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Discover the most unlikely hero who could save Louis Van Gaal or Jose Mourinho

By Rucker Haringey

"Charlie Austin 2015" by @cfcunofficial (Chelsea Debs) London - QPR 0 Chelsea 1. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charlie_Austin_2015.jpg#/media/File:Charlie_Austin_2015.jpg
"Charlie Austin 2015" by @cfcunofficial (Chelsea Debs) London - QPR 0 Chelsea 1. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charlie_Austin_2015.jpg#/media/File:Charlie_Austin_2015.jpg /
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Both Chelsea’s Jose Mourinho and Manchester United’s Louis Van Gaal are in need of saving this Christmas. Could QPR striker Charlie Austin do the trick?

The world’s a funny place sometimes. Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho and Manchester United boss Louis Van Gaal are two of the biggest names in the Premier League, but they might need the assistance of a long-overlooked striker to bail them out of their current troubles. QPR striker Charlie Austin could do wonders for either man in their hour of need.

It has to make you chuckle a bit to think that either Van Gaal or Mourinho, two of the biggest egos in the Premier League might need to ask Charlie Austin, one of football’s most selfless men, for help. The two managers can frequently be found strutting around the pitch like they own it or lecturing the public at their press conferences. There might not be two bigger egos in all of football. Yet both of them find themselves in significant managerial trouble at the moment.

Manchester United, for one, has had interest in Austin previously. They dallied with him in the summer but refused to meet QPR’s very public 15 million pound asking price. At the time, no one thought much of it. After all, United still had the venerable Wayne Rooney as their number mine and youngster Anthony Martial had been purchased as his understudy. They could even afford to let a player like Javier Hernandez leave the club without a care in the world. Now, they are certainly a team who could benefit from an additional striking talent like Austin. My how things can change in just a few months.

Chelsea has never really been strongly linked to Austin, but they have a gigantic hole at the striker position. Their failings up top have been well-documented on this site and many others so I won’t rehash them in great detail in this piece. Suffice it to say that Diego Costa, Falcao and Loic Remy have been epic disappointments at Stamford Bridge. Their biggest need in the January window is to find a competent number nine and Austin is certainly that. The thought of Jose Mourinho having to “lower” himself to purchase Charlie Austin to save his job is enough to send most Premier League fans (myself possibly included) howling with laughter.

For what it’s worth, Austin has plenty of talent to do a quality job for either club and their manager. Louis Van Gaal and Jose Mourinho should be so lucky as to manage a player and a man like Austin. He’s the very antithesis of what’s gone wrong for both men at their current clubs.

I’m not sure that Austin should lower himself to solve the problems of either man, but the prestige of playing at either United or Chelsea would likely be too much to turn down. No matter what happens, I hope that both Louis Van Gaal and Jose Mourinho have to ask Charlie Austin for help in their time of need.

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