I don't think Woody was determined to be sack Mou now. The reasons to that are various.
a- The club would owe Mourinho quite a huge amount of money. Woody will have to justify to the owners why he gave him a contract extension only to sack him few months later.
b- We'll have to find adequate replacement for him. There aren't many top managers available and those who are, might not want to sign now that the season had already started. If Zidane had actually turned us down then the best of the crop of those available now is someone whose been sacked by Chelsea. I wonder if the board will be happy having the club being portrayed as Chelsea's dustbin especially after we've signed Mata, Matic and Mourinho from them. Not to forget that Conte is as troublesome as Mourinho is. Italy, Chelsea and Juventus can easily testify to that.
c- While everything is pointing at Mourinho losing the dressing room, there's no definitive proof to it.
Thus while Woody is clearly annoyed of being thrown under the bus by his own manager. However I think he was more then keen to give Mou the time to dig his own grave. As testified at Chelsea, Real and United, the manager is quite good at that. So the script is quite predictable. Mou would keep on blaming everyone under the sun then once he made enough enemies and had failed to qualify to the CL, the the club would move quickly and remove him from his job. If Mou complains about that, then the club can easily point out that is standard procedure for the club to sack the manager after failing to qualify to the CL. As Mou once said, no one is bigger then the club.
However things might have changed now and the reason is fan power.
I know that that the idea of fans having influence on the club's decision making is considered blasphemy at United. After all we've been groomed to believe that fans are one tracked morons who have to support the club no matter the shit being thrown at them. However fans power is a real thing especially for clubs that float on the stock exchange. The last thing investors would want to hear is the board being booed during matches and legends + the manager turning against the board. That's bad for business.
This fans crusade might or might not have saved Mourinho for now. However, if this booing and this criticism from the media persists then this might be enough for the club to move quickly and remove this toxicity for good, especially if results do not improve.
I honestly can't understand Gaz. He had previously criticised Mourinho with the latter retaliating in his usual savage and classless way.
Now I understand that Gaz has this idea of clubs sticking to the manager up until they take them to non league football. However, going against the club for such low life doesn't really make sense. Unless of course, he seriously think that by putting pressure on the club and defending the manager he might land a job at OT. If that's the case then surely he's deluded at best.
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?