They were, that's why it's a little worrying at the moment because United under Mourinho has hardly shown the attacking prowess of his teams of old. Okay we might not have the same quality of player but again, we aren't fecking relegation fodder. We have the second best squad in the league, we don't play like we do though.
Jose saving his skin - yet again.. (Manager v Players blame game)
- Thread starter Raees
- Start date
-
Nik (@Rood) and Imran (@Annihilate Now!) discuss United's fantastic win away against Athletic Club in the semi-final of the Europa League.
They also pick out the positives of United's 4-3 loss away at Brentford, and Nik reviews a day out at Old Trafford watching Manchester United Women qualify for the Champions League.
- Status
For that you also need squad like the absolute top teams. No, our squad can't do both, play attacking as well as win big. I don't mean the squad is shit or players are incapable but the mentality of many is questionable while dealing with pressure situations. I don't have an issue with hoping for better football? Why would I? Why would anyone? It isn't debatable whether we play a fluid brand of football. We don't. I have issues with comments which imply it is all down to Mourinho and if we get Jardim or Sarri or whoever, it will magically transform, while keeping results consistent as top clubs.
Ameen.
I can tell you that I am disappointed we aren't winning with smooth attacking football. I am disappointed our team isn't gelling well. I am disappointed we lose games like Sevilla at home. What is not disappointing is that for the first time in years, actually for the first time since SAF I go into games expecting to win. I don't expect the bad results. I don't expect the 0-0 draws. Players also want to join us, Superstars!
Our football might not be pretty at the moment but the results are and that's enough for me.
Our football might not be pretty at the moment but the results are and that's enough for me.
We also seat 2nd in league
. For me, the more work which is needed on squad is mentality wise than about their talent or team tactics. If what team does on training ground is markedly different than what they do on pitch(and of course on pitch, in real match things will be different), then players mentality also plays a part. There is only so much you can get by changing managers constantly, unless you have players like RM and Barca. Even those players with superior quality need to maintain strong mentality to win.It is funny that mentality of our players has been questioned a lot on this forum since Fergie left, both in individual performances thread and in general, but when Mourinho points it out, it is wrong. Why because he supposedly wants us to play cowardly football. It doesn't add up.
Suprised so many think the vast majority of players will fall out with him to be honest.
He'll have quite a few on his side in the dressing room I'd feel. There's no way most of the players will have been happy with what they served up and will know they can do better.
I don't think we'll see Shaw again before he leaves in the summer so that won't cause too much disharmony really.
Players like Lukaku, Matic, McTominay and I even feel Pogba and Sanchez will be fully behind him.
I'll explain the Pogba and Sanchez ones as I know they will cause issues.
Pogba won't be happy recieving the ball so slowly from the back and will know it can be much better. His ego will also push some of the blame for his poor performances on lack of movement ahead of him.
Sanchez has the same type of ego as Pogba and will also want a faster pace of play.
Now by no means do I think that they'll actually get these things, but they will support the manager in the sense of agreeing with his points and wanting the same things.
A core of Matic, McTominay, Pogba, Sanchez and Lukaku supporting Mourinho will ensure that most of the dressing room is on side. They're our big name players (bar McTominay) and will have most command of that dressing room.
He'll have quite a few on his side in the dressing room I'd feel. There's no way most of the players will have been happy with what they served up and will know they can do better.
I don't think we'll see Shaw again before he leaves in the summer so that won't cause too much disharmony really.
Players like Lukaku, Matic, McTominay and I even feel Pogba and Sanchez will be fully behind him.
I'll explain the Pogba and Sanchez ones as I know they will cause issues.
Pogba won't be happy recieving the ball so slowly from the back and will know it can be much better. His ego will also push some of the blame for his poor performances on lack of movement ahead of him.
Sanchez has the same type of ego as Pogba and will also want a faster pace of play.
Now by no means do I think that they'll actually get these things, but they will support the manager in the sense of agreeing with his points and wanting the same things.
A core of Matic, McTominay, Pogba, Sanchez and Lukaku supporting Mourinho will ensure that most of the dressing room is on side. They're our big name players (bar McTominay) and will have most command of that dressing room.
Whilst I’m bored of his football and the Seville game was just brutal.
Even if we get the best attacking manager available he is not going to turn Valencia, Lingard, McTominay and Shaw into great attackers. Rashford and Martial have both been hit and miss also. Rashford more so because at times he takes too much time on the ball. Young puts in a great ball once every 10 games. People used to cringe when Fergie started Valencia and Young. Yet here we are six year laters and these two are still offering the team width. That can’t be right.
The difference between Mourinho and Pep in terms of squad building is Pep knew what he wanted. He wanted ball playing centre backs and attacking wing backs. He also binned the underperforming fullbacks. He binned Joe Hart.
Where as Mourinho has barely let any players go. He hasn’t been as ruthless as Pep in terms of squad building. Here we are two years later with a lot of the players still here. Why is Darmian still here? Why is Blind here if you not going to use him? There’s a few others in that category. One of the centre backs needs to leave in the summer or maybe two if we sign another one.
We don’t need just in comings in the summer. We need to start shifting the waste.
Even if we get the best attacking manager available he is not going to turn Valencia, Lingard, McTominay and Shaw into great attackers. Rashford and Martial have both been hit and miss also. Rashford more so because at times he takes too much time on the ball. Young puts in a great ball once every 10 games. People used to cringe when Fergie started Valencia and Young. Yet here we are six year laters and these two are still offering the team width. That can’t be right.
The difference between Mourinho and Pep in terms of squad building is Pep knew what he wanted. He wanted ball playing centre backs and attacking wing backs. He also binned the underperforming fullbacks. He binned Joe Hart.
Where as Mourinho has barely let any players go. He hasn’t been as ruthless as Pep in terms of squad building. Here we are two years later with a lot of the players still here. Why is Darmian still here? Why is Blind here if you not going to use him? There’s a few others in that category. One of the centre backs needs to leave in the summer or maybe two if we sign another one.
We don’t need just in comings in the summer. We need to start shifting the waste.
Yes we don't have a squad comparable to the likes of Bayern and Barcelona, but is our squad so inferior to the likes of Sevilla? Even Brighton looked more organized yesterday than us. No one is asking us to play champagne football and win trophies in a matter of weeks, shouldn't we at least expect to see a semblance of improvement in that front?
I've been one of Mou's strongest supporters but the last couple press conferences have been shambolic. No manager with full control of and support from the dressing room constantly singles out players to publicly humiliate them. He definitely seems like 3rd season Mou, which we were all hoping wouldn't show up at United until the 6th season. But he's here, in the 2nd season.
Needs to change his attitude soon. Or he needs to go
Needs to change his attitude soon. Or he needs to go
How can we determine whether the players are mentally weak though? That’s where the body language experts pipe up and say it’s visible from their in-game reactions. It’s really not, so it seems rather pointless to question their mentality when it’s in no way public knowledge.We also seat 2nd in league
It is funny that mentality of our players has been questioned a lot on this forum since Fergie left, both in individual performances thread and in general, but when Mourinho points it out, it is wrong. Why because he supposedly wants us to play cowardly football. It doesn't add up.
Just wait when main followers wake up and see your thread 
He's sold a lot of the deadwood really in just 4 windows.
Depay, Schniderlin, Rooney, Schweinsteiger, Januzaj, Valdes. Then you have the youngsters he let go, Blackett, Keane, McNair, Powell.
That's a lot in 2 years. This year we can expect Blind and Darmian to go from that stock of deadwood with full backs coming in to replace them.
We can only add 3 or 4 players each season so it makes sense that 3 or 4 will leave each season aswell.
Why are people such pussies. This is not an office job. Its a sport. Its more like the army. OK its not to that degree but in football you need to man the fk up. If your manager gives you shit. Your response is yes sir and try harder. They should instill this in them from a very young age. My manager gave us shit all the time. I can't remember anyone crying. Its just an interview.....get over it.
We also seat 2nd in league
It is funny that mentality of our players has been questioned a lot on this forum since Fergie left, both in individual performances thread and in general, but when Mourinho points it out, it is wrong. Why because he supposedly wants us to play cowardly football. It doesn't add up.
Mentality doesn't improve cohesive football though TMH. You definitely have a point if something goes on in the training room and something entirely different goes on in the pitch. However, with mouthpieces like Duncan castles and @Maradona10, we would have surely heard about them, no?
If your manager chats shit, no worries just suck harder seems to be the prevailing mantra at the moment.
I think I am missing the agenda here. Jose said the exact things we all are saying even in threads. Luke is past it. So him. He was no good before injury and no good past it. He doesn't have a single senior goal in his name. Jose was right to criticize him. Valencia is not a right back we all know that. He can barely beat the first person he meets on the track. But with the given budget he could either buy 8 mediocre players and turn them into masters like pep or he could buy 3 good players hoping they will enhance the team performance. If pogba is more interested in dabbing and dancing how can we blame jose for that. Matic is playing good, Bailey is good, lukaku is good, lindelof is not so bad. His transfers were not all failures .
I want us to see our full backs to overlap in attack, jose wants that too but if our full backs do not do that can we blame jose ? If we do not play our current full backs, then whom shall we play there. We are lacking players in certain positions and to take care of that he needs to have few transfer seasons . Alexis needs sometime so I won't talk about him. But others, he was right to be critical where it is needed to be .
If jose is asking his players not to concede goals, does it also means, do not keep possession as well .we can still have clean sheet every game if we can keep hold of the ball by passing it around the park and look for openings to attack. Yes he is defensive manager but he is also the manager who got most points and goals in epl and most goals in Spain.
Every time I read a bit about jose it feels like he cannot be more wrong, but when I see his actual press conference I realize he said exactly what we think too.
Guys I am very far away from manchester sadly, but those who can atleast give the best support to our manager and players atleast till end of season. 2nd and FA cup is still much better a season to have. GGMU
I want us to see our full backs to overlap in attack, jose wants that too but if our full backs do not do that can we blame jose ? If we do not play our current full backs, then whom shall we play there. We are lacking players in certain positions and to take care of that he needs to have few transfer seasons . Alexis needs sometime so I won't talk about him. But others, he was right to be critical where it is needed to be .
If jose is asking his players not to concede goals, does it also means, do not keep possession as well .we can still have clean sheet every game if we can keep hold of the ball by passing it around the park and look for openings to attack. Yes he is defensive manager but he is also the manager who got most points and goals in epl and most goals in Spain.
Every time I read a bit about jose it feels like he cannot be more wrong, but when I see his actual press conference I realize he said exactly what we think too.
Guys I am very far away from manchester sadly, but those who can atleast give the best support to our manager and players atleast till end of season. 2nd and FA cup is still much better a season to have. GGMU
Players....
Look at the top 4:
City: KDB, Aguero, D Silva, Sane
Liverpool: Salah, Mane
Spurs: Kane, Son, Alli, Erikson
United: Lukaku, Rashford, Martial, Sanchez
Honestly, City, Liverpool and Spurs have better attacking players -- by a wide margin -- than we do. Look, with Hazard and Willian, Chelsea have better attackers than we do and it's a minor miracle we are in 2nd.
We were garbage on the pitch today. But I saw a team that didn't have heart. Lukaku, yes, he has heart. Matic, Valencia, yes.
I'm with Jose on this. You can be playing god awful football, but you cannot shirk from your responsibilities. Stand tall in the shirt. You must defend, no matter how poorly you play when attacking.
We can all criticize Jose, but he's working with substandard attacking players at the moment compared to other contenders in the league.
Look at the top 4:
City: KDB, Aguero, D Silva, Sane
Liverpool: Salah, Mane
Spurs: Kane, Son, Alli, Erikson
United: Lukaku, Rashford, Martial, Sanchez
Honestly, City, Liverpool and Spurs have better attacking players -- by a wide margin -- than we do. Look, with Hazard and Willian, Chelsea have better attackers than we do and it's a minor miracle we are in 2nd.
We were garbage on the pitch today. But I saw a team that didn't have heart. Lukaku, yes, he has heart. Matic, Valencia, yes.
I'm with Jose on this. You can be playing god awful football, but you cannot shirk from your responsibilities. Stand tall in the shirt. You must defend, no matter how poorly you play when attacking.
We can all criticize Jose, but he's working with substandard attacking players at the moment compared to other contenders in the league.
Was our squad unorganized for Chelsea and Liverpool matches? Have we been unorganized whole season? If we are averaging more than 2 points a game in a league, scoring more than what we did in any season after 2013, surely we are doing something right? We need a lot of improvement but it is not fair to say that everything is unorganized and shite just because we unexpectedly lost to Sevilla.
I am not claiming to be body language expert but some teams and players react better to going behind or after losing key game. We had it with Fergie teams.
See I am not saying all out players have terrible attitude. They don't. You don't get 65 points from 30 games that way. I am not going to say that it is because of only Mourinho we are there. Players also deserve credit. Players also seem to have good bonding in general which helps. I doubt the ability to come out when going gets tough and then to own it to change it. We don't see many players doing that. You saw Lukaku, how animated he was after scoring vs Sevilla. There was close to zero chance of getting anything thereafter but he was pumped up and wanting to go for it. If all players display that attitude, when faced with tough situations and also going into games from start, we should see differences. Nowadays there is tendency of thinking football is all mathematical given the terminologies that float around and so many sites explaining tactics etc. I don't discredit that and it is good to gain knowledge for us as fans and it also plays big part in key games especially. What I think though is, football is still a simple game where a top mentality coupled with good quality goes a long way. It is also a game where small small moments can alter courses of whole game. Some such moments don't seem big ones after the fact. The great teams grab and capitalize on those moments. You need to go into game with certain mentality for that, without thinking already that game is played on paper with net talent value so if we are better on paper we will eventually win. The killer instinct you may call. Do people think it is there in team?
The draw was Mouriniho fault. He decided we should sit back with Leicester down to 10 men and counter. We invited cross after cross into the box from Albrighton. We could have played out time by holding possession bur that wasn't his plan
Well.... Yeah? Throwing the toys out of the pram as a fan isn't going to fix anything. If the players don't want to be there then the manager must get on with getting rid of them and continuing to build. Football is cyclical, of course. At what point do people start wise up and realize that this is a massive rebuild and we're still probably a quarter (if that) of the way into it?
We don't have a captain. We have two wingers playing as fullbacks, we've got players who look like they are downing tools when they've been told to go out and play for their own reputation at the very minimum.
I've lost the track of some of the narrative here to be honest. If the football is shit then blame it on the players, it is their responsibility - the manager can't go out there and play the game for them. If they can't hack it, leave.
Yet another thread OP full of anger and walls of text, but lacking intelligence. Did he not hear Lukaku say "players are hiding in the locker room" after the Sevilla loss? The players were rightly embarrassed by their performance and the result, yet Mourinho defended them anyway.
So the OP apparently needs explained to him why Mourinho didn't defend the players after the Brighton game, since to his blind eyes it was the same performance he saw against Sevilla (sans the loss). So I will explain it to him: the lack of response from the players that failed to show up against Sevilla. That's what pissed Mourinho off. This was their chance to right that wrong, and instead they were scared to play. Having a bad game, and even failing under the pressure of the Sevilla game, were forgivable offenses (in Mourinho's eyes). What was not acceptable was the players failing to respond to that loss.
Who did Mourinho praise in the post-match press conference? McTominay. Even though he had his worst performance in a United shirt, Mourinho praised him for his character and willingness to fight.
OP, how this stuff isn't plainly obvious to you is baffling to me.
So the OP apparently needs explained to him why Mourinho didn't defend the players after the Brighton game, since to his blind eyes it was the same performance he saw against Sevilla (sans the loss). So I will explain it to him: the lack of response from the players that failed to show up against Sevilla. That's what pissed Mourinho off. This was their chance to right that wrong, and instead they were scared to play. Having a bad game, and even failing under the pressure of the Sevilla game, were forgivable offenses (in Mourinho's eyes). What was not acceptable was the players failing to respond to that loss.
Who did Mourinho praise in the post-match press conference? McTominay. Even though he had his worst performance in a United shirt, Mourinho praised him for his character and willingness to fight.
OP, how this stuff isn't plainly obvious to you is baffling to me.
Good post.
And you're getting good results, let's not forget that either.
Great post.
Blem
We are getting what many would believe is the minimum, given our squad.
Millennials. If the teacher yelled at them in school, the teacher was fired. This is why Jose's methods are "outdated".
This is what mourinho said in the Brighton pre match press conference
"One day when I leave, the next Manchester United manager will find here Romelu Lukaku, Nemanja Matic, of course David de Gea from many years ago, they will find players with a different mentality, quality, background, with a different status and know-how."
So basically he inherited a shit team and everyone except ddg is not worth keeping from the team he inherited.
And there was this.
"Do you think they didn't have any players who could play in my team?"
So most our team can be replaced by Sevilla players that's how poor his team is.
Now either I don't know what defending someone means and we have all been doing it wrong or mourinho doesn't seem to.
This is why I rarely watch or read interviews
Mourinho defended the players after the Sevilla loss? Have you somehow missed the presser?
He has been a great manager and is currently still a good manager (not great) but by God I haven't heard another manager bitch and talk shit about his players so much as him.
Why play Shaw in the first place.? Certainly couldn't have been on merit. A shadow of the young player we bought from Southhampton and then one of the best young LB's in the game. He looks ready for the Travellers yard. Reminds me of a freak show. Makes you think he just gave him a run out to for him to dig his own grave and Mourinho prove a point and stop the fans getting on his back for not playing him.
What’s the obsession with Shaw. Dude got mantitties. How many top pros have mantitties
Thankyou for saving me to write a wall of text. @fishfingers15 this words my reply to you perfectly.
Whether he is right or not he shouldn't be saying it in Public.
If They aren't good enough sell them. No need to slaughter them in the public forum.
Jose is not playing football, players are. They have to react, they have to have pride. They have to fight back. You should not need managers words after what happened against seville, the reaction should be automatic. It was from Matic and lukaku, it wasnt from others. Shaw is done here, we ll sell him for a fee as now he signed a contract. Martial is another one, who plays well when going is easy. He is the respawn of nani right now whilst not being as good.
I hadn't watched the press conference before I saw the thread. It made me curious so I had to watch it.
Honestly, I don't think he didn't said what we are all thinking. Some of the players are and have always been sh*t. They must step up or step down. We need fighter/winners, Keane's and Cantona's. We need passion and desire.
I do agree with the point that as a manager he can't afford to say what he says the way he says it but he is who he is. He was always a controversial person and manager. There will always be players and people who react both positive and negative to his character.
I was never a Mourinho fan but I do respect what he has achieved with lesser teams. Him being unable to make our players win speaks volumes about the state of the squad and the damage that was done by the 2 goons preceding him. You may even argue that our decline started way before that. Ever since the the Glazers' takeover. We were dominant for so long that we could get away with the Klebersons and Djebmas and Bellions but there are only that many good players that you can let go of and never properly replace. Now I don't know if it was the lack of money or Fergie not believing in value for money or the stars alignment but is sure took its toll.
Honestly, I don't think he didn't said what we are all thinking. Some of the players are and have always been sh*t. They must step up or step down. We need fighter/winners, Keane's and Cantona's. We need passion and desire.
I do agree with the point that as a manager he can't afford to say what he says the way he says it but he is who he is. He was always a controversial person and manager. There will always be players and people who react both positive and negative to his character.
I was never a Mourinho fan but I do respect what he has achieved with lesser teams. Him being unable to make our players win speaks volumes about the state of the squad and the damage that was done by the 2 goons preceding him. You may even argue that our decline started way before that. Ever since the the Glazers' takeover. We were dominant for so long that we could get away with the Klebersons and Djebmas and Bellions but there are only that many good players that you can let go of and never properly replace. Now I don't know if it was the lack of money or Fergie not believing in value for money or the stars alignment but is sure took its toll.
Yep, everyone but the manager is responsible for how things are.
Some of Jose defenders Must be paid to write this genius stuff.
Must be paid to write this genius stuff.- Status