Juan Mata | 2013/14 Performances

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I don't really need him playing, as long as the camera shows him on screen every 5 minutes I'm happy even if he's on the bench. :drool:
 
Rooney-Tevez-Ronaldo vs Januzaj-Rooney-RVP-Mata?

If only the midfield and defence compared.
 
2 open questions:

1) Am I the only one worried that Mata is going to be wasted out wide? I think he's best in central positions, and as the spearhead of a midfield 3, I think we would finally - since Scholes - have some creativity and goals from midfield. Playing him wide doesn't sit too well with me.

2) Do you think this signing will mean we play a more attractive style of play? My main gripe this season, even moreso than our poor results, has been our dire football style. At least lose with style, hello!
 
LawCharltonBest said:
2 open questions:

1) Am I the only one worried that Mata is going to be wasted out wide? I think he's best in central positions, and as the spearhead of a midfield 3, I think we would finally - since Scholes - have some creativity and goals from midfield. Playing him wide doesn't sit too well with me.
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I don't think it's too much of a worry. He is too talented for him to be wasted. He is not a Valencia or a Young where they are tradition wingers and can't cut in and do damage. But mata is different. He has the talent to play different positions and interchange with the people around him.

Just look at the videos on YouTube when he plays for Chelsea. He does so much damage playing wide as well. He is also effective if he plays on the wing.
 
LawCharltonBest said:
2 open questions:

1) Am I the only one worried that Mata is going to be wasted out wide? I think he's best in central positions, and as the spearhead of a midfield 3, I think we would finally - since Scholes - have some creativity and goals from midfield. Playing him wide doesn't sit too well with me.
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At Valencia he would start on the right and drift in. He won't be a conventional winger for us ala Nani/Valencia but he certainly won't be 'wasted' should he start on the flanks.

LawCharltonBest said:
2) Do you think this signing will mean we play a more attractive style of play? My main gripe this season, even moreso than our poor results, has been our dire football style. At least lose with style, hello!
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That remains to be seen, but I'd wager than once Rooney and RVP are back and firing, the talent ought to be there in creating a more dynamic and fluid build up to our attacks (in theory).
 
LawCharltonBest said:
2 open questions:

1) Am I the only one worried that Mata is going to be wasted out wide? I think he's best in central positions, and as the spearhead of a midfield 3, I think we would finally - since Scholes - have some creativity and goals from midfield. Playing him wide doesn't sit too well with me.

2) Do you think this signing will mean we play a more attractive style of play? My main gripe this season, even moreso than our poor results, has been our dire football style. At least lose with style, hello!
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1) He will make his own way in the first team, if he proves to talented to be "wasted out wide" then it's to the benefit of the club, personally I think he will be used wide with instructions to switch, Rooney, Mata and likely Januzaj forming a 3 that will rotate positions. It has the making of a fecking nightmare to defend against, even the addition of Kagawa rotating across that 3 probing for weakness, it's really going to make life impossible if it's done correctly.

2) I think it will give us more possession, Mata is more than just an in the hole player, he is available and takes responsibility for possession, what we have lacked so far is movement across the last third and we have almost 90% of the time worked it wide to under performing wingers and hit a brick wall. Having this bloke on board also gives lesser sides less license to have a go at United for fear of what he will do in between the lines. I could lose attractive for steady but we might find ourselves using the same sucker punch that has been our own downfall this season.
 
Not sure how to embed tweets, but telegraph saying Mata is ready to fill iconic no.7 shirt.
 
I have wet dreams about Kagawa, Januzaj and Mata playing their best stuff, with that second half against Swansea fresh in mind. Imagine how that would look if you took out the lumbering oaf that is Valencia and popped a Mata in his place and had the team practice that style of football on the training ground.

It gives me a lump in my chest. The good kind of lump.

I also get a lump in my pants.
 



Here's that tweet ye mentioned.
 
Juan of seven who will no doubt wear number 7 too. :drool:
 
Didn't Damien put that up a while back?
 
Fantastic read on what went on behind the scenes to get this deal done.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/jan/26/chelsea-manchester-united-juan-mata-transfer
Perhaps the most intriguing part of the long, complex process that finally led to a helicopter carrying Juan Mata arriving at Manchester United's training ground on Saturday is that a £37.1m deal can be arranged without as much as a telephone call between the clubs. Several months of positioning, mutual suspicion and political bargaining, and everything was done without a single word being exchanged in person.

Chelsea certainly tried. On more than one occasion, a message reached Ed Woodward, United's chief executive, that the relevant people at Stamford Bridge were open to sitting at the other side of the negotiating table. Each time, he politely declined. Everybody in football knows Chelsea want to sign Wayne Rooney and Woodward reasoned that it would be virtually impossible to keep them sweet on Mata while also informing them they could forget about anything happening the other way.

Instead, the background to the Mata deal is a case study about how complicated and sensitive these big-money arrangements can be, and an insight into the high influence of agents in the modern business. Without them, both clubs recognise the chances of the deal going through were nonexistent. Seven different agents approached United since August to say they could make it happen. As it turned out, they used Mata's father, Juan senior, and Colin Pomford, a Madrid-based agent who specialises in Spanish business going back to Steve McManaman's time at Liverpool and, later, the Rafael Benítez era.

What has never come out before is that United first heard Mata was open to leaving Chelsea, and keen on moving to Manchester, late in the August transfer window, after he had picked up strong vibes from José Mourinho that he would be used only sparingly. Woodward never actively followed it up because of the Rooney situation. He did, however, establish that David Moyes liked the player.

Their next information – after the window closed – was that Mata was so unhappy he had been to see the top people at Chelsea, among them Roman Abramovich, and been given a verbal agreement that if he carried on being left out of the team, and maintained his professionalism, he would be allowed to leave in January. Chelsea would later harden that into a written agreement that included a €45m buyout and – possibly still thinking about the Rooney issue – one proviso: that the figure could not be activated by United.

That could easily have been the end of the deal. Except Mata and his father went back to Stamford Bridge, once it became clear there was interest from Old Trafford, and asked for the condition to be removed. One of the people involved in the negotiations has told this newspaper that Mata and Abramovich are "almost like friends". Mata had kept to his side, bar one fit of pique after being substituted, and Abramovich respected that.

Chelsea gave him a verbal promise, but nothing in writing, and then sent a message, via Pomford, that maybe it was time the two clubs met face to face. Woodward said no. He simply did not want to risk changing the temperature by getting involved in any talks about Rooney and, with nothing in writing, he was not willing to take any chances about the price suddenly going up.

A separate message came back to United that Chelsea would welcome an official bid on a specific day. Woodward declined again. Instead, his lawyers faxed through a "transfer agreement" informing Chelsea that United had met the buy-out clause and would pay the money, as stipulated, in three parts.

But the game of cat and mouse continued. Chelsea indicated again they wanted to talk and would even let Mata travel to Manchester to take his medical. Except Woodward knew, again, that Rooney would crop up and potentially kibosh the whole deal. "He couldn't risk it," according to one source. So he sat tight, while Mata and the relevant agents went to work behind the scenes. Then Mourinho went public that Mata could leave and that was always going to speed up the process. Finally, the deal was closed on Saturday.

For Woodward, it is the biggest coup of his time in charge at Old Trafford. United have been accused of panic-buying and maybe, in light of the new detail, that is an unfair slant to put on it. The club had, however, advised journalists to "ignore" any speculation about Mata earlier in January, and sources say they still felt as recently as Tuesday that it was far more likely to happen, if at all, in the summer.

If Mata still feels like a strange buy, it is largely because Moyes has insisted for several months that all he wants is a central midfielder and a left-back. Questions about Mata were knocked back on the basis United already had Wayne Rooney and Shinji Kagawa for the No10 position, in line with the club's explanation for not challenging Arsenal for the signature of Mesut Özil.

So why Mata and not Özil? Timing, basically. Özil was offered to United in the first week of the summer transfer window, but Moyes had barely seen Kagawa at that point and wanted to learn more about a player about whom Sir Alex Ferguson had left glowing reports. As it has turned out, Kagawa has been disappointing. United, however, would prefer to keep him for now, not least because Mata is ineligible in the Champions League.
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Woodward, you legend!

Must've brought a book on how to be business savvy on that flight he went on.
 
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