What job?
If Mourinho's authority and ideology were given more backing, would we be challenging?
- Thread starter DeGea
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Scoring goals
NO, we would be an oldie team playing boring football
The short answer is yes. We have a ridiculous situation now where our dressing room controls the manager not the other way around. If the dressing room doesn't like the manager or isn't up for his tactics they can just rebel and get him fired. It's happened four times now in just over six years. It looks like it is happening again. Until we re-establish the profile of manager at Man Utd the death spiral will continue.
3 goals in 7 games?
Have any of those managers been deserving of more time? I think the majority of fans had reached breaking point with the previous 3 and a tipping point is definitely coming for Ole as well.
This is the ultimate get out for these players. Fans will always blame the manager.
The fact is we've got a bunch of overpaid, mid-table players and they will keep escaping their reckoning and keep getting contract extensions by simply outlasting managers.
No. So many of his signings have been terrible for different reasons. Didn’t deserve to be backed any further.
Fred - £52m nothing needs to be said here
Dalot - RB who can’t defend although young
Matic - 30+ yo. Had 3/4 months when he genuinely looked class, downhill since then. £40m Jesus Christ
Sanchez - Again nothing needs to be said here
Lukaku - £75m good goalscorer, terrible in build up, ends up being sold by new manager
Mkhitaryan - Didn’t work out
Bailly - Headcase who can’t stay fit
The real problem is because of our lack of plan/DoF we don’t have any consistency which results in hiring managers with different philosophies who want to sign different kinds of players.
Which means we’ve wasted hundreds of millions of pounds.
Fred - £52m nothing needs to be said here
Dalot - RB who can’t defend although young
Matic - 30+ yo. Had 3/4 months when he genuinely looked class, downhill since then. £40m Jesus Christ
Sanchez - Again nothing needs to be said here
Lukaku - £75m good goalscorer, terrible in build up, ends up being sold by new manager
Mkhitaryan - Didn’t work out
Bailly - Headcase who can’t stay fit
The real problem is because of our lack of plan/DoF we don’t have any consistency which results in hiring managers with different philosophies who want to sign different kinds of players.
Which means we’ve wasted hundreds of millions of pounds.
Where do people think we would be now if Jose wasn't sacked last season after wasting almost 400 million and falling out with everyone at the club bar Fellaini?
At best we would have finished bottom half last season had another summer of complaints and excuses before spending another 300 million on players he would not be able to improve before declaring in public how useless they were .
If he didn't relegate us last season he certainly would this one
At best we would have finished bottom half last season had another summer of complaints and excuses before spending another 300 million on players he would not be able to improve before declaring in public how useless they were .
If he didn't relegate us last season he certainly would this one
The personality cult around Jose Mourinho is one of the weirdest phenomenons in football. How some United fans still defend him to this day after all he said and how some Real Madrid fans want him back is baffling to me. The guy is a tapeworm.
The highlighted sentences could be shorter-- change to "Mourinho's ability (which has served him well in the past) demands the board rejuvenate the spine of the first team every three years. So, when he said that 82 points is an achievement for this squad and that there was no way it could push for the title should the PL continued to be decided on 95+ points, he knew what he was talking about." No need to add qualifiers. It would really have been nice, wouldn't it, to rejuvenate the spine of the team every 3 years? I can see why the mgmt wouldn't rather not spend the money to do that, I still can't understand why people on Redcafe are so bothered by the idea.
Likewise, change the second highlighted phrase to simply -- "Mourinho's lack of faith in this squad was correct."
He was right and the hundreds of posters who said he was holding the team back were wrong, wrong, wrong. Simple as that.
Wanting "fresh ideas" when you just acknowledged that the team was incapable of the most basic of ideas just means you want some other team and their manager instead of what we have.
Matic, Lukaku, Sanchez, Fred and Mkhi were players that had a lot of interested clubs at the time. They were logical signings based on the players top performances on the previous seasons.
Baily and Dalot were hiring U23 players with potential, you were not paying for a finished product. Bare in mind that Dalot is still just 20.
Challenging Liverpool - so around 95 points instead of 66 if he was allowed to buy Maguire?
Ideally, yes. I would prefer another first team coached by someone who's neither Mourinho nor Solskjaer.
Mourinho's a top-class manager but both Klopp and Pep are ahead of him atm. And they have a better understanding with their respective boards. If he was afforded the absolute freedom he was craving for, he would have pushed for transfers and tactical changes that would not sit well with a fanbase that didn't like him much in the first place. Evenrually, the team would fall behind Liverpool and City and the atmosphere would turn toxic in a blink of an eye.
But this doesn't mean that his assessments were all wrong. Solskjaer came in and kicked some of the least liked players out of the club. Now, he's managing a threadbare squad and he's telling the press that a draw in the EL with no shots on target is a good performance. It's one thing for the fans on the Caf to believe that Martial and Rashford are ready to become the new Rooney and Ronaldo or that the youngsters' skills will improve on their own if they are given games like on Football Manager but when the actual manager of the club believes it, i see a problem. This is what Solskjaer is facing now, his wrong assessment of the squad's abilities and not some major tactical mistakes.
So, i'd like Mourinho's pragmatism combined with a modern tactical approach. Someone who will take cliches like "local lad gets the club", " give youth a chance and don't worry if the team's not ready", "United way", "ask what Fergie would do", throw them to the bin and help us move on from the past.
Couldn’t agree more. Direct and to the point.
The way I see it and will continue to point out is that, that list of players do not look like Jose Mourinho type signings except a couple of them. So, if you ask me if he was backed, I would say he wasn’t to the level this team needed.
When he wasn’t backed last summer, the results of his final season with us don’t matter. He had thrown in the towel. The breaking point was in the summer when he asked for backing. The results of where we were in the first part of the season was simply a reflection of him not getting what he asked for and not getting the backing when it came to player power.
if he was backed, that season would have looked very different.
And the same can be said for the Jose haters. How these fans can’t see past the hate and take notice of the problems beyond Jose.
I'm talking challenging liverpool at this current point in the season, with man city having a few faltering issues this season and the likes of Chelsea, arsenal and spurs having slow starts to this season as well, if Mourinho had got what he wanted and was not acting toxic then I could have seen the team looking good in the league at this point.
that’s what most fans don’t quite get. If he was backed on player acquisition that summer and backed on player power situation, we would see a different Mourinho and a different set of results at the start of that season. When Ed decided not to back Jose, things were headed for the worse and Ed might as well have sacked him before the season even began.
We would be a team that would have the likes of Willian, Perisic and Aldervield (sp) playing for us... thank god we didn’t back him.
I agree that at that point, Jose should have gone.
those 3 would improve our team right now. It would have improved our team when Jose asked for them.
Flogging the dead horse...
Mourinho himself admitted the sack was fair and square. For his methods to work you have to give him:
1 - Full power to assemble a staff.
2 - Full power to dismiss any player.
3 - Recruit players with a certain psychological profile in order to handle the over demanding attitude of JM and the playing style.
Mourinho himself admitted the sack was fair and square. For his methods to work you have to give him:
1 - Full power to assemble a staff.
2 - Full power to dismiss any player.
3 - Recruit players with a certain psychological profile in order to handle the over demanding attitude of JM and the playing style.
I think Mourinho actually wanted out. We acceded you his request and gave him 19 million gift card too 
I don't hate him. I just refuse to make excuses for his constant narcissism and scapegoating.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. You are denying facts in order to fit what you want to believe. I can't vibe with that.
not denying any facts that you and I don’t have. However, if you do spend some time to look at Jose’s career and what profile players he prefers, you might see what i’m talking about. If you haven’t gotten the point that i’m trying to get across, the problem isn’t with Jose. The problem is with Ed.
Absolute nonsense. What happened last season was typical Jose . People keep building up him taking us to second as a great achievement which is rubbish . It can only be a great achievement if it leads to something better and it clearly didn't and was never going to either.
Jose was throwing the toys out of the pram before the second even finished and just got worse as he went on . The truth is he knew he wasn't good enough anymore and couldn't compete with Pep and Klopp .
Mourinho was always a short-term manager. He's always been one. Lock thread please.
Quite a bit wrong in your post here.
First, he didn’t say finishing 2nd was “a“ great achievement. He said finishing 2nd was “his greatest” achievement. There’s quite a bit of difference in those two things. If you need help differentiating that further please do ask.
secondly, he was acting the way he was even towards the end of the 2nd season because he is a winner and cannot stand not being able to compete. He knows his squad is not good enough to compete with those two teams. Not that he is not good enough. He is plenty good enough if not better. while being a good and proven manager, he still needs personnel on the field to carry out the work. People expecting him to adjust this squad of players to compete with those other two teams are unrealistic. It was clear to see we needed to buy and upgrade in quite a few positions. He didn’t even get one center half he asked for. The conditions of the league that season we finished 2nd was changing drastically. I’m sure he saw it and couldn’t convince Ed and the board to invest to adjust to the competition.
Mourinho is a classic cheque book manager. The money he was allowed to spend on players that were at best short terms solutions has added to our issues and not resolved them. Any person wanting him back, is deluded. He is a winner but he is very devisive, he knows how to build a team granted, but only if he gets what he wants, and after 3 years it all goes pear shaped because his approach is all about now.. The problem is you cant spend £300m every 1-2 years, its non sustainable. We are approaching things better now in my opinion but its going to take some time
the problem is, the squad we had needed to change. We needed to spend. Some short term to keep us competing, winning, and relevant. Then there is a need to invest for longer term along side the short term fixes. I don’t think Ed fully understood and bought into what this squad needed.
You could argue that Mourinhos best signing was Zlatan, for free, which makes for uncomfortable thinking.
We absolutely needed to spend, but the way we have gone about it has left a 'legacy effect' meaning future transfer budgets will naturally become more scrutinised. You could argue we have spent over £800m since 2013, and we have a much poorer squad to show for it, but that's only because lack of a plan and vision has been the problem and Mourinho has added to that.
You're trying to create a narrative that expells Jose from blame by suggesting that the *many* failed signings that occurred during his tenure were not of his making, which everyone and their dog knows is false. They were all his signings.
I agree, the problems at the club extend beyond the manager and fall directly at the feet of one Ed Woodward. But that doesn't absolve Jose of wasting an absolute fortune on useless dross.
Next time you want to correct people read the post . I never said Jose said second was a great achievement so no I don't need help differentiating something that I did not say
I think the dumbest thing here is some of you think Jose just decided to fall out with the players because he's a difficult personality. No. He set high standards of effort and play, demanded more from them, including confirming to his tactics. When underperformers or those that couldn't keep up were benched or admonished, Woodward stepped in to play favorites. When star players acted out, Woodward put his arm around them and assured them of nice long stays and big paychecks.
That's how it went down. It wasn't just a self destruct. The manager was undermined, which has always been Jose's red button with the big feckin warning not to be pressed.
That's how it went down. It wasn't just a self destruct. The manager was undermined, which has always been Jose's red button with the big feckin warning not to be pressed.
Not arguing against that but it is only because he’s trying to get us back to winning ways. Do y’all remember what we were like before Jose?
I don’t agree with that based on what Jose has signed over his career. You can’t deny that this list of players dont look like his typical signings.
Absolutely!