De Zerbi true feelings on horror Spurs start revealed as Man Utd star ‘slams’ team-mates
Luckily for us all, there’s an expert on hand to reveal the truth about how Roberto De Zerbi thinks things are going at Spurs. The answer will shock you.
Meanwhile, there’s apparent division in the ranks at Manchester United and a huge injury setback for the club that will see one player potentially miss as many as zero Manchester United games.
Plus some more JJ Gabriel nonsense, because every day must bring more of that.
Body of evidence Astonishing to think that, if it weren’t for the rigorous and scientific work of the Daily Express’ on-call body language expert Darren Stanton, there would simply be no way at all for us mere mortals to know that Roberto De Zerbi might be under a bit of pressure at Spurs.
Putting all those years of training at body language school to great use, Stanton informs us that:
“Roberto De Zerbi looks like a man who knows he’s very much on the brink now. “During the game, his expressions and the way he was pacing down the touchline, he looked like he could almost burst into flames but there was real anxiety too. Seeing him head down, shoulders back, is usually a sign of someone feeling acute stress. “The way he walked away, straight down the tunnel, with his head down, gave all the signs of someone fully aware of the jeopardy they are facing.”
Fascinating and elite insight from a true expert, revealing as only the trained mind can that the manager whose team sit bottom of the Premier League after spending hundreds of millions of pounds on players he demanded might be thinking there is some sh*t heading rapidly fan-wards.
But while Mediawatch will concede to being but an ignorant layman in such matters of very real science, we do humbly wonder if even the undoubted greats of the game like Stanton can sometimes miss.
Because he also says this.
“He’s reliving everything as he responds to the reporters, and he is feeling all that stress and accountability, and in that sense he is trying to do the honourable thing and not just throw his players under the bus. “It’s quite refreshing, really. We are becoming used to managers coming out to divert criticism onto their players and he isn’t doing that here.”
Forgive us if you can for using something so impossibly basic and non-scientific as verbal rather than the intricate and reliable body language, but he did also call those players the most fragile team he’s ever coached.
Our favourite line in the whole thing is this, though.
Body language expert Darren Stanton believes the Belgian is acutely aware of his precarious position, suggesting that he is almost expecting to be sacked following the loss to Villa.
In fairness, he does look quite Belgian, doesn’t he? Don’t ask us to explain it, but Roberto De Zerbi has Belgian hair. Not Italian hair. He has the precise look of being the last Belgium player to reach 50 caps before the Golden Generation came along.
It somehow makes perfect sense that a body language expert would see him as Belgian.
Four sight Wonderfully crafty stuff from the Daily Express here, capitalising on the new-fangled extended international break and the fact most normal people won’t yet have clocked just how many games are piled up in it to secure this tap-in.
Marcus Rashford suffers injury blow as Man Utd star faces four games on sidelines
Four England games on sidelines.
Working hard or hardly working Mediawatch had a little rant last week about ‘pointing the blame’ when the person doing said pointing is in fact more accurately ‘taking’ or ‘accepting’ said blame.
So consider this a coda to that rant and, to no great surprise, it’s Man United at the heart of it once more. Cue the Daily Mirror:
Matheus Cunha slammed his Manchester United teammates for not working as hard as Fulham in their draw at Craven Cottage.
Again, they know what they’re doing. They know this looks like division in the camp. Like Cunha throwing his team-mates under the bus.
Inevitably, he makes no us and them distinction in his actual words, where the relevant pronoun is consistently ‘we’.
“We didn’t score, unlucky, and they scored in like one action that’s hard to explain. A lot of luck. Then you come back and this is frustrating because I feel to be honest after we conceding the goal we played much better with a lot of enthusiasm and effort. It’s only one point. We try to never play for one point.” He added: “It’s hard to explain. I feel like after the first half we played well. It was how we planned to do it in the beginning of the second half. I feel like they put more into it than us and we cannot accept this. We always play better after conceding a goal but it cannot be like this.”
He could not be clearer about the collective nature of this, or that he is part of it.
United stunt Sticking with United and swirling nonsense, the JJ Gabriel palaver continues to deliver high-level guff. The panicked nature of the coverage about a 15-year-old – however talented he might be – has felt ridiculous throughout, from the Messi comparisons to the genuinely wild Daily Telegraph criticism of United for treating a literal kid with kid gloves.
Now comes a very conveniently planted Daily Mail story, the crux of which has been inevitably recycled absolutely everywhere else, explaining the reason why Gabriel simply must leave Man United at this time.
According to the report, ‘United falling behind the heavyweights of European football is the driving force behind Gabriel’s desire to leave the club’, with it felt that they are now ‘far away’ from other top teams in Europe. This Man United is small, the clubs out there are… far away.
‘His dad has ambitions for his son to be the best in the world and play with the best and learn from the best and right now that’s not current situation at United – far from it.’
Now that’s true, but it’s also absurdly disingenuous. JJ Gabriel was literally two years old when Man United last won the Premier League title. They couldn’t plausibly be described as one of Europe’s top teams at any point since. Certainly not at any point since he joined the club in 2022.
If that is truly his reason for wanting to leave, it begs a question that was apparently not put to the mystery source: why did he ever sign in the first place? Or does he truly, like so many us, simply pine for the glory days under Ralf Rangnick?
