I think we need to hire a DOF as soon as possible, just to plan for the future and have a steadying influence at the board level regarding the football side of things. There were some rumors in the past that we were looking for one, but they seem to have gone away now.
Jose saving his skin - yet again.. (Manager v Players blame game)
- Thread starter Raees
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The players absolutely need to shoulder some of the blame. However, when Bayern were struggling under Ancelotti, they didn't sack half the squad but got in a better manager. Sometimes a club and a manager aren't just a good fit. I think this club and Mourinho aren't just a good fit.
Yes when we lose it is Mourinho, when we win it is players, Bravo!
You and others questioned Mourinho on training and not doing anything about attacking football. You have no proof of that. Players not playing well can also be down to them or combination of both things. Yet for people like you it is only Mourinho's fault. So show me proof from training ground that he is doing it wrong there.
Mourinho's Real Madrid have record of most goals in La liga. Mourinho plays attacking football when he has such resources. Otherwise he goes with solid defensive structure. He gets hired for trophies, he has his proven way for that.
Mourinho is commenting on players not following instructions this game. Not whole season. Why would he come out and say it every match if he was OK with it in earlier games? Stupid point. Also more than not following instructions, he was pissed off with players not owning up and daring to do things which they are capable of.
I agree we need a DOF. Most of the big european managers are used to working with one anyway. Also some of the decisions the board have made regarding the manager of our club have been dubious and lazy. We need a plan as you say.
How has this performance been any different to a multitude of performances this season? Or you think we have been playing scintillating football so far bar for this game.
He has had nearly two seasons with these players. If he still cannot get them to play fluid football, then either all the players are thick and not good enough or Mourinho and his training methods aren't up to scratch. Take your pick.
As for praise, plenty praised him here for the changes he made when we were trailing Palace and City. After a decent performance against Liverpool, he decides to move our best attacking player on the opposite wing and then bring in Fellaini as soon as he gets fit as if he is Messi. But it's the players being incorrigible.
Neither was Moyes, is he a fit anywhere, or LvG either. Some of these players were a problem then, so maybe it will mean we need to rethink what the future of this club is. Either just another big name to splurge money left right and centre with no plan whatsoever, or a younger manager with a style and is good at developing younger players, not just our own.
We’re at the point where so many good players (especially the attacking ones) are playing poorly that maybe it has something to do with his tactics and approach to games. He’s tried different formations and personnel and it’s never clicked. Maybe he should think about that. There are coaches out there who could get a lot more out of this team.
He won't be getting the boot. The club will be happy when we finish second and will back him to the hilt.
Nearly all games are proof of that. And the boring tumescent football that they serve almost on a weekly basis.
This is the third most expensive squad in world football. Partly because Jose invested 300m in it and signed Zlatan on free. And it plays turgud football. I wonder who might be responsible for that.
I completely agree with your last points. Someone like Pochettino who can improve our youngsters as well.
We are turning into Arsenal? I hope not. Actually we aren't because they do play football. I worry at all the reports saying he doesn't coach the attacking side. That cannot help. He either has to have a big rethink and get in an attacking coach or he is really making big problems for himself.
"It was OK" which means he was actually quite content with what he had seen. Everyone would have said he's happy with performance and we're gonna keep with it.
I don't know if he has been training them on defending or attacking, and I don't care because it's not the point now. Time to stop treating these professional footballers that are paid millions like babies who need a baby sitter to make them perform. If Mourinho is supposed to work for his salary (and that's right), then these players need to show some urgency and intensity in their play to work for their salary as well. I'm not talking about playing fast attacking football, I'm talking about showing some fecking urgency and try to run a little bit at least.
Since SAF left and the easiest solution was to throw the full blame on the manager. Sack Moyes, everything will OK, sack LVG, we'll be great again, sack Mourinho, and he'll be great offensively. It's fair to show some criticism for the players a bit I guess, they have been escaping most of it since SAF left.
Now does that mean Mourinho is blameless ? Absolutely not. I have criticized Mourinho a lot in the last 2 months in games as Tottenham, Newcastle and Seville, and IMO, he failed to integrate Sanchez in the team and made baffling decisions since the latter arrives. He's not blameless, however, trying to convince us that the players are blameless and it's only the manager fault they don't show any urgency is baffling as well. During LVG and Moyes days I criticized both the manager and players. They both should be blamed.
Now come to these comments, again if these professional footballers can't take such comments then why are they playing for a big club at all ? They aren't babies. Time to sort themselves out and start performing (and that applies for Mourinho too). They have been free of responsibility and pressure for 5 years now, losing then coming in the media to tell us "Oh so sorry we lost but it's time to throw this loss behind our back and try to win the next game". Apparently that next game never came. Now time for them to realize they aren't that free of responsibility and need to perform for their earning now.
We had lost several times this season and Mourinho didn't slaughter them as much as yesterday. He has also praised them multiple times in the presser during the season. If they can't get a one or 2 brutal pressers as this, they don't belong here then, as they want an environment free of pressure.
I just cant get past how we played in the first 10 or 11 games of the season. Right up to the international break and then that park the bus game at Anfield. I honestly think something changed at that point because we really failed to get any sort of rhythm in our form after that. But we have had some really good attacking displays, just not enough of them.
Exactly, it is high time we hired a DOF, most of the coaches now a days prefer to work with one anyway. It also peovides stability to building a squad in a particular way, and also hiring the right person to coach them that align with what the etjos of the club. Our approach since SAF retired has been all over the place, in terms of both, player and manager recruitment.
I think the Glazers will surely be thinking about the fact that we are making record profits being just successful enough to maintain them. At the end of the day if the club is profitable and we stay relatively successful then its probably not much reason to go and sack him.
Maybe just maybe some of these players aren't good enough, I mean in the last 4 years they have by and large finished 7th, 4th, 5th and 6th and now they are suddenly good enough to win major trophies, and this is there 3rd manager in that space of time and they are still not playing well at what point does it become the players fault
Maybe we should just buy Monaco. They seem to get the youngsters and then turn them into big assets who they sell for a fortune, which we wouldn't have to do.
I hate bringing City up, but they are doing it right it appears, they have planned ahead. Knew which manager they wanted, be consulting with him as to who or what type of player he wanted and then they have gone out and got the players. They are also buying young with thought to the future of the team. We have bought a couple of young ones, but mainly bought legendary names, who are well passed their sellby dates just so they can have one last payday. That is not good planning.
Also looked in the Twitter thread and it said Jose is after Matuidi and Perisic yet again. I hope not. They are both the wrong age and Perisic's form dropped off a cliff.
His main job is to get results first and then improve performances also step by step. He has improved significantly on both aspects than last season.
Not all of the attacking players have been together whole time. Sanchez arrived in Jan, Lukaku this season.
Manager has proven to get best out of many players at multiple clubs before and most of our attacking players haven't proven on big stage before. Take your pick who is to be blamed fully. I personally won't blame either set (Mou+ his team and 2nd set the players). To me it is combination of things and biggest area for improvement.
He also got blamed for Sevilla lost by many. For me too loss was on him for team selection. It is the calls for sack that are stupid not the blaming for Sevilla loss.
I've been critical of Jose and the shite negative football we play, but this time I'm fully behind him for criticising the players. He's absolutely right that some of them are cowards. If they can't handle being called out for their cowardly performances then we're better off without them.
The problem on here is people will put all the blame on the manager or the players when in reality it lies with both. Mourinho is too cautious; the tactics against sevilla were disgraceful. However we also have some players who are dross and not fit to wear the shirt.
The problem on here is people will put all the blame on the manager or the players when in reality it lies with both. Mourinho is too cautious; the tactics against sevilla were disgraceful. However we also have some players who are dross and not fit to wear the shirt.
No let's blame the manager. Just joking, but yes you do have to start looking at some of the players.
We average around 2 goals a game this season which is improvement on last season significantly. Give me the attacking players who he bought for big bucks and are failing. Lukaku has 25 goals, Zlatan got close to 30 by April before getting injured and we have seen how Pogba can fit into formation and impact when he cares. Martial and Rashford both are having better seasons than before. I wonder who might be responsible for that.
People are always a bit stary eyed where players are concerned. It is like a movie, if it bombs people blame the script or the director when it might just be the actors are a bit wooden.
If people are starry eyed about anything it seems to be with Jose not the players.
I said if there is no improvement. He don't need to sell all such players in one go as well. He has no general issues with many of them. He was expecting them to respond better after a bad loss but they didn't which irritated him. We have at least 9 more games to play and they can now respond. Also I called it a risky thing to do as it can go wrong with current generation of players.
See, that's the point. You think that performances and results don't go hand in hand. No manager gets a clean slate when he joins a club. You cannot have 22 new players every time you change a manager. He hasn't been able to get the best out of the likes of Martial or Pogba - two of our biggest talents. Sure they may not be the easiest personalities to handle but that's where top managers are paid mega bucks. So that they can get the best out of their best talents.
Getting Fellaini to "run through a wall" is not that difficult because afro hair knows that the only way to make up for his lack of talent is to run himself into the ground. Not a bad trait but more talented players in attack have to be given more freedom.
The moment Sanchez came in, Martial - who was our player of the month for Jan - got dropped without any reason. That's just one example. Mourinho tends to have his favorites and he sticks to them no matter what. Same happened with Ivanovic during his second Chelsea stint when everyone could see he was way past his peak. Here he treats Fellaini like he is the only player willing to give his best. He drops players or switches their positions without any reasonable cause most times.
I don't think Mourinho is the person to take our club forward towards where we want to be - a club feared by opposition. Now every club we face tend to have a right go at us. I don't see that changing under Mourinho since he seems too set in his ways to change according to the times. Yes he won a PL title but the TV money has changed the landscape massively and Mourinho seems to be a man whose philosophy is getting found out more often.
Then why have we fired two managers, want another sacking it appears and the likes of Chris Smalling have been here all along and he is still not the CB we need. Jones is out injured again, but he is still here from SAF times, Valencia cannot be a winger any longer, but he is a fullback who cannot contribute anything to our attacks. We have a fullback on the other side who cannot keep an eye on his weight (women pay a fortune to get a chest like that) and another who is over 30. Darmian and Blind are still here when they should have gone in the summer. I can blame Jose for a lot of things but the job is massive and it looks like it is breaking him. He is having to tidy up previous managers cockups.
I think people forget he is human and as you say is likely irritated. We all do that if someone doesn't do something we have asked to do. As though managers turn into robots and just turn off their emotions when they take a job.
I am worried if we persist with Mourinho, we may end up losing players like Pogba and Martial and get players who are just past their peaks. His Inter team fell off a cliff because he frankly cared about the next two seasons he was in charge rather than the future. Maybe that was his diktat at that time but it's not the same here.
Players like Pogba and Martial are more important to us than Mourinho in the long term. If a manager can get the best out of these two brilliant potentials then we can play great football and win things too.
He’d have sold King Midas just to get Goliath for a single season.
I will put some blame regarding Martial on Mourinho but not for Pogba. Pogba's crap performances can't be blamed on Mourinho. Often he has been bad even when played with his preferred role. Martial too has habit to sulk when things aren't going well. Mourinho is not expecting 22 new players. Many of those whom he inherited, he is happy with them.
What I know is Mourinho deserves to be here next year and then based on results club can take call.
Given that he said "I could be at a club in a different country with the league in my pocket right now, the kind of league you win before it starts, but I am here and will be for a long time", based on a simple Freudian analysis we can conclude he's off to PSG.
.....or .. BAYERN?!
The flaw with that is that Jose’s bought in a number of players to replace Moyes’ and LVG’s squads. The same players who failed under LVG have been largely moved on, and yet we are still struggling. So is it Jose’s fault for buying the wrong players? What happened to Mkhi? Where’s Lindelof? Why not spend some money on our full backs? What’s happened to Herrera (our POTY under LVG)? Why are talented attacking players like Pogba, Martial and Sanchez failing to perform (it can’t be a coincidence that their form has dropped at the same time)?
A lot of blame falls on Jose here, if it’s the player (because they’re not good enough) then Jose has fecked up recruitment and should pay the price. If the players are good enough then Jose has messed up with his negativity.
As manager he can definitely give the players a dressing down but to throw them under the bus in the media is downright ridiculous. And it's not anything new for him. It's his biggest flaw and it generally signals the beginning of the end for him at clubs when he starts taking players on.
Lukaku finished on 26 PL goals for Everton last season. Are you crediting Jose with Lukaku being on 14 PL golas with just 8 games to go?
Jose is relying too much on the individual qualities of the attacking players, there is no good attacking system in place and he is doing a terrible job at implementing one if he is trying at all. 4th best attack in the league with a lot of money thrown on attacking players: Pogba, Lukaku, Martial, Mkhi/Sanchez plus the likes of Rashford and Zlatan and Lingard. All these players and tumescent football. It can be excused only if it leads to a big title, not to micky mouse trophies.
Not buying that. If Smalling is so shit why not replace him with the 35m CB Jose himself bought? if Valencia is so shit then why has he not only been not replaced but why has Jose sent out our reserve RB on loan and called Valencia the best RB in the world? If Shaw is shit why not sell him instead of playing him and calling him shit? He's signed 2 CB's 2 strikers, 2 CM's and a winger. If the team is still shit as he claims it's on him and him alone.
Think it was a typical Mourinho ploy:
• Drop Pogba and Sanchez like the entire World seems to be begging him to do.
• Make a point in saying before the game that Pogba and Sanchez are dropped as the players on the pitch are the ones who deserve it.
And then…
Allow said players to show that they are actually a bit shite and unlike Pogba and Sanchez, these feckers actually hide from the ball. Mourinho said nothing I wasn't thinking myself watching, that we were crap and that too many players looked like they didn't wanna be there.
Mourinho has us in second, if we stay there it'll be our best finish since 2012-13 and our second best finish since 2011-12. Add to that we're in the semi final of the cup. Now Mourinho is gonna have to get much worse results and say something a hell of a lot worse than what most of us were thinking last night during the game before I turn on him like you lot. Some of these players need a fecking poker up the arse.
Let's not forget, SAF said this after fecking winning the Scottish Cup:
• Drop Pogba and Sanchez like the entire World seems to be begging him to do.
• Make a point in saying before the game that Pogba and Sanchez are dropped as the players on the pitch are the ones who deserve it.
And then…
Allow said players to show that they are actually a bit shite and unlike Pogba and Sanchez, these feckers actually hide from the ball. Mourinho said nothing I wasn't thinking myself watching, that we were crap and that too many players looked like they didn't wanna be there.
Mourinho has us in second, if we stay there it'll be our best finish since 2012-13 and our second best finish since 2011-12. Add to that we're in the semi final of the cup. Now Mourinho is gonna have to get much worse results and say something a hell of a lot worse than what most of us were thinking last night during the game before I turn on him like you lot. Some of these players need a fecking poker up the arse.
Let's not forget, SAF said this after fecking winning the Scottish Cup:
If we want to get back to the top, I hope the club doesn't simply look at results but how we get those results as well. There is not a single powerhouse in Europe now who play defensive reactionary football so I don't get the need to choose between performances and results. If performances improve, results automatically will.
To quote a cheesy line from a movie which I am sure you have seen too. Go for excellence and success will follow.
I’ve always been an admirer of Mourinho but he has shown himself as a poor leader in the last week. In fact the last few days have been utter disaster for our club, not as much because of the results or performances but more because of Mou’s total lack of ownership and picking fights with everyone (players/ex-managers/pundits/fans) just to deflect blame. If I was in the Utd boardroom, I’d be worried that after getting free hand for almost two years, the manager doesn’t seem to have a handle on a certain playing style and about the limited progress of promising players, inconsistency of star players in the team.
Results wise Mou’s tenure has seen progress, but he doesn’t seem to have direction on how to take the club to next level. Instead, he’s resorting to self-preservation to justify the current state of things and taking things too far.
Haven’t completely given up on Mou yet, but he’s been absolutely awful in the wake of CL departure.
Results wise Mou’s tenure has seen progress, but he doesn’t seem to have direction on how to take the club to next level. Instead, he’s resorting to self-preservation to justify the current state of things and taking things too far.
Haven’t completely given up on Mou yet, but he’s been absolutely awful in the wake of CL departure.
Pre match presser, not post. My bad.
It's not the best time to be on the forum.
My take is simple, if we have, like some say, one of the best attacking talents in the country, they should be doing way better than that, even without being coached 'attacking' football.
The players can't even do the basic things for God's sake. It's not a coincidence that it happened with LVG before who, was teaching them how to play on attack.
People say that pep's barca team was almost playing by itself, because he had some cracking attacking talent, they didn't even need coaching (which I agree with some of it by the way), then they come here and say that, the players aren't been coached, that's why they can't do simple fecking things. That's the hypocrisy of some of the people here. It's football, when you have players like we do, they should be doing way better, even if Tony pulis was our coach.
There's no reason Sanchez misplaces so many passes like he does for example, and i' using him as an example so that the Martial and Shaw fan boys don't jump on this post which isn't about them.
The players have been cowards, it's not a coincidence that the players that are playing the best and are lifting us and buying into mourinho philosophy are the one he bought. Matic, Lukaku, Bailly.... He isn't afraid of dumping those that don't, look at Mkhi. And I would guess that if Pogba continues like he is, next year is going to be his last here.
The talking about coaching attacking play is just ridiculous.
I agree with people that what's keeping them from playing when we play the top 6 is his approach to bug games. But it was fecking Brighton, we saw that a lot this season, against smaller teams where there's no way he told them to play defensively, so no excuses really.
He should shoulder some of the blame of course, it's his team, his responsability to sort things out, but the players are as cowards as it gets, most of them anyway.
Couldn't even string two passes against some of the smaller teams, footballers of their ilk have to be coached attack to do the basic things. It's really a joke.
I don't agree with his approach to the game, like eveyone h, but let's stop protecting the players, they have as much responsability as him.
My take is simple, if we have, like some say, one of the best attacking talents in the country, they should be doing way better than that, even without being coached 'attacking' football.
The players can't even do the basic things for God's sake. It's not a coincidence that it happened with LVG before who, was teaching them how to play on attack.
People say that pep's barca team was almost playing by itself, because he had some cracking attacking talent, they didn't even need coaching (which I agree with some of it by the way), then they come here and say that, the players aren't been coached, that's why they can't do simple fecking things. That's the hypocrisy of some of the people here. It's football, when you have players like we do, they should be doing way better, even if Tony pulis was our coach.
There's no reason Sanchez misplaces so many passes like he does for example, and i' using him as an example so that the Martial and Shaw fan boys don't jump on this post which isn't about them.
The players have been cowards, it's not a coincidence that the players that are playing the best and are lifting us and buying into mourinho philosophy are the one he bought. Matic, Lukaku, Bailly.... He isn't afraid of dumping those that don't, look at Mkhi. And I would guess that if Pogba continues like he is, next year is going to be his last here.
The talking about coaching attacking play is just ridiculous.
I agree with people that what's keeping them from playing when we play the top 6 is his approach to bug games. But it was fecking Brighton, we saw that a lot this season, against smaller teams where there's no way he told them to play defensively, so no excuses really.
He should shoulder some of the blame of course, it's his team, his responsability to sort things out, but the players are as cowards as it gets, most of them anyway.
Couldn't even string two passes against some of the smaller teams, footballers of their ilk have to be coached attack to do the basic things. It's really a joke.
I don't agree with his approach to the game, like eveyone h, but let's stop protecting the players, they have as much responsability as him.
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