Casemiro condemned in Mainoo comparison despite being ‘only player’ to achieve feat in two decades

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·28 de abril de 2026

Casemiro condemned in Mainoo comparison despite being ‘only player’ to achieve feat in two decades

Casemiro achieved something no Premier League player has managed in Kobbie Mainoo’s lifetime, but the Brazilian just isn’t ‘comfortable mucking in’.

It is a really quite absurd claim to make of the Manchester United midfielder.

Vídeos OneFootball

There are also ‘hints’ that Pep Guardiola is staying at and leaving Manchester City, depending on your perspective and how desperate you are to file a column.

Manchester United beat Brentford on Monday evening in a game Mediawatch is not convinced Samuel Luckhurst of The Sun actually saw.

If he had, he could not have committed this line to print with a straight face:

‘Mainoo was more comfortable mucking in than Casemiro, whose goals have masked his relative ineffectiveness in a defensive capacity.’

Well this is awkward. Over to you, OptaJoe:

Imagine if he was actually ‘comfortable mucking in’.

Pep talk

‘Is Pep Guardiola about to quit Man City?’ asks one Daily Mirror website headline, with John Cross combing through ‘the hints which suggest he might say goodbye’.

We yearn for the days when Guardiola was going to make an ‘announcement’ over his future, because this sh*t really is tiresome now.

But at least those ‘hints’ are neatly contained within three paragraphs, starting with these two:

‘Guardiola right now just looks free and, dare I say it, demob-happy, like some kind of weight has been lifted off his shoulders. Even down to that new rather trendy-looking sweatshirt with a P as a logo. ‘He looks carefree and is enjoying himself like never before. He looks cheeky. Enjoying more banter and managing like he knows things are coming to a glorious end.’

Man is having good time at work and has purchased new jumper so is clearly about to quit.

Then comes the last ‘hint’ that ‘cheeky’ Guardiola is preparing to leave:

‘There is also no way he signs Gianluigi Donnarumma unless he saw this season as one last hurrah. He is a keeper so out of keeping with his style. He does not want to play out from the back.’

It’s not exactly Sir Alex Ferguson bringing in a 29-year-old Robin van Persie, is it? An opportunity to sign one of the best keepers in the world arose and Guardiola took it.

In the same article, Cross writes that Guardiola ‘is still at the cutting edge of football, new ideas and plans’, adding that he ‘has made us change the way we think about football, brought new tactical patterns, systems’ and ‘reinvented positions’.

But signing a keeper whose main strength is goalkeeping can only mean that Guardiola is packing his trendy P-emblazoned sweatshirt away this summer and leaving. It is not possible to compute any other outcome. There is simply ‘no way’ he signs Donnarumma unless this is his ‘one last hurrah’.

It does beg the question as to why people are still asking Guardiola about his future; he made it explicitly clear this is his last Manchester City season when he…signed a really good player.

Hint condition

As if to capture the infernal ridiculousness of the debate, Cross’ Daily Mirror colleague Andy Dunn brings us this:

‘Pep Guardiola drops huge hint he WILL be back at Man City next season’

Did Guardiola reveal that he’s bringing Ederson back? Has he purchased more jumpers with Ps on?

Nope, he just said yet another thing about “next season”.

Dunn literally writes that ‘it was a throwaway closing line’ and it’s ‘perhaps best not to read too much into it’. His headline writer clearly disagrees.

Gray days

It is April, and thus the time of the year when every football newspaper writer feels obliged to earnestly inform the world who gets their vote for the FWA Footballer of the Year award.

There is a dispute brewing, however, because ‘Bruno Fernandes is the only choice for Footballer of the Year – but I’d give second place to a Spurs player, and here’s why, writes OLIVER HOLT’.

But Fernandes can’t win the award, silly goose! It has to go to a title winn…wait, what in the shuddering Christ was that about a Spurs player? Coming second? In the Footballer of the Year award vote? When Spurs are about to get relegated? And have just won their first Premier League game of the year? In April?

We are in the weeds now so sod it…

‘And if I could vote for a runner-up in the FWA poll, which will close next week, it would go to Archie Gray at Spurs, a young lad marooned in an awful team at a club in disarray. He is just about the only player at Tottenham whose reputation has been enhanced this season.’

It feels like the bar should probably be higher than ‘he’s been okay for a generationally bad team’.

‘Sometimes, it has seemed as if Gray has been asked to play in every outfield position in the Tottenham side and he has done it with class and style, dedication to a team ethic and an ability beyond his years. What a player he is becoming.’

He’s a very good player who has been unforgivably lumbered with an absurd club at a young age. But you can’t pretend your award is really important and prestigious and should be taken extra serious, while simultaneously claiming someone who has started barely half of the team in 18th’s games should come second in the vote.

Enzo the Earth

There is an enjoyable and predictable concerted effort in the media to make a controversy out of Enzo Fernandez’s trip to Madrid with Marc Cucurella and Joao Pedro, Chelsea’s players having been given some time off at the start of the week:

‘Enzo Fernandez spotted in Madrid just weeks after flirting with transfer exit from Chelsea’ – The Sun website.

‘Enzo Fernandez spotted on Madrid trip less than a month on from Chelsea taking disciplinary action against midfielder for transfer hint’ – Goal.com.

‘Enjoying Madrid, Enzo? Captain Fernandez and fellow Chelsea stars spotted in Spanish capital one day on from FA Cup win – and a month after midfielder controversially opened door to Real Madrid move’ – MailOnline.

This line from The Sun’s article is wonderful:

‘Fernandez’s flirting with a move to Madrid saw the club slap him with a two-match suspension, but that hasn’t stopped him from travelling to the Spanish capital.’

Well, yeah. He said he quite likes it there so probably will visit in his free time.