If you are a star player with lots of expectations from your manager, fans, and whole world you obviously come under performance pressure and if you fail to deliver, your confidence deteriorates to a new low and this is something that seems to be happening with Manchester United skipper Wayne Rooney who has recently been struggling to recollect his form. Though, none of his bosses are showing any dislike over his lack of score yet it is easy to guess how things would have been going on behind the curtains. To overcome this pressure, even Rooney is doing his best by ignoring media rumors about his form. However, according to former club coach Rene Meulensteen, he should be given more time to heal his confidence and collect his form back which is a necessity for anyone facing the same problem. But English soccer is way too different than other parts of the world where you can enjoy freedom to deliver your best, here in central Europe; you need to deliver earlier than your competitor if you want to secure your place in the side.

Rooney could only secure two goals in last fifteen premier league games which is a shocking record for someone who is going to celebrate his twelve years long association with the Red Devils. His performance is affecting whole team badly and United had to leave its top board space within days staying on the top. Meulensteen said talking about the United show and how they are being impaired with skipper shoddy form, he said, “You can’t throw it all at Wayne himself, it’s a combination of a few things. Wayne is an adventurous player who likes to have freedom on the pitch, to roam around and get involved and find his own way to get into the game.

“I think at the moment he’s a little more restricted, he doesn’t always get the ball when he wants it and where he wants it. Manchester United are going through a transformation from the style Sir Alex Ferguson liked to play. He wanted to play with a lot of creativity, a lot of freedom and, at times, risk, but now under Louis van Gaal it’s much more calculated. It’s more about working your way up the pitch, it’s more laboured and more pedestrian.”

Defending Rooney, he added, “Wayne’s stats in the derby may have looked poor, but a lot of players’ stats also looked poor. But I do feel that he is not totally himself when I see him play at the moment.”

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho is not a kind of mentor who easily digests failures and that is why when he has failed completely to defend Chelsea’s league title, he is finding no place to hide hence exhausting his frustration with his outspoken behavior. Knowingly, he has already been sanctioned for confronting with referees two times this season and now when media is highlighting the story of his sacking, Portuguese seems to be losing his temper again. Recently, when his sacking news first broke into the media, Blues owners issued their support for the second term serving boss, though did not clearly said they will continue with the former Everton boss and Mourinho took it as their promise to keep him on the top club post. Again, taking about his future and if he will be heading the side after Roman Abramovich clarification, 52-year-old expresses his happiness and satisfaction over boss’ encouragement and refuses asking for it once more. This is actually not the first time a manger is heading for sacking but since it is Mourinho who has already experienced this phase of professional career, even media is carefully publishing stories that go against him.

Talking about his morale at this stage when North Londoners have lost seven of last fifteen games, former Real Madrid boss said, “My general situation is fantastic. I have a day off tomorrow, I have a fantastic family, I can sleep well every night. And Thursday is one more day like I have in the last 15 years of my life. If I have to blame someone it is the ones who tell the manager ‘I don’t want to take it’ and run away.” While adding about the meat he still has in the team and their morale that seems to have gone down off late, he said, “(We have) a lot of quality, a lot of attacking quality, a lot of attacking football and emotional control. Everything was good apart from the penalty shootout. I think in the first half it should be 3-0 or 4-0.

“Honestly, you think the players are not with me and didn’t give everything to win the game? That is really sad; not sad for me but sad for the players. That is a lack of respect to the players, not to me. For me it would be a fantastic situation if the players are against me, I can say we don’t have results because the players are against me.

“I think what some people write and say is really bad for the players and because most of the people that does that, they were players. Maybe they think my players are like them when they were players.”

This English season is expected to bring many surprises to the fans and first of them has already been poured in front of all of us, i.e., the devastating form of the league defenders and now we have Manchester United leading the table which was also not unexpected before start of the season. Liverpool, on the other side, is another one capable of surprising anyone and manager Brendan Rodgers is as well optimistic that they will be among the top four by the end of the year, in fact, he has a back of his players including James Milner who categorically praised his boss and his talent to bring Reds on the top again. If we look at the league table, they are comfortable at number eight with five points difference from the leader knowing the fact that Anfield side is without some of its former high profile players including of course Suarez then how they will succeed is still confusing to many yet Milner believes they have the back of one of the top class manager who can bring the glorious days back to the Liverpool fans.

He said this after their emphatic victory against Aston Villa this Saturday with an important contribution from the 29-year-old who opened his account by netting one goal. Talking about his manager and the way he trains them, Milner said, “I’ve been really impressed with him. Preparation is second to none. We go into every game with a gameplan. Training is very good and any problems as a player you can see on the pitch, he has seen them as well rather than him not knowing what the problem is. I’ve talked with him after a game and whatever I’ve thought he has already said ahead of me so I think he is well on top.

“A lot of things that have been said are disappointing and frustrating really because you see how close they went to winning the league a couple of years ago. And then with the players that have left the club it is going to take time to get back to that point. But with patience he has shown he is a top-class manager and with the players we have we can get to where we want to be.”

Clearly he is using media to flatter his boss and expecting something in return, maybe he wants to be in the side on permanent basis, who knows!

Ahead of every high profile game in English premier league, media starts digging previous bytes of both the bosses to find out anything interesting and of we are talking about Chelsea and Arsenal, they won’t have to do much hard work as both Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger have lots of negative words against each other in the past and for that reason upcoming Saturday showdown between the two has already created a buzz in the media. If we look at last season, both of them equalized their face-offs; while Blues won the premier league game, Gunners triumphed North Londoners in 2015 FA Community Shield at Wembley hence weekend game could give more meat to media hunks to exaggerate their cold war. Anyway, without weighing the rumor too much, Arsene Wenger recently said he would hand shake with the Portuguese before the game proving they both enjoy healthy sporty relations without any ego fight and if we look where Chelsea stand this year, they are fighting for their survival with a seventeenth place on the board hence they desperately need to win the upcoming game and this nervousness is the key weapon for Emirates side to overcome league defenders.

Reacting over Chelsea’s current form and state of mind of former Real Madrid boss, Wenger said, “I don’t want to talk about that, it is not my problem. You have to find the right players and the right balance. It is the same for everybody.” He intelligently taunted over Portuguese’s ability to form a best combination of players to win matches, but anyways, everything is fair in love and war and Saturday would prove who is better among the two. In any way, Frenchman would like to answer Mourinho for his remarks when he called him a ‘Specialist in failure.’

Adding about the long hours journey his side would have to go through for weekend faceoff and if he would take it as an excuse if they lose the game, longest running Gunners boss said, “We have to deal with that and we have to forget about that and just focus on the game. No, they prepare well enough. You never know what kind of consequences that is but I think we are prepared to deal with it. But as well you want to do that without destroying your game. We have a good natural balance between physical and technical quality so I will not change too much.”

A number Three always carries superstitions with it and it is believed by everyone inside or outside of the game and even in soccer a Three is considered unlucky by many. The league defenders Chelsea could be the next target of this number as being assumed by many English experts. According to few published reports, the term is the third one for manager Jose Mourinho and for this reason Blues could be performing so badly in the league while on the other hand Portuguese has refused to accept that current form has anything to do with any misconception, however, he agrees there are few problems which they need to fix as soon as possible. This is possibly the first time, former Everton boss has talked about poor form of his side and unexpectedly he looked rather calmed and replied to media questions quite patiently. Interestingly, the reports are being flashed across channels ahead of Chelsea’s Champions League clash with Maccabi Tel-Aviv which has already gained lots of media attention for its importance for the North Londoners and if Mourinho fails to overcome Israelis rivals, it would be a huge setback for until highly successful Stamford Bridge boss.

Anyways, rejecting all the interpretations of number three, 52-year-old reacted irately to the reports and said, “My third season in Porto, I didn’t have a third season. In Inter, I didn’t have a third season. My third season at Chelsea, the first time, I won the FA Cup and the League Cup, and I played the Champions League semifinals. The third season in Real Madrid, I won the Spanish Super Cup, lost the Copa del Rey final, and I went to the Champions League semifinals.

“These are my third seasons. So click on ‘Google’ instead of asking stupid questions. You spoke about the third season, and I’m telling you the question is stupid. I know the point — it is that the question is stupid.”

His response looks positive and logical while media is trying to create a link with his third spell and failures to encash curiosity out of nothing! Replying to team’s current form questions, former Real Madrid boss said, “It’s sad that it’s like that. It’s so simple to accept the results are not good because that’s football, because every season you have some teams who don’t start well and have bad results.

“It’s so easy to connect that with football, with injuries, with bad luck, with bad moments. It’s so easy to do that, so it’s quite sad that people go in other directions and try to find problems that don’t exist.”