After being Chelsea’s player of the season two years running, José Mourinho allowed Juan Mata to leave Stamford Bridge in January 2014, for Premier League Manchester United.
In fairness to “The Special One”, Manchester United were not contenders to the Premier League at the time, David Moyes made sure of that, and as the Scot was on a 5 year deal, their fortunes did not look to change for a very long time.
Luckily Moyes was sacked and Louis van Gaal has come in to step up the United results.
Whilst promoting a Special Olympics event, in Madrid, Juan Mata had this to say following claims that he is a luxury player:
“If a luxury player is a player who scores and assists and has good stats, then I’m happy to be a luxury player,”
Since the start of the 2011/12, Juan Mata has scored or assisted 74 goals which is more points than any other midfielder, during that time frame.
Mata continued by highlighting his achievements at Manchester Untied over those at Chelsea:
“I’ve scored as many goals for Manchester United in the Premier League as for Chelsea, but in something like 30 games less,”
“In terms of scoring and assisting I’m quite happy with the stats, and stats don’t lie. They are facts.”
“I want luxury players in my team. I like creative players, and players who do different things. It’s easy to say certain players are luxuries, especially when you’ve lost a game. When you lose, a certain kind of player — the creative players — always get the blame.”
Despite never being given an explanation for his transfer away from Chelsea, Juan says that he is grateful for his time at Stamford Bridge:
“I didn’t speak with Mourinho like he has spoken with you, for example. I never had any explanations and didn’t ask for them.”
“But what is past is past. I will always be very grateful to Chelsea for everything they did for me, but I had a chance to join a great club and am enjoying it here.”
“I’ve got a good record with goals and assists and hopefully we can reach a point where we win trophies, which is what I did at Chelsea.”
Juan Mata was subbed off at half time of the Everton match, for Jesse Lingard. Louis van Gaal claims that this was for tactical reasons.
