Paper Round: Manchester United are in 'crisis', according to Marouane Fellaini

Manchester United midfielder Marouane Fellaini has admitted that his side are in the midst of a crisis following Sunday's loss to Watford - reports the Mirror. The Red Devils were beaten 3-1 at Vicarage Road, with manager Jose Mourinho risking a player revolt after the game by openly criticising the popular Luke Shaw. But Fellaini has supported his manager's view that Sunday's performance was unacceptable saying:

Paper Round's view: Oh Marouane. You can't help but feel a little sorry for him. In this age of media training a player should know not to use words like "crisis", even if they are surrounded by important context and sound football opinions.

In essence Fellaini is right - a club like United shouldn't accept losing three games, so in that respect it is a mini-crisis of sorts. But he should not have said it, not least because the ever-present midfielder* is hardly a fan favourite as it is, and this sort of comment is unlikely to win over his detractors.

Nicklas Bendtner doesn't regret claiming earlier in his career that he could become the greatest player in the world, but admits he was a little hasty expressing such a sentiment - reports the Independent. "I was very young and I might have said it too early," Bendtner said ahead of Nottingham Forest's League Cup clash with Arsenal, before adding:

Paper Round's view: There's something wonderful about Bendtner... in an egotistical and often unlikeable sort of way. Even when the former Arsenal striker is attempting to be humble, he isn't quite able to accept that he may have been overconfident in his own ability. It's what makes him who he is, and what could have pushed him up to the top of the game... if only he had all the other attributes required to become the world's greatest footballer.

Credit to him for going to Forest though, knuckling down and trying to show that he is a footballer of substance. And who'd bet against him scoring against his old club? It's surely written in the stars.

With a new autobiography on the way, Joey Barton spoke to the Daily Mail and told them that he'd back himself to do a better job than Sam Allardyce and Roy Hodgson as manager of England. Typically forthright, Barton also told Matt Lawton that he believes he should have received far more than his one solitary England cap, saying that the favoured players of his generation didn't have the stomach to succeed at the top level:

Paper Round's view: It's a reasonable question - what has Sam Allardyce got that Joey Barton hasn't got?

Quite a few things spring to mind, but one particularly pertinent answer stands out:

This is a classic Barton interview, full of hyperbole and delusions of grandeur. He's going to be a better manager than a number of current top-flight coaches, he reckons, despite not yet even dipping his toe in the managerial water. And he could have been a big player for England, he thinks, ignoring the fact that he was never a world-class central midfielder in an era when the Three Lions were blessed with numerous better options in that area (not that any manager was capable of getting the best out of them, but that's a different matter).

But the most Barton thing about this interview is that it was taken a day after his training ground bust-up at Rangers, but before news of the incident had broken... yet he negated to even mention the impending media storm in favour of verbally patting himself on the back. Some things never change.