Paul Pogba believes Manchester United are a “proper team” now with more balance and structure. The French midfielder, who had to watch the majority of this season from the bench with injuries, has returned to the team since the restart and already there are signs of a connection forming between himself and Portuguese midfielder Bruno Fernandes who was signed in the January transfer window.
Speaking to United Review Pogba said “You can call it a proper team. Sometimes before, we were maybe too defensive or too offensive and we didn’t have this balance or this control. Now you can see we have that balance and there is more structure — we’ve been working hard on that.”
The too defensive comment could be seen as a dig at former manager Jose Mourinho with whom Pogba had a very contentious relationship. The current Tottenham boss is rumored to have called Pogba a ‘virus’ during his final months as Manchester United manager with the Telegraph in England reporting that he told Pogba “You don’t respect players and supporters. And you kill the mentality of the good honest people around you. You are like a person with the flu, with a virus in a closed room – you pass that virus to the others.”
United have scored 16 goals in their previous five games including five against Bournemouth and three against Sheffield United, Brighton, and Aston Villa. Pogba played a part in all five of those wins, including scoring the third against Aston Villa, but has seen his role change to more of a holding midfielder due to the phenomenal form of Fernandes, Martial, Rashford and Greenwood in the attack.
“The improvement is huge and you can tell that. It’s always good to have that improvement, but you don’t want to stop it, you know you have to keep working.” – Paul Pogba
The next step according to Pogba is winning trophies as the confidence of a 17 game unbeaten streak continues to grow. “United is about trophies, we know that and there are trophies we know we can get and we can win,” he said, which will fill United’s fans with belief that their star player might stay beyond 2021 when his contract expires. United do hold an option to extend for a year but if Pogba decides his future lays away from Old Trafford there is reason to believe he could off at the end of this season with Real Madrid among interested teams.
