Football Daily | Martínez lets rip as United’s dirty laundry gets a very public airing

As ringing endorsements from the punditocracy go, not being quite as terrible as they were against Spurs was just about the best Manchester United could hope for after Atlético saw out a fairly routine 2-0 Bigger Cup win in Madrid on Tuesday night. In the opening minute, though, United were every bit as terrible and more as they had been on Saturday, as they allowed their hosts to steal an early march when Pablo Barrios’s shot beat Senne Lammens, only for the ball to squeeze under Leny Yoro, wipe its feet and trundle over the line. For the benefit of our reader who can’t be bothered with Bigger Cup until the knockout stages, United went on to create chances they didn’t take, Atlético had a goal ruled out by VAR for handball, both sides hit the woodwork and the game more or less ended as any kind of meaningful contest when Yoro was shown a rough red card. When your luck’s out, your luck’s out, and Ademola Lookman made sure of things for Atlético with a follow-up strike after Lammens saved from Jonathan David.

While we’re prepared to concede we’ve probably made all that sound far more exciting than it actually was, it was just a prelude to the real entertainment. That began after the game when somebody from the United media team made the ill-advised and potentially career-damaging decision to allow Lisandro Martínez to run the obligatory post-match interview gauntlet. For a man who hasn’t been delivering much on-pitch bang for the generous buck he’s been paid so far this season, Martínez had plenty to get off his chest. Amazon Prime’s pitchside reporter Gabriel Clarke thought all his birthdays had come at once as the Argentinian started spitting home truths. “Tonight it is easy to say the coach, easy to say the players but also we have to see other areas,” he harrumphed, pointing in a direction generally accepted to have been ‘upstairs’. “I expect more [investment], 100%. I expect more from our technical director [Jason Wilcox]. Last season we did everything, we created the base to create an amazing team. You can’t keep changing, changing, changing the manager. What about other areas? I can’t say more.”

Except he could. Moments later, the centre-half cut loose again, embarking on a follow-up torching of Wilcox and United’s transfer policy in an interview with Peter Schmeichel for the CBS Bigger Cup B@nter Show. The former Manchester United goalkeeper, a global ambassador for the club, looked visibly flustered as Martínez vented but couldn’t shut him down despite repeated attempts to change the subject. Opinions on Martínez’s post-match tirades were mixed, with some saying a man caught red-handed in close proximity to so many on-pitch crime scenes this season has no right to belittle his teammates. Others were of the view that any club dirty laundry should be washed behind closed doors. Meanwhile, Big Website’s Jamie Jackson has it on good authority that Martínez was simply airing an opinion shared by most of his teammates.

As for their spokesman? One suspects Martínez could pay a heavy price for running his mouth off in such a public fashion, with a hefty fine and an indefinite spell training with the kids potentially just the start of any punishment that may be coming down the pike. Having spent the early part of the season defending with all the poise and assurance of a deckchair flapping in a gale-force wind, he is far from indispensable and may well be angling for a January exit from an increasingly listing United ship. If the club’s technical director is still around by then, the best revenge might well be to force the mouthy mutineer to remain on board until his contract expires in June.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Man City deserve those trophies. I love the way ⁠they play football, and after that, you have ​to wait [for the] ​last decision and nothing ​else … I think the trophies that you win ​on the ‌pitch remains on ​the pitch, ​and they deserve to win that. I hope they can avoid that sanction” – embattled Manchester City find an ally in the manager of … checks notes … Wednesday’s visitors PSG, who just so happen to be nation-state owned themselves. Funny that.

 FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS

While it was great to see the mighty Sky Blues featured in yesterday’s Football Daily, as usual I have to take issue with your statement about the club being ‘forced to live as tenants in their own city’ and ‘having to go cap-in-hand to neighbouring villages, looking for sofas on which to crash’. It was the club’s owners’ choice not to buy the stadium at a fair price when the opportunity was offered, just as it was their choice to go on a rent strike and move to Northampton/Birmingham, in the hope this would bankrupt the stadium’s owners (one of whom was a well-respected local charity) and let them get it for a knock-down price. Thankfully the council stood firm against these bully-boy tactics, and Sisu were eventually sent packing to be replaced by King Doug, and the rest is history. But please, let’s not perpetuate the myth of the club being ‘exiled’ from their home city” – Tim Russell.

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I don’t have anything particularly funny or insightful to contribute, but I wonder if someone has a count of how many awards Football Daily has given out and how many times Noble Francis has won them. Who are the most successful winners? The FD community should know. As a major daily across the pond says in its motto, ‘democracy dies in darkness’ – Dimitris Stergiopoulos.

Re: Memory Lane (yesterday’s Football Daily, full email edition). Wow, that really is a mascot to scare the kids into submission. I think the only scarier thing I’ve seen is whatever the Jags have running around their pitch on matchday” – Ingo Herzke.

If you have any, please send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s prizeless letter o’ the day goes to … Ingo Herzke. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, are here.  

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