Luke Shaw, Anthony Martial, and Paul Pogba: Has Mourinho's criticism worked?

Anthony Martial

Anthony Martial created a lot of headlines during the pre-season when he left midway through the preparation to witness the birth of his child. In fact, what actually created the headlines is that the winger failed to return to camp on time sparking rumors of tension between himself and the manager.

Mourinho publicly expressed his dissatisfaction of the player's indiscipline and it seemed like a matter of time before the club would announce Martial's departure. Mourinho even fined the player for going AWOL. Being an unused substitute on the opening day of the season had many feeling that the bench would be Martial's home for most of the season.

The opposite has happened, the former Monaco man is currently Manchester United's hottest prospect. His double against Chelsea was maybe his best performance in a Manchester United shirt. His three Premier League goals this season is more than Roberto Firmino, Leroy Sane and Willian. Not only his goals, but Martial is also becoming a player who wants the ball, a player who is most likely to make great things happen. Like Shaw, Martial is expected to sign a new contract in the coming weeks and don't be surprised if he receives a French national team call-up in the near future.

Martial has even gone a step further and claimed there was never any issue between the manager and himself.

"Things were not tense between us to begin with [before the performance at Chelsea]," said Martial.We have a player-coach relationship and I hope that we will continue like that and bring Manchester United as much as possible."-

Anthony Martial

Edited by Deepanshu Sharma