The true cost of the Mourinho era and how badly the club has been run

[GoldTrafford99]

feck all to do with Mourinho

Try: The true cost of the Glazer era.

feck me, this place.....

As in you are complaining about the Glazers because they gave the managers too much money as this article suggests?

 

[Gopher Brown]

We were in need of some ‘short-term’ success when Mourinho was appointed. We’d only won the FA Cup in 3 years and were falling out of contention. How much bleaker would the last 10 years have been without that League Cup and Europa League in 16/17? Not big trophies by any stretch, but at least it was something.

 

[Jezpeza]

The first paragraph of that is so condescending.

As if Ole saying there won't be major deals would make Dortmund think"Yeah, they don't have loads of money, give them Sancho for £50m, poor things."

And apparently the Glazer debt hasnt affected our operatinf ability? Maybe if we weren't paying them £90m a year we could have 5 or 6 £50m+ defenders like City?

the Glazer debt still sits at like £450m. They bought us as a business venture, not a hobby like the saudis and abramovich, in a leveraged buyout at 800. They have constantly refinanced those initial loans to a point where over 15 years later they have not yet even paid half off because the servicing costs are enormous. And yes, they take a large dividend at every chance.

this is always going to be a constraint against City, an ownership who throw money at it for a laugh versus one who are penny counting to get those profits.

look at the summer - they took their dividend despite the covid situation and then we ‘couldnt afford’ sancho.

 

[acnumber9]

I know we like to point Mourinho as the big bad and all but if you look at the graph in that table that is included, the increase in spending was much sharper prior to Mourinho. Almost as if somebody else was appointed in 2013 who was much worse and more responsible for bad spending. We know it wasn’t Mourinho who wanted to give Martial a massive pay rise for example.

Why the focus on Zlatan who did well and the ignorance of Falcao and Schweinsteiger? Hard to take seriously.

 

[Sandikan]

I AM NOT ITK.

I do not profess to be ITK.

I just happen to be good friends with a Manchester United first team coach - have been for decades.

The above article is a good read, and it mirrors everything this first team coach has told me over the past couple of years.

The Mourinho era brought years of detriment to our football club... Though this coach also blames Woodward for giving into Mourinho...

He says (and I won't name him) the one thing that baffled him more than anything was the contract given to De Gea as he knew it would have future consequences, right through the club. He has also told me that the one thing Alex Ferguson was most baffled about over the years since his retirement was the sale of Jonny Evans under LvG... Fergie has since told this coach that he simply couldn't believe that sale. He was stunned by it.

But yeah, if any United fan wants the actual truth, the article above is as close as you're gonna get it.

Stunned by the sale of Evans?! A guy who put in arguably the worst individual season of a playing centre back at Old Trafford in the last 30 years?!

 

[Leftback99]

For all the transfers we made between 2013-2019 all we have to show for it is:

- Shaw (fortunately he's finally come come good. Seemingly a deal done regardless of LVG who then bought two more left backs in the same summer)
- Martial (going backwards)
- Pogba (wants out, probably on a free)
- Fred (does a job but in the end not good enough)
- Mata (past it)
- Lindelof (not good enough and never was)
- Bailly (injury prone and not good enough)
- Dalot (terrible, even Milan don't want him)

We sold Evans, Keane and Zaha for less than £15m combined.

In hindsight it's almost impossible to spend so much and end up with so little. We could have literally done nothing and not be in much worse shape.

 

[sparx99]

Van der Beek is really a strange one, considering the other of Oles signings (Maguire, AWB, Bruno) are our top 3 in minutes played since they arrived

I've heard talk about him "being forced" on Ole by the board and the fact that hes barely played is not just because Ole does not rate him, but also because he wanted to send a signal to the board...but as i said, rumors. The way i see it there are 3 possible scenarios here

1) He was a "board" player that Ole did not really want
2) He was poorly scouted and/or he did not adapt to the league as they had hoped
3) Ole really wanted him and he did not do his homework

Also, we needed a body because Pereira was loaned out and Lingard was having issues in his personal life.

Van De Beek hasn’t settled well but imagine if Bruno was injured for a period of time. Who would play there? Mata? Pogba?

 

[Sandikan]

Does the DVB transfer involve the transfer board? As The Board should they be questioning Ole why he is not using a 40 million asset? It's like buying an aircraft then not using it while it's parked all the time. When it's parked it's not making any money.

We have to hope VB shows his worth next season, in a similar style to how long it took Fred to show himself.

 

[sparx99]

Well it's not a miracle is it, let's at least agree on that.

And what we know for certain is that Ole alone isn't deciding transfer strategy, the transfer board which includes Ole and Phelan decide on it. We know they sold Fellaini when we didn't even have a manager, we know they vetoed Mourinho on the Pogba/Martial sales and the purchases of Perisic and William. The DvB signing is almost certainly one put forward by the transfer board that Ole decided to trust and not to veto.

So yes, the transfer strategy of the entire club has been much much smarter since 2018, before Ole even arrived. Trying to pretend that is 100% on Ole, and a "miracle" is just incorrect.

It’s not mentioned in the article but selling Fellaini, Smalling and Lukaku was a clear sign to me that we want players with technique, first touch and generally comfortable on the ball.

I think AWB was signed as young player with the hope he could be improved in that aspect.

 

[Regulus Arcturus Black]

Likewise trying to avoid any positive influence Ole has clearly had on it is ridiculous and clearly agenda driven.

There you go again, not listening, and only hearing the parts you want to hear.

Ole is part of a transfer strategy that the club set in motion after Mourinho's second year, to curb the influence of the manager. Yes or no?

Ole may be a huge part of our scouting and targeting players, or he may have a smaller roll where he trusts the scouts (unlike Mourinho). Either way he's either targeting players I personally like, or he's doing the right thing by not vetoing them and trusting in expert scouts.

That means he's doing a very good fecking job of it, but a) it's not a miracle and b) he's not 100% responsible for it and that includes flops like DvB.

 

[Regulus Arcturus Black]

It’s not mentioned in the article but selling Fellaini, Smalling and Lukaku was a clear sign to me that we want players with technique, first touch and generally comfortable on the ball.

Agreed.

 

[Massive Spanner]

It's funny how these articles about Jose and LvG pop up whenever we're doing shite under Ole. Anything to excuse him I guess.

 

[DomesticTadpole]

It’s not mentioned in the article but selling Fellaini, Smalling and Lukaku was a clear sign to me that we want players with technique, first touch and generally comfortable on the ball.

I think AWB was signed as young player with the hope he could be improved in that aspect.

Pity most of our team can't pass a ball five yards.

 

[Buster15]

feck all to do with Mourinho

Try: The true cost of the Glazer era.

feck me, this place.....

Bang on correct.
Was Jose in complete control of a business like Manchester United. Off course not.
He is what he is and if Woodward didn't understand that, then it goes to show his incompetence.
He was brought in to win things and overall that is what he did.
This article is simply another cheap shot at him and as a result, just like any other self interested newspaper article. Trash.

 

[Buster15]

It's funny how these articles about Jose and LvG pop up whenever we're doing shite under Ole. Anything to excuse him I guess.

Why. Did he write or publish it...

 

[Buster15]

Pity most of our team can't pass a ball five yards.

Ah. But that is Jose fault.

 

[clarkydaz]

It’s not mentioned in the article but selling Fellaini, Smalling and Lukaku was a clear sign to me that we want players with technique, first touch and generally comfortable on the ball.

I think AWB was signed as young player with the hope he could be improved in that aspect.

Fellaini and Lukaku were finished once Jose left. if we wanted technique and first touch we would be playing Donnie.

 

[DomesticTadpole]

Ah. But that is Jose fault.

Of course. Pity most of these players didn't actually play under him.

 

[Oranges038]

The true cost is that he now means so little that people don't even care to spell his name properly anymore.

 

[Buster15]

Of course. Pity most of these players didn't actually play under him.

Exactly. But what has facts got to do with anything nowadays.

 

[DomesticTadpole]

Exactly. But what has facts got to do with anything nowadays.

Not a lot. I watch MUTV and the last game, fair enough Statman Dave picked Luke Shaw and his statistics were good, one day when we get a bad result they should pick someone like Fred or even Bruno and highlight their passing stats. I would love to know what theirs are.

 

[Marwood]

We were in need of some ‘short-term’ success when Mourinho was appointed. We’d only won the FA Cup in 3 years and were falling out of contention. How much bleaker would the last 10 years have been without that League Cup and Europa League in 16/17? Not big trophies by any stretch, but at least it was something.

The Europa league in particular was a boost(although even that was a struggle against teams we've mostly never heard of).

However it should have been possible to hire a guy who could win that and not cause so much havoc at the same time.

 

[croadyman]

I am not against this transfer team that we have put in place but would just prefer some kind of Sporting Director, the worrying thing is that they take so much time deciding on things as evidenced by those reports of us thinking about plans for the summer in a few weeks when we should be doing that now. If this team were actually organised then maybe we would be able to do deals quicker rather than just dithering around and waiting until what's left at the end of the window. Ideally we need to sell at least TWO big players this summer out of Pogba/DDG/Martial or we will have little money for transfers and have to be sounding out teams now because they will all be long winded time consuming deals.

 

[Bilbo]

Its pretty obvious that we had a disastrous 5 or so year spell where our money was frittered away. As much as I love to hate on Jose it wasn't all his fault. LVG wasted money too, and Woodward signed this all off. Everybody is culpable.

What is undoubtedly true is that we are still hampered by this period and we are still playing catch up, but we seem to be on the right track to solving these issues.

 

[Marwood]

Excellent article though. Confirms what a lot of fans believe.

The big shame is that a lot of what's gone wrong over the last few years isn't just hindsight.

The average fan at the time could see one disastrous decison after the next happening.

 

[Regulus Arcturus Black]

Its pretty obvious that we had a disastrous 5 or so year spell where our money was frittered away. As much as I love to hate on Jose it wasn't all his fault. LVG wasted money too, and Woodward signed this all off. Everybody is culpable.

What is undoubtedly true is that we are still hampered by this period and we are still playing catch up, but we seem to be on the right track to solving these issues.

Bang on the money pal.

 

[Massive Spanner]

Why. Did he write or publish it...

It's quite clear the media go pretty easy on Ole compared to previous managers, I guess because of who he is and bring a Utd legend.

 

[Suedesi]

Saw this on reddit and really thought it was a worthwhile read

Explains in depth how badly our finances have been handled the past few years and why we still have a hangover from some of the deal we made

Three paragraphs in, three grammar mistakes

Waste of time, filled with basic mistakes and didn't learn anything new

 

[Velvet Revolver]

It is a good read and although the title is a little sensational. it explains in a purely 'economic' sense of our transfer strategy (or lack there of) and how decisions are made by the board purely on a '$' value and not necessarily related to footballing matters.

The pointer towards Jose is that, Signings of zlatan and Sanchez set us back quite poorly in terms of cash and football, money could have been spent wisely.

 

[Buster15]

It's quite clear the media go pretty easy on Ole compared to previous managers, I guess because of who he is and bring a Utd legend.

Not just the media incidentally.

 

[Sandikan]

It's funny how these articles about Jose and LvG pop up whenever we're doing shite under Ole. Anything to excuse him I guess.

Is being 2nd in March, sh!te, out of interest? If you check our finishing positions post Fergie?

 

[UpWithRivers]

The mistakes that were made were bad in hindsight but at the time they made sense. Everyone tries to blame the Glazers or Woodward but the fact is there are a number of people involved all giving their input. Sir Alex himself takes some blame for the Moyes debacle. Everyone laughs at Sanchez but at the time every man and his dog thought it was a genius plan. No one predicted how utterly sht he would be. Pogba was the same. Most of the players bought and the managers signed had massive backing.

The problem was no continuity. Each manager did something different. Therefore the next manager came in and had to start from scratch. New philosophy, new ideas, new players. The number one failure was no DOF. Someone to define and manage a single philosophy. To hire managers and players that followed the same path or close to the same path.

We are still in the same boat. We have no specialists. Is Rashford a LW? He says he wants to be a striker. Martial the same. Greenwood everyone says he is a striker but hasnt proved that yet. No RW. Fred and Mctominay - not quite defensive not quite attacking enough. Pogba wants out and we still havnt nailed down his spot. Wan B isnt attacking enough. CB's not fast enough. Two top keepers and we dont know which one to keep. Massive wages all over the place so we cant sell. Rinse and repeat.

 

[Champagne Football]

Jose is the type of guy who runs your club into the ground, like an under qualified irresponsible CEO who has found themselves in a job they don't have the required skills for, and then blames everyone but himself for the disaster and harps on endlessly about the small achievements afterwards during his time. The type of business men who are only in it for themselves and the champagne salaries, with little regard for the long term health of the company. John Delaney, ex CEO from the FAI springs to mind.

Weeks before Jose signed a contract extension at Utd, he was harping on about how he see's himself staying 10 years at Utd, the board fell for it, gave him a massive new deal, and once signed, he started causing trouble and throwing the toys out of the pram. He kept harping on about how we can't compete with Paris and Madrid because we can't afford superstars like Neymar and Cristiano, the board fell for it and gifted him Alexis who he dumped on the bench because he wasn't the best player on the pitch in his first game, without giving him that 10 game run in the team he needed to adapt to his new environment.

I wanted Pochettino before we landed Jose, and Pochettino was a perfect fit, a manager who ticked all the boxes in terms of Utd DNA, but we can't complain, we dominated the league for 20 years, a dark period was inevitable. That's how it goes.

 

[el3mel]

It has been nearly 2.5 years since Ole took over and 2 summer markets.

Pretty sure this is far more than enough time to clear any mess left by the previous manager. Should we talk about the true cost of LVG era as well ? Considering that he was supposed to rebuild the squad Moyes left and spent nearly 300m in 2 summers and the end result was leaving the squad in a bigger mess ?

I don't get the point of this. It's basically just a rehash of telling us that we were doomed and Ole is doing miracles with United or something.

Let's focus on the current manager first, shall we ? Considering that he's approaching the end of his second year.

 

[Leftback99]

Why do the same posters try turn everything into an Ole bashing thread?

 

[Foxbatt]

So who is in this transfer Board?

 

[Ladron de redcafe]

Jose is the type of guy who runs your club into the ground, like an under qualified irresponsible CEO who has found themselves in a job they don't have the required skills for, and then blames everyone but himself for the disaster and harps on endlessly about the small achievements afterwards during his time. The type of business men who are only in it for themselves and the champagne salaries, with little regard for the long term health of the company. John Delaney, ex CEO from the FAI springs to mind.

Weeks before Jose signed a contract extension at Utd, he was harping on about how he see's himself staying 10 years at Utd, the board fell for it, gave him a massive new deal, and once signed, he started causing trouble and throwing the toys out of the pram. He kept harping on about how we can't compete with Paris and Madrid because we can't afford superstars like Neymar and Cristiano, the board fell for it and gifted him Alexis who he dumped on the bench because he wasn't the best player on the pitch in his first game, without giving him that 10 game run in the team he needed to adapt to his new environment.

I wanted Pochettino before we landed Jose, and Pochettino was a perfect fit, a manager who ticked all the boxes in terms of Utd DNA, but we can't complain, we dominated the league for 20 years, a dark period was inevitable. That's how it goes.

Excellent post. The damage he does isn't easily eradicated so quickly, either.

 

[Ali Dia]

Why do the same posters try turn everything into an Ole bashing thread?

every single time.

 

[Bilbo]

It's quite clear the media go pretty easy on Ole compared to previous managers, I guess because of who he is and bring a Utd legend.

I'm not sure I agree with this. I rarely if ever see any praise go his way from the mainstream media. He's either criticised (sometimes correctly) or not talked about at all - unless you believe that a manager currently 2nd in the table should be getting hammered from all angles

 

[MU655]

I think it is a pretty poor article, to be honest.

The last thing you want to do is let others know you have lots of money? Has this person never heard of financial reports? You don't need to say you have loads of money for others to know you have loads of money. Manchester United are a publicly -listed company, so their financial information is there for all to see. That was always one of the most stupid arguments used against Woodward.

The point about Zlatan is nonsense. He says that we needed loads of signings so getting him as a stopgap was a bad idea. What? If anything, it was a very good idea. Considering we needed loads of signings, Ibrahimovic was a perfect bit of business for us. He is pretty much proposing we should sign all players in one window in that paragraph. Ridiculous.

The related paragraph is also nonsense. He is complaining that we had to sign another striker (Lukaku) because our stopgap player (Ibrahimovic) got injured. Again, a point that makes no sense. Ibrahimovic was clearly a short-term option. Do people forget we barely scored any goals in the season before under Van Gaal? Rashford and Martial were nowhere near good enough alone. We had 1.2 goals per game ratio in Van Gaal's last season; something needed to be done.

He complains about Manutd spending loads of money but then complains about Mourinho playing Lingard, a player from our youth system. Lingard was actually pretty good under Mourinho. I know people forget this because he went on that long spell of not scoring, but he did pretty well under Mourinho.

He dedicates a paragraph to Blind, complaining that Mourinho chose others over him. That guy has become so overrated since we sold him. He isn't even that good. He did nothing of note whilst he was here.

In all, it just sounds like someone trying to alleviate Solskjaer of any blame. Do people forget he has spent £250m himself?