Manchester United fell to a 1-0 defeat against Arsenal at Old Trafford on the opening weekend of the 2025-26 Premier League season. Arsenal’s Italian defender Riccardo Calafiori headed in the only goal from point-blank range after United ‘keeper Altay Bayindir weakly flapped at a Declan Rice corner under his own crossbar in the 13th minute. […]
Tag: MU
Ander Herrera – Player Profile
Full Name: Ander Herrera AgüeraDate of Birth: 11/08/1989Place of Birth: BilbaoNationality: ESPPosition: Central MidfielderClubs: Real Zaragoza, Athletic Club, Manchester United, Paris Saint-Germain, Athletic Club, Boca Juniors Ander Herrera is a Basque central midfielder who spent the bulk of his career playing for Athletic Club in Spain and Manchester United in England. He began his career with Real Zaragoza and […]
Rafael Pereira da Silva – Player Profile
Rafael Pereira da Silva is one half of a pair of Brazilian twins who joined Manchester United aged just seventeen in January 2008. He and his twin brother Fabio had been on the books of Rio de Janeiro based club Fluminense since they were eleven years old, but had yet to represent the first team. […]
Wilfried Zaha – Player Profile
Of the five players to have represented both Manchester United and Lyon, Wilfried Zaha is the one to have left by far the least impression on both clubs. He’ll go down as little more than a footnote in their history, or at most the answer to an obscure quiz question. Not that he wasn’t a […]
Anthony Martial – Player Profile
Les Ulis is a working class new town that was built not far from Paris in the late 1970’s. It has produced such luminaries as Thierry Henry and Patrice Evra, but was starting to look and feel a bit run down by the mid-1990’s. That’s when a couple of Guadeloupean origin welcomed a young boy […]
Nemanja Matić – Player Profile
Serbian central midfielder Nemanja Matić signed for Olympique Lyonnais from Ligue 1 rivals Rennes for €2.6 million in the January 2024 transfer window. The thirty-five year old becomes the oldest player in the current Lyon squad and has joined on a two-and-a-half-year contract, taking him through to summer 2026. Matić had only spent half a […]
MUACOL players at AFCON 2023
Five MUACOL players were called up to their respective national team squads for the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, which somewhat confusingly took place in January 2024, in the Ivory Coast. There wasn’t a huge amount to celebrate for any of them as they all experienced somewhat disappointing campaigns. You can read a summary of […]
Mid-Season Report: Manchester United
Manchester United Men: It has been a pretty dire first half of the 2023-24 season for Manchester United. Their injury hit squad has struggled in the Premier League and crashed out of two cup competitions with barely a whimper. Off-field controversies surrounding Mason Greenwood, Antony and Jadon Sancho were a distraction, as was the drawn-out […]
Bilbao and Lyon top big five leagues for home-grown players
The Football Observatory at the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) has published a world ranking of football clubs showing which have fielded the most home-grown players in domestic league matches so far this season. The results make for very interesting reading from the perspective of this website because Athletic Club and Olympique Lyonnais are […]
United suffer again at the hands of Brighton
Manchester United produced yet another poor performance against a buoyant Brighton and Hove Albion side, who had no trouble in collecting another three points from their latest visit to Old Trafford. Former United striker Danny Welbeck broke the deadlock in the 20th minute when he timed his run into the box perfectly to latch on […]