Phew.

He's a top centreback you plum

Mata to Man Utd rumours doing the rounds again, Independent saying it will take over £40mill for Man Utd to have him.

Don't like the sounds of Mata playing behind Rooney/RVP...

I'm not sure what they need Mata for. Kagawa is already rotting away because Rooney occupies the same space. You could play him wide I suppose but not in the way United tend to use their wingers.

They gots januzaj too

They'd be better off spending big on gundogan

If Mata is going to United then Rooney is off.

Klaus wrote:

I'm not sure what they need Mata for. Kagawa is already rotting away because Rooney occupies the same space. You could play him wide I suppose but not in the way United tend to use their wingers.

I do wonder whether these leaks are coming from Chelsea who are alerting other clubs to his availability and what kind of money they are after. From Chelsea's point of view makes no sense to sell him in January, they are still in three competitions and he is still a very handy player for them.

IF they do sell to Man Utd it does make me wonder about Mourinho, wouldn't loan us Ba who after 22 games has made 2 starts and 6 sub appearances in the league but happy to sell them Mata? Does he not see them as threats or the conspiracy theory doing the rounds is he has no use for Mata and will sell him in the summer anyway but he can cash in now and mug Man Utd and thinks he might help them take points of us and City. Or maybe there will be some agreement that they sell Rooney to Chelsea in the summer. Too much bullshit going round, always happens during this bloody transfer window!

SSN saying talks between Man Utd and Chelsea are going well regarding Mata.

Mourinhos a sneaky one , he will probably loan them Mata having already played them twice, will also want to include in the negotiations some sort of deal for Rooney. Best case scenario for him , loan Mata to United so they can hurt other title rivals and also nail down a deal for Rooney.

JazzG wrote:

Or maybe there will be some agreement that they sell Rooney to Chelsea in the summer.

Can't possibly imagine why Chelsea would sell to Man U unless an agreement like that is included.

GooneriC wrote:

Mourinhos a sneaky one , he will probably loan them Mata having already played them twice, will also want to include in the negotiations some sort of deal for Rooney. Best case scenario for him , loan Mata to United so they can hurt other title rivals and also nail down a deal for Rooney.

If I was manager I would do exactly the same to be honest.

It's not sneaky, it's being very smart.

As soon as Chelsea enter first spot ( after equal games played) they will prob remain their for rest of the season unfortunately. Once Jose has a grip on something he won't let it go esp in business end of season. That's why we need City to beat them.

Chelsea will go deep into the Champions League, we won't.

I love how I keep thinking "Man, he's really going bald" every time I see Rooney. Then I remember that he's had several extensive hair transplant procedures done. That has to be one of the world's shallowest gene pools. The water barely reaches the ankles.

His look's not improving much with age.
Why would Madrid want him?

Because he's really good at football and one of the top 5 most marketable players in the world?

Outside of Ibrahimovic, Rooney would be the best fit of any #9 in world football to play with Bale and Ronaldo in my view. He would certainly make a lot more sense to me than Suarez for Real Madrid even though Suarez is the better player.

I agree with that assessment, but only because I think he would be an ideal foil for Ronaldo. He is a very selfless player and would blend into the Real team nicely.

Not so sure Ibra would be a good fit though.

Mourinho would have mastered the art of war if he manage to give United Mata and win the league. Sly fox.

[size=x-large][size=large]By selling Mata, Chelsea are saying United are a spent force. They are wrong… this will be the beginning of the end of Moyes' crisis[/size]
[/size]
The last player to move between Manchester United and Chelsea was Juan Sebastian Veron. Sir Alex Ferguson probably didn’t think them serious rivals at the time.

That went well. Veron, at £28.1million in July 2001 the most expensive player in British football, was not a success at Manchester United, despite Ferguson’s expletive-littered protestations to the contrary.

Sold for £15m in 2003, he flopped at Chelsea, too. He lasted one season, played 14 games, and scored one goal, on his Premier League debut in a win at Liverpool.

Injury intervened, and it was all downhill from there. When Jose Mourinho arrived a year later, among his first acts was to send Veron to Inter Milan on loan. He never returned.

Juan Mata is different in that Chelsea are making a substantial profit on the deal. Mata cost £23.5m and will be sold to Manchester United for around £37m.

In these days of financial fair play, such a dividend is not to be sniffed at, and to show a profit of more than £13m on a player who cannot get in the team is excellent business.

Mata would probably have been sold in the summer anyway, and after another five months in the cold, possibly at a loss. Chelsea are taking advantage of United’s desperation by forcing a high price. It turns out that Sunday’s 3-1 win was worth a lot more than three points.

And yet Chelsea are also taking a huge risk. In essence, they are coming to the same conclusion as Ferguson 10 years ago: that this rival, although wealthy, is not a threat and one player is not going to affect that.

They are saying that Mata, like Veron, is not good enough for our team and his impact will therefore be limited. And they are saying that an ineffectual squad of footballers cannot be turned around in a matter of weeks, or months, and the consequence of this sale will not be felt for some time.

And on all counts, bar the pure business side, they are wrong. Veron was not really a failure at Chelsea. As a player he bombed, but as a sales tool, he was quite brilliant.

Imagine if Roman Abramovich had not spent his first year in English football acquiring marquee names at extreme prices.

Imagine if, when he initially approached the young manager of Porto, all he had to show for his 12 months in charge was the same group he inherited from previous owner Ken Bates. What would that have said about Chelsea’s ambition?

Special managers are not attracted by owners content to stand still, and nor are special players. So that first summer, Chelsea recruited Veron, Glen Johnson (£6m), Geremi (£7m), Damien Duff (£17m), Wayne Bridge (£7m), Joe Cole (£6.6m), Adrian Mutu (£15.8m), Hernan Crespo (£16.8m) and Claude Makelele (£16.6m).

They did not win the league, or any other title, but when they went to Mourinho, he knew they meant business.

It is the same with Mata. Had this transfer window passed without major recruitment at Manchester United, and the club had then failed to qualify for the Champions League, how much harder would it have been to rejuvenate the squad in the summer?

Now, there is evidence that Moyes, and the owners, will do whatever it takes. By breaking United’s transfer record they will signal their intent to address this slide.

United will not be allowed to slip to the periphery, like Arsenal before the recruitment of Mesut Ozil. They will spend, they will scrap, they will successfully pursue players from the top echelon of the game.

Whatever Mata achieves in a red shirt this season, he is the poster boy for optimism. Last week, Moyes was the man who couldn’t persuade Leighton Baines to leave Everton — now he is the manager who signed Mata. Why have Chelsea afforded him this fortunate break?

It would be easy to blame the demands of financial fair play, were there any suggestion from Chelsea that it played a part in their thought process. The heart-warming version is that the club respected Mata’s ambition to play in the World Cup; the hard-nosed alternative that it was simply too good an offer to turn down.

Mourinho made it clear that Mata’s first-team opportunities would be limited, Chelsea got the game with United out of the way to guard against any nasty surprises, and did the deal when United were at their neediest.

Yet even if that were the case, why solve United’s problems now? Chelsea were emphatically the better team on Sunday. United’s defence was poor, and their front line ineffective, but it is the midfield that should be troubling Moyes. Now was surely the time to rub it in.

Creative players with Mata’s gift are rare. United would find it hard to rebuild in such a competitive market, yet with Adnan Januzaj on one side, Mata on the other and Wayne Rooney and Robin Van Persie fit again, a far more substantial team begins to take shape.

Maybe Mourinho recognised this and noted that United still had Arsenal and Manchester City to play this season, but it remains a big gamble, not least because there is always the chance that Mata hits it off with Rooney, lifts his mood and decides his future. Either way, this should be the beginning of the end of the crisis at Old Trafford.

United may be down right now, but a club of that size is never out. Liverpool have not won the Premier League since its inception but they have been European champions. Even if the League is beyond them now, Manchester United are still competing in two cups.

Moyes is deluded if he thinks United would have the same cachet without Champions League football next season, but they possess a significant financial resource through a commercial arm that sets them apart, and can throw money at a problem in a way their rivals can’t, with UEFA’s blessing.

United have been crying out for a player of Mata’s substance. All the more reason not to sell him, then. It will be cast as a bold move, a brave move, and proof that United are no longer seen as a Premier League force by Mourinho — but in selling Mata, the Happy One may just have woken up a little too chipper for his own good.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2543521/MARTIN-SAMUEL-Chelsea-saying-Manchester-United-spent-force-selling-Juan-Mata-They-wrong.html#ixzz2r6ot6rYg
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Fully agreed. Surely Chelsea can't be this stupid, are they on drugs or what?

If Chelsea turn United down now, United still have £40m to spend now or in summer, and Chelsea still have Mata apparently surplus to requirements.

You can't stop a club with United's spending power from renewing itself in time. Mata won't guarantee them Champions League, and if they don't get him they'll spunk their cash on someone else.

Reckon united will waste Mata on the wing.

That's the same line of thinking that saw us sell Van Judas to those cunts, should never have done it.

If there were top players out there that ManU could easily sign for 40m they'd have done it ages ago. We all know they spent the summer looking for players and ended up with duds like Fellaini, and it will even be more difficult for them to bring in top players in the summer if they don't make the CL. Rooney and Van Judas will no doubt look for a way out, Moyes could be fired, the whole club could be in a big mess.

Chelsea are increasing their chances of making the CL (and preventing all that mess in the summer) if they sell Mata to them in this window. Very stupid move IMO.

Irish gunner wrote:

Reckon united will waste Mata on the wing.

Mata played on the left in a 4-2-3-1 formation at Valencia and scored a lot of goals that earned him a transfer to Chelsea. Don't see him struggling in that position, they could play:

-----------Judas
Mata-----Rooney-----Januzaj

That front 4 will get them top 4 IMO. Don't forget most of their defeats in the league have come without Rooney and Judas playing together.

It's true to a point, I'm just inviting you to see the other sides.

That's the same line of thinking that saw us sell Van Judas to those cunts, should never have done it.

The way it panned out was revolting, but he would've ended up at City and we still would've gotten slaughtered last season.

Should have forced him to move abroad or forced him to see out his contract. Anyway, I'm done with that cunt, glad he's gone.

United would do well to sign Mata but more is needed, Their main priority should really be a top CM to pair with Carrick or another CB. Figure the return of RVP/Rooney will probably be important than any purchase of Mata

I don't want to drag it out either, but everyone knows the only clubs in for him were the two Manchesters and if we'd held him to his contract, he'd still be playing for another PL club right now.

The thing that really blows my mind about Mata is that Jose has frozen him out. That makes no sense to me, as he's a superb player ideally suited to the PL.

Burnwinter wrote:

I don't want to drag it out either, but everyone knows the only clubs in for him were the two Manchesters and if we'd held him to his contract, he'd still be playing for another PL club right now.

The thing that really blows my mind about Mata is that Jose has frozen him out. That makes no sense to me, as he's a superb player ideally suited to the PL.

Mourinho is a negative managers who prefers hard workers to ball players who are weak defensively. I like/rate Willian, but he's mainly preferred to Mata because he's got 100 lungs and can run all day.

The guy turned Samuel Eto'o (one of th best strikers of the last 15 years) into another Dirk Kuyt at Inter. Disgraceful.

Surprised Schurrle hasn't gotten more game time, I really like him. Think he could be quite effective up front too.

United will make top 4 if they manage to get Mata.

If RvC and Rooney are back anytime soon they'll probably make it even without him. I'm guessing Mourinho is banking on them doing enough damage to the other contenders while being too far back to worry about challenging.

Long term though I'd say it's a pretty dumb idea. Surely he can flog him off to some foreign side.

El Genio de O++viedo wrote:

United would do well to sign Mata but more is needed, Their main priority should really be a top CM to pair with Carrick or another CB. Figure the return of RVP/Rooney will probably be important than any purchase of Mata

They could easily get by with another decent CM next to Carrick till the end of the season. Cleverly or Jones could do the job.

The two CMs should sit deep and told not to cross the half line, and they'll attack through the fullbacks + their front 4, similar to how Brazil played under Dunga.

Word is they are signing Contrao, really hope not because he'll be a very good signing. One of the top 5 LBs in Europe IMO.

Mourinho isn't going to sell Mata to United unless he gets Rooney in return. Thought the Ba episode would have made that obvious.

Tactics wrote:

Burnwinter wrote:

I don't want to drag it out either, but everyone knows the only clubs in for him were the two Manchesters and if we'd held him to his contract, he'd still be playing for another PL club right now.

The thing that really blows my mind about Mata is that Jose has frozen him out. That makes no sense to me, as he's a superb player ideally suited to the PL.

Mourinho is a negative managers who prefers hard workers to ball players who are weak defensively. I like/rate Willian, but he's mainly preferred to Mata because he's got 100 lungs and can run all day.

The guy turned Samuel Eto'o (one of th best strikers of the last 15 years) into another Dirk Kuyt at Inter. Disgraceful.

:confused: in the CL winning season eto'o had 37 goals and 15 assists in 53 games. nothing kuytish or disgraceful about that.

That was the season after, when Mourinho was gone. Scored a whopping 16 goals in 09-10 when he was put on the wing, 12 of them in the league and 2 in CL. Salomon Kalou stats.

yeah my bad, that good season was with rafa and leonardo. that first season could also have been a little adjusting to a new league and manager.

Pepe LeFrits wrote:

Mourinho isn't going to sell Mata to United unless he gets Rooney in return. Thought the Ba episode would have made that obvious.

I think he still wants to work for Manu in the future.

Looks like this is actually going to happen.