Positives from Mourinho's spell at United?

Adisa

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Apart from the trophies, can't think of any lasting positive. Maybe McSauce.
 

Wumminator

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That now our current manager doesn’t have to deal with people constantly asking for him to be fired because the “special one” is free.
That I don’t have to listen to how he is made for United or a “serial winner”
 

sajeev

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That now our current manager doesn’t have to deal with people constantly asking for him to be fired because the “special one” is free.
That I don’t have to listen to how he is made for United or a “serial winner”
This
 

Kag

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As highlighted already: two trophies and his sacking.

From a footballing point of view, there were very few positives and, come the end, we had gone backwards in more or less every way.
 

Sayros

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Trophies and got the team to second place, and somehow the negatives outweighed that.
 

Woodzy

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Think we are being a bit too unkind.

Lots of positives, mostly early on:
  • Dropped Rooney from starting position and let him go when previous two managers were reluctant
  • Won a couple of trophies
  • Qualified for Champions League twice
  • Finished second during a time where the league is at its most competitive
  • Brought a special player to the club in Zlatan, who made a huge contribution in his first season
  • Identified McTominay, and put a lot of faith in him early on where a lot of us were not quite seeing his potential (he also could have easily ruined his career by playing him at CB to try and prove a point to the board, but that's another story)
  • Dull football and tactics aside, he actually made Fellaini useful and a match winner on many occasions
There are of course, far more negatives than positives, but the point stands that he wasn't a complete disaster and actually did some good for the club, at least not until season 3.
 

Pav1878

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Think we are being a bit too unkind.

Lots of positives, mostly early on:
  • Dropped Rooney from starting position and let him go when previous two managers were reluctant
  • Won a couple of trophies
  • Qualified for Champions League twice
  • Finished second during a time where the league is at its most competitive
  • Brought a special player to the club in Zlatan, who made a huge contribution in his first season
  • Identified McTominay, and put a lot of faith in him early on where a lot of us were not quite seeing his potential (he also could have easily ruined his career by playing him at CB to try and prove a point to the board, but that's another story)
  • Dull football and tactics aside, he actually made Fellaini useful and a match winner on many occasions
There are of course, far more negatives than positives, but the point stands that he wasn't a complete disaster and actually did some good for the club, at least not until season 3.
Agree with this post. Mourinho had his negatives but he at least made us relevant again. Plus Zlatan will now always be a successful united player, and that's very cool
 

RkkMan

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The trophies
His press conferences(they were better than Ole`s TBH only LVG was more box office with the press)
His handling of Rooney
Our second placed finish and results in big games that season most notbaly the comeback against City away and Liverpool at Old Trafford
De Gea`s prime
Back to back CL seasons
Our statement transfer window in 2016
Other than these hard to think of any other positives.
 

stevoc

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The club is no longer trying to assemble a team of 30+ journey men.
 

Josh 76

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His first press conference as Utd manager.
2 trophies
Somehow finishing above Klopp in PL.
 

clarkydaz

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Handled Rooney out of the club great. Gave me reason to think he had matured as a manager, oh well
 

charlenefan

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I'm not sure I can even look back now at the two trophies with all that much fondness, I mean Zlatan was great that season and he was a positive so I guess you can give Jose credit for him but the football we played in both of his seasons was shite. It seemed better because LVG's football was even worse but when you look back we shithoused our way to both trophies which on another day could have gone against us in multiple occasions

The 2nd season the league results were obviously better (going from 6th to 2nd) and I guess had it not been for City we'd of won the league that year, we really were a typical effective Jose team in 17/18 always doing just enough to win but you can't look back at it fondly
 

stu_1992

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Obvious thing was the trophies of course. He got us back into the Champions League following an enjoyable run to the Europa League win.

McTominay is another big positive from him. Can't say much of the same for his transfers, but Fred has turned out well though he didn't show that under Mourinho. I know people like to complain about Matic, and I have too on occasion, but I reckon he's been a decent buy for us overall. Having Zlatan for that 18 months, but especially the first year was enjoyable too.
 

arthurka

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McT
Nothing else.
He left this club in the shits.
Never a Utd manager and Sir Bobby knew it all along.
 

Greck

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Elated we no longer have to treat finishing second as a badge of honour.
 

SilentWitness

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McTominay, Pogba, Lindelof and Fred have all been good signings or introductions.

Having someone like Zlatan probably helped Rashford and a few of the other lads hugely mentality wise.

It showed how much you needed a CB like Maguire no matter how much it cost.
 

harms

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He warned us about the virus way beforehand.
 

Sweet Square

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The league cup and europa league win were brilliant(The relief after Zlatan winner was a special moment).

Honestly his time here wasn't that bad and in a few years people will look somewhat positively towards it.
 

ROFLUTION

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Made us realize we need to have a lot of patience and a clear concept for running our club for the long run.

Cant just go with flavour of the year managers with totally different approaches. Its a completely ineffective way of spending money.

Problems haven't been fixed yet, but we all know now. Actually this is all mostly Woodward's fault for not finding the right fit.

Id be a negative git too working for a fool like Woodward who knows nothing about football. He basically needs to try out all options player- and managerwise to figure out what makes a good foundation. It takes a very narrowminded businessmind to do that and only learn from own mistakes. A great one listens and learns from others mistakes.
 

Josep Dowling

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His first season we won two trophies.

Loved Zlatan being here.

Beating Juventus in Italy felt like our biggest result in Euroe

He gave a lot of faith to Rashford as well as McTominay. Jose was questioned every week about his youth policy when he provided more minutes to youngsters than any top 6 manager in the first couple of seasons.

It didn’t work out but he’s been our most successful manager post Ferguson. Maybe the board should have listened to him or sacked him before giving him a new contract. After all our first main target after we sacked him was to pay a world record fee for a CB.
 

Adam-Utd

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He broke us so that we could be reborn a new.
 

2 man midfield

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I liked his first two seasons, it felt like we were competitive again. You never got the impression it was long term though, it was very much this is it, all or nothing.
 

anant

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1. Took us to our rock bottom which meant that we finally had to correct our strategy in the market and now you can see that we are heading towards the right track.
2. Ended the argument the 'serial winner' argument. Finally, most people realize that the manager needs to be a right fit with the club's core values
 

dalriada

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I think it will be a bit like looking back on Tommy Docherty - secured promotion back from Div 2 to third in Div 1 and as far as FA Cup final against Southampton, so successful compared to O'Farrell but personally highly unlikable and inclined to backstabbing. From the moment Mourinho arrived, to me it looked like an appointment for short term success - and League Cup and Europa League were big successes in the context of where we were since SAF's retirement - but long term trouble.

Zlatan was great entertainment value, but clearly not a solution to our longer term needs. His transfers in were mixed - Lindelöf, Bailly, Fred, Matić and Dalot are all still here, with varying degrees of success, but the ones who aren't (or not actively contributing) have been expensive failures. For all his claims that he supported youth, his handling of Rashford was almost deliberately equivocal and his only promotion from the second team was McTominay - his one notable success - who was used for his height as a kind of alternative Fellaini when the latter was unavailable. During the time he was here, the youth teams lost key members of the coaching staff and the second team was relegated. Youth players were constantly denigrated as "kids" ("This is Manchester United, we don't play kids" - !!!) and when he took some of the "kids" on pre-season tour he couldn't even remember their names.

At the time we appointed him the risk was that we would get a couple of years of relative success followed by a big falling out and a big pile of crap to sort out afterwards, and that's exactly what's happened. We are still sorting it out now, although it's not all Mourinho's fault, more a consequence of trying to replace a manager who became the beating heart of the club for 26 years and struggling to find one who would take it in a direction that it felt comfortable with.

So Mourinho will go down as part of that process, which has taken too long, but the only positives from his spell will be what you would expect of him - a couple of pieces of quick silverware, and a decent second season, and even that was 19 points behind City. He was never, ever going to be the man to rebuild the team and that became evident in his third season.
 
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1. Took us to our rock bottom which meant that we finally had to correct our strategy in the market and now you can see that we are heading towards the right track.
2. Ended the argument the 'serial winner' argument. Finally, most people realize that the manager needs to be a right fit with the club's core values
Moyes was rock bottom.
 

anant

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Moyes was rock bottom.
Under Moyes, we had retained the values and the changes was easily reversible. What Mou did was destroy the fabric of the club, divide our base and it just seemed a club in a civil war
 

Andycoleno9

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Except winning only trophy which we didn't have, winning league cup, buying Fred, Pogba, Zlatan and Lindelof, promoting McT, making United relevant and big again, getting us back in Cl.....it was shit reign.
.