There has been news on three fronts for Manchester United since the transfer window shut on the 1st of September. The first and the most exciting one of the lot: Manchester United were playing free-flowing football. They were scoring goals galore and had made Old Trafford a place of joy and humdrum.
Be it young Marcos Rashford dribbling past two players or Romelu Lukaku unable to stop scoring or Henrikh Mkhitaryan assisting every possible Red Devil on the pitch or the same old news of David De Gea pulling another stunner out of the bag, the Old Trafford faithful were on cloud nine.
The second news got them a little worried: Injury to their midfield superstar Paul Pogba was followed by injuries to Marouane Fellaini and Michael Carrick. The news kept growing gloomier as more players followed into the medical room. Marcos Rojo and Eric Bailly had been added to the injury list with Phil Jones out this weekend. Doubts and scepticism were slowly crawling into the club and United entered panic mode.
The third and the worst news for any man in the red half of Manchester: Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City are playing the best possible football in Europe at the moment. They are dispatching sides with absolute ease and the fluidity in attack looks unstoppable. The Citizens have scored almost 50 goals in their domestic and European matches since the market shut.
Ask any United fan, and the one thing that is worse than not winning the Premier League is losing the title to their noisy neighbours.
A glorious start to the new season has somewhat calmed down. It does not mean that United are suffering, no. Mourinho’s men remain firmly in contention for every major trophy this season.
What is perhaps notable is that there is a sudden drop in temperature; a calm because of everything happening around Old Trafford at the moment. The kind of calm you see before a storm comes raging through before Zlatan Ibrahimovic comes kicking back to the Manchester United pitch.
The 36-year old Swede is close to full fitness and is expected on the bench this weekend. One of the most dynamic characters of football, the Swede scored 27 goals last season in 45 games before getting injured.
Mourinho has said that he is happy to have his options up front back to full again and has not ruled out the possibility of Zlatan playing alongside Lukaku, in what will be a fearsome physical battle for the opposition defenders.
His return is surely going to boost the United attacking department and he will take some major scoring responsibility off the shoulders of Romelu Lukaku, or maybe with Zlatan being Zlatan, forcing the young Belgian superstar back to the bench with an impressive run of games.
