Juan Mata Reveals What He Does While On Break
Manchester United’s embattled midfielder Juan Mata is looking forward to better days ahead. The Spaniard’s form at Old Trafford has been anything but encouraging since when he was dropped from the favourite striking trio. In similar vein, Mata was also ignored when the Spanish national team coach sent out invites to players who eventually lost to Sloviakia and got a victory against Luxembourg.
Juan decided to use the break as some sort of vacation and has travelled to Spain to pay visits to friends and family, and the attacking midfielder explained that such was necessary to clear the mind before the game against West Brom.
On his blog, the Spaniard stated that “Some of you have asked me about the first thing I do when I come to Austurias. As you can imagine, as soon as I leave that the plane I go to see the ones I love”
It will be recalled that the midfielder was acquired from Chelsea this January and has scored 8 goals in 10 matches before he lost his place to summer arrival Radamel Falcao.
Before the twist of events, Juan Mata had enjoyed extensive play time under erstwhile manager David Moyes and even when the new manager took over the reins, the Spaniard was still assured of his reserved spot behind Wayne Rooney and Robin van Persie. Although the midfielder came under serious criticisms for his lack of defensive abilities, and even while playing under José Mourinho at Chelsea, Mourinho declared him surplus to requirements and this prompted Moyes who was also under pressure for being less active in the transfer market, to splash about £37m to land him.
Unfortunately, Mata couldn’t improve on his marking even after switching sides and as much as he tried, his effort still couldn’t save Manchester United from an agonizing 7th place finish last season. However, even with all his excesses, Juan was still ahead of both Adnan Januzaj and James Wilson in the pecking order, in the attacking midfield position. In fact at the time when Louis van Gaal was axing the ineptitude members of his squad, Mata stood firm until just few days before the close of the summer transfer window when Louis van Gaal agreed a temporary deal with French outfit PSG for Radamel Falcao.
The Colombian, even though not fully fit is now a favourite upfront for the Red Devils and have even sent the team captain, Wayne Rooney behind him and van Persie. Falcao also appears to possess a considerable level of defensive abilities as he was on hand to clear a goal bound shot off his goal keeper’s line in the Red Devil’s last game against Everton.
However, it is nice to see Juan still working hard to impress as he will still be called upon to handle some matches for the team especially when one of the favourites isn’t available as Wayne Rooney currently is.