I’m probably in the minority of those who aren’t calling for Mourinho’s head and at the same time don’t want him to be backed to try and spend his way into being an immediate, yet temporary force. I don’t care if he doesn’t sign anyone at all. If he’s “backed” this Summer, we’ll overpay for a Matuidi or a Vidal, replace Luke Shaw with Danny Rose, and add an experienced centre-half like Sokratis to his team. We prob still won’t win the league next year, yet our transfer outlay will almost certainly make us favourites to and we’ll be an easy target for the naysayers. Even if we do the unlikely, and Jose gets the United notch on his premier league winning belt, it won’t be happily ever after… his post-title winning hangovers are never fun. Within 12-18 months, we’ll probably need to replace Matic, Sanchez, Valencia and Young alongside the sprinkling of the above mentioned thirty-something mercenaries that we’ll no doubt add to the first team squad this Summer.
I’d rather he turns to Timbo and Tuanzebe, and perhaps signs up Ryan Sessegnon to compete with Shaw on the left. I have been impressed with his handling of Scott McTominay, but he needs to keep it going. Give Gomes or Chong some minutes at the back-end of this season, he should drop Sanchez and start one against Brighton. Surely they can’t do any worse than Fellaini did mid-week. Jose’s whole career has been built on short-termism, and instant wins. At United he has the chance to change that. When we finally got him in, I really thought that this was the job he’d been waiting for. I envisioned his ego wanted his time at Manchester United to be his legacy, not a footnote.
So I guess my Summer squad refresh would look something like this.
IN: Ryan Sessegnon, Fosu-Mensah, Tuanzebe, Pereira.
OUT: Fellaini, Herrera, Young, Jones, Rojo, Darmian, Blind.