You mean it's not conclusive evidence or its not evidence at all? Because the former would be hard to buy and the latter would be ridiculous. If the words from his own mouth don't count as evidence then I wonder what does. What else can realistically be presented to prove that he was on board with the Sanchez signing besides the numerous instances of him indicating he was?
If Mourinho's authority and ideology were given more backing, would we be challenging?
- Thread starter DeGea
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You never heard of lying?
One of the worst transfers we've made in the past 15 years, an absolute disaster of a signing with the wages he's on, and Mourinho would keep his mouth shut if Sanchez was someone that Woodward signed without Mourinho wanting him, yeah right 
The point of this thread was if he was backed to build the team in his full version would we have won the league. I think so tbh. I think he was torn here between playing his defensive style and playing the United way, beside he couldn't rebuild the entire squad and sign as many players to suit his ideas to revamp the squad in the way he likes like what he did at Chelsea first reign, Inter and Madrid.
He was backed to a decent degree but to the degree he asked for especially in his last season and he was never able to apply his style freely because of the pressure of the United way thing.
You don't hire Mourinho for long term planning or playing great football. You hire him to win fast. Mourinho is used to build his team fast and win fast then leave fast too. He rebuilt all his previous sides with loads of transfers in his first or second transfer market. If you hire Mourinho you should know what you are going for and do it like his other clubs did. We didn't.
We finished 2nd...,With over 80 points....We got 12 points more than the previous season....We finished above Spurs and Liverpool....
We didn't challenge for the title. Do you disagree with that?
Yes we'd be challenging for mid table if he was backed with lots of money, like he was
Absolute genius.
We finished 19 points off the lead.
Against arguably the greatest EPL side of all time...With a much much much much much much much much much much better side than United.
19 points is surmountable with 2 world class centre backs perhaps, and an out and out winger.
They have better team than 2018/19 Liverpool.
Mourinho peak is 2nd season but unfortunately for him their was a far better coach like Guardiola unlike Pellegrini/Wenger/Pochettino in 2014/15 season. Another attacking coach like Klopp had got CL final and shown a yearly progression unlike Mourinho so it was normal to see him competing after this year's spending despite on paper having weaker squad. if Mourinho had a better philosophy than parking the bus, long balls to Fellaini and targeting 30 yr old duds he will have stood a great chance.
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No idea why people are losing their marbles over that video. There's nothing groundbreaking about it, hardly a revolutionary strategy
The lack of strategy at the club set him up to fail. Without absolving his obvious shortcomings, for Mourinho to have been more successful he would have needed more favourable conditions rather than the strategic clusterfeck that comprises the footballing direction of the club.
But he is a world class coach, with a plethora of experience as well as his own staff. What you said might ring true for Ole, in fact i had to make sure i wasn't in the Solskjaer thread when i read your first line. Favourable conditions, set him up to fail? He was backed to the hilt until the last window. Woody put his own reputation on the line for him and is now paying for it.
Why does it matter? Both cases the manager gave the go ahead, whether he specifically asked him or was told by someone else we can get the player the manager still agreed to it. So either way he has responsibility. If you dont like the players a club are offering to come in you can leave.
Now if that had been the case and Mourinho left because he didnt like the players we were bringing in, then it becomes a talking point. But he didnt. He was asked to leave instead
Mourinho played with 1 winger and started the season with our two weakest CBs at the time. Okay not Rojo but Rojo barely plays
Can you be a bit more specific ?
Whats the point of threads like this and VG thread. Its over, done. Nothing is ever going to change whether they had signed this player or not that one.
To jump from Ferguson to Moyes to Van Gaal to Mourinho to Solksjaer. There is no continuity or cohesion there. Each one is basically the opposite of what came before. There is no consistency in game models, principles in how you play or the types of players required to make different systems work. It's all been a conflicting mess.
To answer the OP : No.
Not long term and certainly not short term either since there was a big gap between us and the champions last year. Not to mention the loss to Sevilla and the abysmal tactics employed.
Not long term and certainly not short term either since there was a big gap between us and the champions last year. Not to mention the loss to Sevilla and the abysmal tactics employed.
If the dressing room was fully behind him and he had full backing, then yes we would be challenging. But I think he lost the dressing room at that point judging by the squad's reaction to the Ole appointment. Mou's second season is always his best but ultimately his best (81 pts) was not enough.
I'm not trying to suggest the manager is absolved of all responsibility, but I'm rather trying to understand where there is a structural failure in the club and whether that affects the managers decision making.
I think the managers have just overestimated the evaluation from the scouts in signing off players. I also think our scouts are just misfits. Gary neville said we have one from Fergies time, we kept Moyes scouts and we kept LVGs head scout. They're all probably saying different things at different times.
While it obviously hasn't helped, it obviously didn't set up Mourinho to fail.
Clearly other teams had no problem doing that against that Barca team....oh wait....
Yes a coach like Klopp who has won feck all in 3 seasons yep that’s the guy. No Guardiola had the team who got 100 fecking point in a season with a squad so much better then any other team. Mou got second place with this absolute shite of a United team.
You have a strange chain of thought
Yes the squad he helped to contribute towards building it.
Guardiola and Klopp are better coaches than Mourinho and actually improved their squads besides spending cash. Guardiola turned City into a English Barca. Mourinho created an expensive Stoke.
The best sales man in the world convinces people he wasn't backed despite spending close to half a billion.
Funny how everyone's saying jose got this shit united team to second despite the fact, it was jose who built this team (no one focus' on that, wonder why). Jose was the one who despite having 4 transfer windows kept the likes of Young/Smalling/jones/Rojo/Fellaini/Valencia/mata in the first team and went on to buy more dross and would have included the old boys from Inter/Chelsea if given more money, Yeah they would have helped challenge city/pool. Just needed those 2 old guys and a CB to complete the puzzle.
But yeah he wasn't backed/He didn't build this team/ His tactics weren't to sit back against bottom half teams then lump to Felliani at the end.
Funny how everyone's saying jose got this shit united team to second despite the fact, it was jose who built this team (no one focus' on that, wonder why). Jose was the one who despite having 4 transfer windows kept the likes of Young/Smalling/jones/Rojo/Fellaini/Valencia/mata in the first team and went on to buy more dross and would have included the old boys from Inter/Chelsea if given more money, Yeah they would have helped challenge city/pool. Just needed those 2 old guys and a CB to complete the puzzle.
But yeah he wasn't backed/He didn't build this team/ His tactics weren't to sit back against bottom half teams then lump to Felliani at the end.
For Jose not being backed means not being allowed to replace the huge money he already wasted. An incredibly entitled point of view. LVG wasted money too but no one here fights for his right to replace Darmian, Memphis and Scheiderlin.The best sales man in the world convinces people he wasn't backed despite spending close to half a billion.
Funny how everyone's saying jose got this shit united team to second despite the fact, it was jose who built this team (no one focus' on that, wonder why). Jose was the one who despite having 4 transfer windows kept the likes of Young/Smalling/jones/Rojo/Fellaini/Valencia/mata in the first team and went on to buy more dross and would have included the old boys from Inter/Chelsea if given more money, Yeah they would have helped challenge city/pool. Just needed those 2 old guys and a CB to complete the puzzle.
But yeah he wasn't backed/He didn't build this team/ His tactics weren't to sit back against bottom half teams then lump to Felliani at the end.
Look what we're saying. Look at Klopp's signings. Alison and VVD, when these managers were allowed to spend big they hit home runs. At 300m spent Pep and Klopp had gotten far greater value for money, Jose burned his kitty and looked to burn more on the likes of Perisic and Willian
And certain man still wants to compare mourinho that told us iit's nothing new to get get beaten by Seville to manager that reached 2 CL final in row playing exhilarating football. Get out of here
Worst part is that Mourinho will just rant even more about Klopp now, how this is because the club kept showing faith in him even though it looked like he was failing (not really)
Jurgen Klopp beat Barca 4-0 with players like Shaqiri, Origi, Henderson, Wijnaldum, and Matip.
Sometimes, it's not all about having world class players in every position. It's also how you make the best of what you have.
Sometimes, it's not all about having world class players in every position. It's also how you make the best of what you have.
True. But - if fail in this thread is not get over 90 points to challenge for the title - then you really need all parts of the club singing from the same hymn sheet. The disconnect in the football strategy at Old Trafford isn't the case at Anfield or the Etihad.
Lets be honest, the average member is thick as shit, and this has nothing to do with me believing my opinion is special or anything like that. The amount of threads created depending on which way the wind is currently blowing, is mental, "would x,y,z blablabla bla blab bla bla". Arguing what is posted in a thread isn't all that interesting. We didn't fail because we didn't challenge for the title in the second season, we failed because we went backwards instead of improving on it. The second place itself is meaningless, we didn't actually challenge for the league so we might as well have finished 3rd, even 4th for that matter, and we certainly didn't improve as a team, look back at Mourinho's comments on the importance of 2nd,3rd and 4th, yet now it's suddenly the holy grail.
In terms of the football strategy at Old Trafford, little seems to have changed since Fergie retired, the manager more or less has full control (to an extent). That works very well for some managers, not so much for other managers. I can't help feeling that the same people who are now having digs at the club for not hiring a sporting director, would be the same people completely against it if the question was brought up 7 years ago, or 10 years ago for that matter. Look at the debate at Liverpool during Brendan Rodgers reign, the debates about the transfer committee and Rogers not getting the players he wanted, how Rogers undermined them, at the time there were quite few, if any, that thought it was an ideal situation, ask them now and they will most likely blame Rodgers and not the transfer committee. The disconnect was there, now it isn't, because they've hired people that work well together. Klopp is happy to admit that he initially didn't want Salah, but that he was persuaded. Look at Mourinho at Real Madrid and how well that worked with a sporting director.
The conditions for Mourinho to succeed were there, he more or less had full control over who he could bring in (backroom staff) and Woodward was happy to go out and splash the cash on the various players that Mourinho wanted to bring in, even including the insanely expensive deal to bring Sanchez from Arsenal. Things went sour when we didn't bring in every player that Mourinho wanted, while at the same time Manchester City and Liverpool were progressing. We don't have a bottomless pit of money, every expensive failure has consequences, just as it has for most other clubs, Manchester City and PSG mainly being the exceptions. We obviously needed a defender, but who did he want to bring in ? Maguire, insanely expensive and he'd barely joined Leicester, a player we could've picked up for peanuts if he had been identified earlier. A certain Tottenham defender ? Hardly inspires faith that he knows what he's looking for.
In the end, everything was poorly handled. We rushed to offer him a golden contract when he started flirting with PSG, instead of promptly telling him to prove his worth before he gets his contract renewed, and once we doubted him we should've just sacked him, but it's quite clear that the conditions for Mourinho were initially superb.
And lets just ignore his media approach....
There's no perfect solution, it's easy to come up with the perfect strategy where we identify the direction we want the club to move in, the type of football etc, then we hire a sporting director / transfer committee that's supposed to be in charge of that, then we hire a manager that matches the players and sporting direction. Just as it's easy to identify a perfect strategy where the manager is responsible for everything. Everything is easy when you write it, bit more difficult to put it in motion, there's a shitload of examples of how a sporting director and a manager can be a disaster, but suddenly it's the only solution.
Personally, I believe having a sporting director / director of football / transfer committee is the best way to go, mainly because I believe it removes some of the power from the position as manager and places it with the club, hopefully making it achieve the goals we decide on. It isn't something we should rush into, because opting for the wrong strategy can be just as bad as hiring the wrong manager. Let's not forget that Mourinho has been against the appointment of a director of football at United, and it's only now under Ole that we he have someone who reckons it's a good idea to give the responsibility of identifying players to someone else.
We went from a manager that had full control and that was hardly an issue, it was considered the only way to run a club, it was also a large part of how people viewed the manager position at Manchester United, total control. Is it a surprise that Gill and Fergie didn't argue that we should create a position that would remove power from the manager when Moyes was identified, or Van Gaal for that matter (who turned down an offer from Tottenham, sporting direction and all of that...).
Klopp presses as an attacking tactic.
Jose doesn't have one and sits back.
We would be in a better position but not in a position that he wouldn't be sacked in this year as he always does.
Jose doesn't have one and sits back.
We would be in a better position but not in a position that he wouldn't be sacked in this year as he always does.
Not in my opinion, no. I genuinely think he wasn't backed in his final year because the signings he made didn't really work out.
That is right. I have said the self same thing and have been told (incorrectly in my opinion) that it was a fluke.
Anyway. Being backed is far more than just money for transfers.
It is about having the whole club aligned behind the manager.
And it is about the players accepting the managers authority and instructions and carrying them out on the pitch.
It is patently obvious that he did not receive that level of backing.
Sadly, a missed opportunity for United to compete with the likes of City and Liverpool.
Both clubs who have given total backing to their manager and are reaping the reward for that.