrid. And BVB Dortmund! Plus AS Monaco. Then Olympique Lyonnais. Oh and that club we get to play on Thursday in the Europa League semi-final.....Celta Vigo, all of whom have had to share a similar experience to Manchester United's 'inhuman' 9 game month of April.
Not that the other 7 clubs are complaining, but we'll do them a favour and file their official complaints. I reckon they must be too tired from a 9 game experience to do it themselves anyway.
The sarcasm aside, the lessons here are simple; only with a 28 man squad can you successfully compete on multiple fronts. That's a quantity about Sir Ferguson's teams that is hardly mentioned. Our current manager prefers 22 players to work with, which is all nice and OK in an ordinary season but not quite in a 60 game season.
The Europa league is, by design, a hell of a slab of a competition. It's group stage draw alone exceeds the 60 available minutes in an hour. It has a 'Last 32' knock out phase, making it an essentially longer competition than the Champions League. Then there's the Thursday-Sunday schedule that has regularly formed part of pundit debates.
With that information at hand, Jose must have crossed his fingers at having a clean bill of health for the entire season in order to get by just fine with the 22 players at his disposal. It did appear to come to pass half-way through the season with hardly any injury up until that point. The temptation was there to sanction departures of the squad players who seemed in danger of suffering constructive ''unemployment'' for the whole season.And he gave in. Out went three members of his squad and almost immediately, his luck with injuries run out! Ahead of the final month of the season, Manchester United have just the 13-14 senior players available. It cannot be said to be an entirely an unprecedented turn of events by the Sports Scientists at the club.
It is a given that injuries are part and parcel of sport and particularly football. How the club deals with that is part of the job description of its employees. As such, it can be argued that nothing extraordinary has happened at Manchester United to warrant the world of football to take a moment's pause and reflect upon it with commiserations.
Unlucky? Absolutely. But therein the bad luck was some fortune as well to take the lead against Swansea. United just couldn't translate it into the three points that have incredibly become such a rare phenomenon at Old Trafford this season.
Thankfully for the manager, he had already filed his excuse, just in case things turned out the way they did. Indeed, in many ways, he gave his players reason to fail. The resulting listless, tired performance was the product.
Hands up if you're tired of reading this.