By Daily Sports on April 18, 2017

A third straight defeat to Chelsea this season would have been a bitter pill for the man who had helped in no small measure to make the team a force to reckoned with in modern day football. But 'The Special one' Jose Mourinho ensured that Manchester United reignited the spark of the English Premier League by orchestrating a tactical master plan to frustrate the league leaders with a solid 2-0 trouncing.

It was a score line that was shocking in some sense, given the flying form of Chelsea who have looked for most parts of the season, kings in the making. Antonio Conte, the Chelsea manager has come up with a very difficult 3-4-3 formation that most premier league oppositions have found extremely hard to find an answer to. But Mourinho the spoiler came and put a cog in Chelsea's wheels with a strong and strangulating tactical approach that ensured The Blues would seriously have to look over their shoulders now with rivals, Tottenham Hotspur only four points away as the season approaches its finale.

Mourinho has acquired a name for himself as a solid defensive minded coach who can fashion the kind of tactical plan to stifle the best opposing sides. He's reported to have worked out a plan of deliberately giving the ball away to Lionel Messi’s Barcelona in the UEFA Champions League some years ago in order to concentrate on keeping his Inter Milan's defensive shape and that was how they saw off Barca in the semi final that year.

But on Sunday Mourinho proved his team could show attacking aggression against the best of sides and still triumph. While Chelsea's Eden Hazard was pocketed by Ander Herera, the youthful energy and pace of Jesse Lingard and goal scorer, Marcus Rashford were preferred to the static and aging Zlatan Ibrahimovic upfront and it proved a tactical masterstroke.

Man U harried Chelsea upfront and got their just reward with a goal in each half. United wanted the game more and they were the more physically aggressive side.

Kudos must go to Conte who acknowledged that the failure of Chelsea on Sunday was down to him for not motivating his side well enough to win the tie. Leadership is made of such stuff. The Blues are still favourites for the title despite Spurs heavy pursuit of the West Londoners.

I disagree with Garba Lawal over home-based players for the Super Eagles

Gernot Rohr, the Super Eagles coach has come out to candidly say he thinks the home-based players are not yet ripe enough to replace the foreign based stars of the Nigerian national team at the moment.

His criticism of the local league's standard met with opposition in some quarters. Leading the opposition is former Super Eagles star, Garba Lawal.

Lawal had argued that the local league has a rich history of having produced stars for the national team in the past and that we should not just abandon the interest we have in the league simply because it has some challenges.

Well, my simple question to Lawal is, “which player in the local league can you name as good enough to displace a foreign-based player in the Super Eagles now?”

Source Daily Sports

Posted April 18, 2017

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