Were LVG and Jose both past their prime? Or does the rot go deeper?

11101

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Our predicament is not down to tactics or squad quality. It is down to man management and mentality and the damage Moyes did to that area. LVG and Mourinho are great tacticians but their man management skills are from a previous generation. So was Ferguson's in fairness, but he was so successful and had such control over the club players wanted to play for him regardless, and the ones that didn't were unceremoniously booted out.

We don't need another great of the game who wants players to fit his tried and tested plan. We need someone who can motivate them and will build a plan to fit the players.
 

99withaflake

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Deeper. When our 4th manager during the Woodward/Glazers partnership era also struggles, the penny will drop with even more supporters.

Don't get me wrong, all of those managers have under-performed at times, but the club has far bigger issues than the current first team coach.
 

Mainoldo

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Everyone suddenly pass their prime immediately they join us. Coaches, Players, fans, scouts, everyone.
Yeah what happened at Chelsea then? He’s been gone since he got sacked at Madrid.
 

Mainoldo

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Deeper. When our 4th manager during the Woodward/Glazers partnership era also struggles, the penny will drop with even more supporters.

Don't get me wrong, all of those managers have under-performed at times, but the club has far bigger issues than the current first team coach.
Moyes - been crap everywhere since he got sacked here.

LVG - Where is he managing now?

I think it’s safe to say we have just made crap appointments.
 

broccoli

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100% sure Mourinho will be a success in the next club. You can quote me on that.
 

WR10

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Lvg just didn’t fit our style. Mourinho just didn’t get the players for his style.
 

Red_toad

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It will be clear after the next manager.
It's already obvious our issues are above team manager level. Yes we make a lot of money, but appointments and purchases have been generally terrible for the money spent on wages and transfer fees. We should be easily the second best team in the league and very able to progress into the latter stages of the champions league.
 

broccoli

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Who cares! He is not a success here, that's what matters.
I'm just saying you're royally fecked until you get rid of Woodward. He's clueless and always have been. A new manager like Zidane might rally the troops for a while but it will all be blunt without a proper club structure and players.
 

ActionJackson

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Quite simply Mourinho had never taken charge of a side who were so weak in their own domestic league.
In comparison to the Portuguese league his Porto team were very good.

The Chelsea side he 1st took charge of had just finished runners up to Arsenal and they went out and spent £100+ million when no other side in world football was spending that sort of money.

Inter Milan had been Champions for a number of years before Mou arrived.

Real had an unbelievable squad of world class players who were always going to be challenging.

And his 2nd stint at Chelsea, although not as strong as 1st time around, he still had a number of top players and in my opinion around that time the Prem was at its lowest standard.

Now even tho I believe we have some good players there are 4 teams in City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Spurs who are stronger than us and a number of teams in Arsenal, Everton, West Ham, Leicester who have enough quality to seriously challenge us. I don't think Mourinho knows what to do when half the teams in the league are more than capable of taking us on and beating us and he finds himself in a position of vunerability.

We need a manager who has been the underdog, who has had to succeed with limited resources. A manager who week in week out has had to out think his opponents and has had to develop great man management to get lesser players to perform as part of a successful team. For United the premier league is no longer a case of us v 1 other side for the title as it was for much of Fergies reign and as much as it hurts we are now big underdogs in our own city.

Personally I would try and get Poch from Spurs. He has created a very good side there on comparably limited resources and given their lack of investment this season is imagine the prospect of the United job plus a big transfer kitty would be very appealing to him.
 

settembrini

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All three managers we have appointed post-Ferguson have been on the decline.
 

el3mel

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It's already obvious our issues are above team manager level. Yes we make a lot of money, but appointments and purchases have been generally terrible for the money spent on wages and transfer fees. We should be easily the second best team in the league and very able to progress into the latter stages of the champions league.
I agree completely but some think it's manager only and once chopping them, so I think it'll be obvious if the next manager ends up having the same trajectory.

That doesn't mean I don't want the current manager sacked, but I want him to go out taking several heads with him.
 

thesheriffjw

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Just poor management in all fairness. All 3 since fergie have a very negative style of play. An outdated style of play.

Tactics and man management has changed but the last 3 have not.
 

Reynoldo

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The biggest mistake in that was to hire Mourinho after LvG. Two totally different approaches. I do think LvG build a good team, but his successor had to be someone that believes that posession matters in football. With Mourinho United hired a totally different beast.
Not sure about the him building a good team part but the bolded part is again the worrying sign, not only is it a question of if they were past it but on top of this we have been signing these (good/bad) managers at the wrong time. Like you said had we signed someone to continue the possession approach LVG started then you could see a plan in place. Likewise if we had gone for Jose initially instead of Moyes then I believe things would have been very different, Jose would have been fired up after Real to prove it was just a Real issue and not him and I still believe he was the only man capable of managing the immediate post Fergie era, he has the ego for it. I still think he would have had his 3rd (or shortly after) season meltdown once pep did his magic and overtook him but I think he would have won use a pl or two before then.
 

Adam-Utd

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Quite clearly yes.

You can't tell me if we had Poch / Klopp / Sarri / Guardiola we wouldn't be playing MUCH better football than this.

We severely lack even the basics of playing football in this team. We don't practice as a team as Mourinho finds having the ball not important. It's outdated.
 

pocco

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A lot of people, even those that didn't like Jose, admitted that if Jose can't squeeze at least one title out of us then nobody will. That's obviously forgotten now and a lot of revision of opinion has taken place. But I still think it was a fair assessment at the time. So where does it leave us now? Plunging into the abyss basically.

I don't buy for one second that Jose is a dinosaur or anything like that. Maybe he's not attack minded, but this guy has always known how to set up a team. The problem is he's never even managed to get this team functioning like the efficient Mourinho machine. That's why people have to consider that there are other issues, as well as the manager. It doesn't have to be one or the other, but there's no manager that comes in and fixes us without an element of rebuilding imo.
 

luke511

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Both managers are shite at man management, especially Mourinho, and it's the most fundamental part of managing a modern football team. The mind boggles really.
 

Adam_S

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In a way, it goes to show just how truly impressive SAF was. Look at how football changed over his time in charge but he managed to reinvent himself and his team over and over again to keep up. I don't think LVG or Mourinho had it in them to do the same and the game has moved on.
 

FootballHQ

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In his own way Fergie was a miracle worker.

Lifted world class performances out of average to good players in certain games (Wes Brown, Ji Sung Park, O'Shea and Fletcher to name four) whereas Mourinho is getting average performances out of world class ones.

The mentality aswell was also off the scale. Think back to the routine times you lot were 2 down and got at least a point if not a win.

I was in a pub with 10 Man. United fans on the next two tables yesterday watching the game. When it went 3-1, 7/8 of them got up and left.:lol: Serious point though is now when Man,. United go 2 down in a match there is no belief they'll turn things around like the good old days.

When Fergie left the siege mentality went with him and that's pretty much cost you 10-15 points season on season and it certainly shows in the league table every year.
 

stevoc

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I really don't get the whole things go deeper and there is something seriously wrong at the club theories. It all sounds pseudo religious and tries to paint the problem as bigger than it actually is. The reality is we don't have a proper structure at the club but that can be fixed by hiring a few personnel at key areas such as DOF, scouts etc. I'd start the process by sacking Mourhino and hiring Carrick or McKenna as interim manager, writing the season off and using the next year to put the structure in place before hiring the new manager. People may argue that we cannot afford to write the season off but there is no guarantee that hiring a new manager now will result in better season than putting Carrick in charge.
There no guarantee no, but theres a very real possibility thats things could be way worse than under an experienced manager.
 

Slevs

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People keep forgetting that our points tally for last season would have won us the league in previous seasons.
 

Newman123

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I definitely think they were both past their prime which is why I'm not one to think we won't challenge for the title under this board. If the next manager we sign is one who's in his prime or seemingly entering it, and is of course one who favours having the ball than not, I think we'll do alright again.

I do honestly think if we had got a Pochettino or Sarri and gave them the funds José and van Gaal got we'd be so much better off, so the next manager, with our limited options, doesn't need to have the best list of honours. Just get a progressive manager in like all our rivlas bar Arsenal have and back them in the transfer market - that's it, imo.
Jesus, what's with the shots?
 

Bobski

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I do think the game has moved on and he has not been willing to adapt. Still putting out teams with an emphasis on physicality, still relying on individual moments of quality to win games rather than create a team framework. Looking at the team line up yesterday before we realized that McTominany was at CB it looked like a dinosaur team. 6"4 McT, 6"4 Fellaini, 6"4 Matic, 6"3 Pogba as the midfield. Then you look at that Chelsea-Liverpool game and the speed, mobility and running power stands out. Utd can not play at that intensity, Mourinho has been building the wrong type of team, emphasizing the wrong attributes for the modern game.

LVG was the right type of manager, he was willing to build and sacrifice the short term in a way that Mourinho would never accept. Finding a younger, fresher version of LVG who would commit to the same type of hard graft should have been the choice instead of entirely new direction.
 

Ballache

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SAF was practically Dof at the club especially towards the end of his career.
We had a specific way of playing, a specific player profile both on and off the pitch and commercial success was a result of our success on the pitch and how we generally carried ourselves as a big club.
We have no direction at the moment, we're still trying to work with an outdated system with no clear guidelines as to who does what. This was evident this summer when Mou and Ed clashed over transfers.
We need to restructure, get a Dof with a mid to long term vision. Hire employees (managers and players) that fit into that vision.
Ed is good at the business side of things but he's not a football man.
We really should aim to win the league within 4 years or so, otherwise no noodle company will want to partner up with us anymore.
 

SpyLuke10

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I think Mourinho was the right appointment. Like it or not he brought some of the fear factor back to Man United, he made old trafford the hardest place in England to win at again - his presence no doubt would've helped us in attracting some of the players we got. His signings have been mostly good imo as well. Miki, Lindelof and Sanchez the poor ones, the rest good. Lindelof still young enough to change that though. We made real progress right up until he signed that contract extension earlier this year (and Sanchez signed).

In hindsight we should have appointed a new manager following the conclusion of last season. We should have gotten Sarri, Pochettino or Jardim.

I still think Jose is a half decent manager but he is definitely past his best. LVG was WELL PAST IT.
 

Di Maria's angel

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I think that the whole thing runs deeper than that. It starts with Moyes. Inept as he was, deserved sacking as it was, it was still the first player power thing that got him fired alongside his obvious shrotcomings and ineptitude. Nonetheless, it was the first sign to the players that 'if you want to sack the manager, you can do it', something that obviously was not present at the club for the previous 26 years. After Moyes was gone, plenty of players have gone public with criticism of him, generally speaking the blame could've been and has been laid on Moyes. Everybody else was absolved of the responsibility. Players came and went, new managers popped up, so the first year under LVG we've done okay-ish - we've gotten ourselves 4th, it was better than the Moyes disaster. Meanwhile we've had some questionable transfers done, Rooney's contract extended, lots of talk about 'signing a galactico', so we've gotten di Maria who never really wanted to come here, crock Falcao, past it Schweinsteiger.

So after some time, even though our players were in awe of LVG's professionalism and honesty at first, those things became a problem. Being recorded and then analysed at Carrington became a problem. Our players were sent their performances analyses that they didn't even bother to watch because LVG's a dinosaur and how can he even question them. He was blunt with them, but honesty is only good when you're saying honest nice things about people, when shit goes sideways and it's criticism, honesty is good no more. So they got him sacked, we've won the FA so all the glory to the players but LVG goes. Situation is repeated, players go to the public, talk shit about the manager, general consensus is that it was LVG who's just way past it and new manager will get us going. Everybody else is absolved of the responsibility again.

Mou comes in. We take him in with all the baggage that he brings, the good and the bad. He knows that people like Schweinsteiger shouldn't be here so he tries to get rid of him but we then have got Bayern, half the media and big chunk of our fanbase berate Mourinho for behaving like he did with Scheweinsteiger, even though the problem was brought upon us by Woodward and LVG, he has to deal with this shit. We've still got way past it Rooney, again, problem brought upon us by Moyes and Woodward. He finally gets rid of him, so it's a problem less. But the players still know that there's this button that they can activate that deals with the problems once they are simply bored of the manager. We've got Zlatan in, apparently he's the problem for other players because he's slowing down the play and shit. We've got Pogba who always wanted to come back here but actually wants to feck off after two or three seasons. Martial for whatever the reason is sulking, Pogba is sulking (to be fair everybody knew that sooner or later he'd do that and he wouldn't be the player for the next 10 years or so, don't know if anybody seriously ever even considered that), Raiola's dragging the club through mud but it's not really a problem for Pogba as he's getting him a new contract. Meanwhile we get Sanchez in, who seems to be nothing other than a bust for us and another Schweinsteiger case.

Now don't get me wrong, I'd be deluded to say that Mourinho holds no responsibility for this shit, he's done plenty wrong and it's obvious here. For me, there's probably no coming back for him now so he'll have to walk. But some of the shit, including horrible mentality that runs through the veins of this club ever since SAF departed, is not on him. Players have seen the corruption ever since the Moyes times, some of the players are still here (which begs a question how clown like Jones can still be here after so many years), the same players that got Moyes and then LVG sacked. It could've been Martial's first year at the club, it could've been LVG who's brought him in, but he's seen that if you try hard enough, you can feck off the manager if you no longer favour him. Which is being the case now. Again.

It's like with a teacher and students. If the teacher shows the students that he falters in disciplining them once, they'll know it for years to come and exploit any possiblity to take shit on him once they want to. Woodward, who plays the principal in this analogy, has come to the class, let the students take a shit on their previous teachers and prenteded that everything will be fine with a new teacher. So some of the students graduated, some new students joined the class, but the rot and corruption is still within the class because the principal has let it slide once. Now it's not really him calling the shots. It's the students, even if some of them come and go.

You also have to ask questions of our medical staff how over the years we're still getting players like Rojo or Bailly in, who are constantly injured and unreliable. We've got Smalling, Lindelof, Jones, Rojo and Bailly as centre backs, three different managers have gotten them in and only Smalling and Lindelof are not injury prone, you can ask plenty of questions of their quality too. Honestly, how?
I totally agree with this.

A friend, non-United supporter, said a while ago that "there's a stink at United that just won't go and it's been there since SAF left".
 

luke511

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It's fundamental to managing at any time. So why has Jose been so successful at every club except us? Can you lose your man management ability overnight?
I wouldn't say it was overnight, it started at Real Madrid, lost his job at Chelsea second time round because of it and now it's painfully obvious he's going to suffer the same fate here for the same reasons. His tactics are outdated as well so the two things combined spells disaster.
 

Siorac

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I think that the whole thing runs deeper than that. It starts with Moyes. Inept as he was, deserved sacking as it was, it was still the first player power thing that got him fired alongside his obvious shrotcomings and ineptitude. Nonetheless, it was the first sign to the players that 'if you want to sack the manager, you can do it', something that obviously was not present at the club for the previous 26 years. After Moyes was gone, plenty of players have gone public with criticism of him, generally speaking the blame could've been and has been laid on Moyes. Everybody else was absolved of the responsibility. Players came and went, new managers popped up, so the first year under LVG we've done okay-ish - we've gotten ourselves 4th, it was better than the Moyes disaster. Meanwhile we've had some questionable transfers done, Rooney's contract extended, lots of talk about 'signing a galactico', so we've gotten di Maria who never really wanted to come here, crock Falcao, past it Schweinsteiger.

So after some time, even though our players were in awe of LVG's professionalism and honesty at first, those things became a problem. Being recorded and then analysed at Carrington became a problem. Our players were sent their performances analyses that they didn't even bother to watch because LVG's a dinosaur and how can he even question them. He was blunt with them, but honesty is only good when you're saying honest nice things about people, when shit goes sideways and it's criticism, honesty is good no more. So they got him sacked, we've won the FA so all the glory to the players but LVG goes. Situation is repeated, players go to the public, talk shit about the manager, general consensus is that it was LVG who's just way past it and new manager will get us going. Everybody else is absolved of the responsibility again.

Mou comes in. We take him in with all the baggage that he brings, the good and the bad. He knows that people like Schweinsteiger shouldn't be here so he tries to get rid of him but we then have got Bayern, half the media and big chunk of our fanbase berate Mourinho for behaving like he did with Scheweinsteiger, even though the problem was brought upon us by Woodward and LVG, he has to deal with this shit. We've still got way past it Rooney, again, problem brought upon us by Moyes and Woodward. He finally gets rid of him, so it's a problem less. But the players still know that there's this button that they can activate that deals with the problems once they are simply bored of the manager. We've got Zlatan in, apparently he's the problem for other players because he's slowing down the play and shit. We've got Pogba who always wanted to come back here but actually wants to feck off after two or three seasons. Martial for whatever the reason is sulking, Pogba is sulking (to be fair everybody knew that sooner or later he'd do that and he wouldn't be the player for the next 10 years or so, don't know if anybody seriously ever even considered that), Raiola's dragging the club through mud but it's not really a problem for Pogba as he's getting him a new contract. Meanwhile we get Sanchez in, who seems to be nothing other than a bust for us and another Schweinsteiger case.

Now don't get me wrong, I'd be deluded to say that Mourinho holds no responsibility for this shit, he's done plenty wrong and it's obvious here. For me, there's probably no coming back for him now so he'll have to walk. But some of the shit, including horrible mentality that runs through the veins of this club ever since SAF departed, is not on him. Players have seen the corruption ever since the Moyes times, some of the players are still here (which begs a question how clown like Jones can still be here after so many years), the same players that got Moyes and then LVG sacked. It could've been Martial's first year at the club, it could've been LVG who's brought him in, but he's seen that if you try hard enough, you can feck off the manager if you no longer favour him. Which is being the case now. Again.

It's like with a teacher and students. If the teacher shows the students that he falters in disciplining them once, they'll know it for years to come and exploit any possiblity to take shit on him once they want to. Woodward, who plays the principal in this analogy, has come to the class, let the students take a shit on their previous teachers and prenteded that everything will be fine with a new teacher. So some of the students graduated, some new students joined the class, but the rot and corruption is still within the class because the principal has let it slide once. Now it's not really him calling the shots. It's the students, even if some of them come and go.

You also have to ask questions of our medical staff how over the years we're still getting players like Rojo or Bailly in, who are constantly injured and unreliable. We've got Smalling, Lindelof, Jones, Rojo and Bailly as centre backs, three different managers have gotten them in and only Smalling and Lindelof are not injury prone, you can ask plenty of questions of their quality too. Honestly, how?
I am really, really skeptical of the whole 'the players now know they can get away with everything' thing. Every top club sacks managers regularly without the whole club falling apart because of player power. Sacking Moyes, if anything, confirmed that it's hard to get the manager sacked at United: no matter how inept they are, they are safe until they have a mathematical chance at qualifying for the CL.

There is an argument to be made that we are too lenient with underperforming players and keep them way too long, see Phil Jones or Anderson. But then Van Persie was ruthlessly fecked off the moment his decline became apparent so even that is not the whole truth.

I think our recruitment is simply very poor, both in terms of managers and players.
 

MuFc_1992

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There no guarantee no, but theres a very real possibility thats things could be way worse than under an experienced manager.
How worse could it really get? The only thing we've got to aim for is the top 4 spot and its a three way race between us, spurs and arsenal and spurs definitely have better team than us so, we are huge underdogs for that 4th spot. So, all we are risking is a really slim chance for champions league qualification and that's a fair price to pay for the opportunity to hire the right manager instead of rushing into another failed appointment.
 

TheFlagStaysDown

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While I do think Mourinho should go, it is telling that United are the first big club he managed where he failed to deliver a title.

His first two seasons with Chelsea were great. A CL semi, a CL quarter and a Premier League. Also a legend for preventing Liverpool from winning it.

So, to answer the question, I do feel that whoever is brought in will also fail.
That is very pessimistic thinking, we clearly brought manager who were past it, we need possibly three players to easily challenge for the title if we bring someone who is positive and has some strong philosophy, an attacking coach, it will be hard to find, but all the coaches we hired were just negative but at the very end of the scale, moyes was out of his depth and vangle and mou peaked early didnt match our philosophy, that was all very unfortunate that it didnt go our way but who knew van gaal will reverse his tactics for i stance. Mourinho was a bad fit from the beginning but one of the viable options with proven record. Let’s just hire someone positive and it will be good again. We mught not start winning the titles but can represent the club without any shame of how we play or manager slating players etc. if we hired gusrdiola, klopp the success would come I am sure. Pochettino would be a great fit too just ungettable now unfortunately.

Thinking that we hire someone and he fails is horrible imo, we have money, fan base good team, it’s a big task but the credentials are there
 

Art Vandelay

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I think SAF's omnipresence in all parts of club management is costing you still. When he was gone he left a vacuum of unclear responsibilities which have not been convincingly sorted to this day. The club failed to transition the centralised power of decision from one guy to a staff of people, and seems to be still waiting for SAF2.0 to take over everything for the long term instead of creating these management structures.
I don't think you're too far from the truth there. We seem to he been floundering around with the structure for the past 5 years trying to get something that works.

Our transfer strategy has been all over the place. When Mourinho took over we were already playing catch up and had to spend big money on first team players while City could spend similar money filling out their squad. To then suddenly decide this summer to be more frugal when we were already behind City and Liverpool were spending big was a bizarre situation, then the Varane stories leaking did not help at all. It's just a ridiculous situation where it looks like we are just flinging shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.

I think Mourinho now has to go, because he's left himself in a very weak position that's affecting results and performances. He's publicly fought too many fights and isn't really winning any of them. It won't automatically make us any better though. We still have an unbalanced squad and we need to get rid of Pogba and the Raiola influence as when he wants another pay rise this shit will start again. Our first team is still missing several players to get us to the level we want to be at and I don't trust the current transfer strategy to get that right either.
 

Kapardin

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LvG was past it.

Jose is almost at the level. Obviously still better than LvG in that his signings like Bailly, Lindelof, Pogba, Alexis could do better under another manager -- the squad he leaves behind is not as bad as LvG's. But his methods of coaching are not as effective. I think he is no longer suited for the premier league.

Think he can succeed with PSG. Minimum effort in the league allowing him to focus entirely on the CL while he has world class players to work with. His abrasive management won't matter much since it won't be needed in league games which PSG will anyway win blind-folded, and CL games are only a handful to cause much friction within the squad.
 

#07

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More or less resigned to the fact that almost any manager coming into United will go through a boom and bust cycle: new boss bounce as a result of getting over the last guy, followed by a misalignment of objectives with the board e.g. 1st vs 4th, and a subsequent collapse in authority and performance.
 

Sultan

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I can understand where Neville is coming from with his quotes to an extent. He was a one-club man, managed by the same manager. He saw success with that formula. However, the main point here is the quality and longevity of the people during United's most successful years were Sir Matt and Sir Alex. Moyes was just out of his depth. LvG, the less said the better. Can't argue with the logic of Mourinho's appointment, but as his previous record has proved he's both a serial winner and a liability.
 

Red_toad

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It's fundamental to managing at any time. So why has Jose been so successful at every club except us? Can you lose your man management ability overnight?
Yeah it's like being a footballer once you hit 49, you suddenly become 50 and you're past your prime...

Best insight I've seen on Jose was a 2017 interview with John Terry, guy would have walked over broken glass for him. Now we've got a bunch of players who apparently need a hug to get the best of out them. Jose needs to instill a certain character of player to get the team winning again. Seems a lot of the fans are happy to offload Jose and try yet again with another manager. Jose said he'd liked to have done an entire rebuild when he took the job. Looks like he got it spot on.
 

Adisa

likes to take afvanadva wothowi doubt
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All the top managers in world football at the moment believe is some form of high intensity pressing.
An idea the two managers don't subscribe to.
 

Rozay

Master of Hindsight
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Mourinho won the league 12 months before coming to United.
 

el3mel

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Our predicament is not down to tactics or squad quality. It is down to man management and mentality and the damage Moyes did to that area. LVG and Mourinho are great tacticians but their man management skills are from a previous generation. So was Ferguson's in fairness, but he was so successful and had such control over the club players wanted to play for him regardless, and the ones that didn't were unceremoniously booted out.

We don't need another great of the game who wants players to fit his tried and tested plan. We need someone who can motivate them and will build a plan to fit the players.
There's a problem in quality. The squad has loads of players that has severe lack of intelligence and tactical awareness on the pitch. They might be good players, but are clueless tactically in when and how to move and when to position themselves, thus the attack looks very disjointed.

Mourinho is a good tactician, but he's not someone who will get the players on training ground to teach them the basics of football and how to move on the pitch. He wants to put a plan and players follow it and win.

That's the reason I don't want Zidane also. He will have good in game management, good formation and good subs, but I can't see him going on the pitch to teach players how to actually start moving and working. He didn't need to do that with Ronaldo and co.

Basically at this moment we need one of those budget like managers like Klopp, Sarri, Jardim ..etc who will take the players to the training ground and start teaching them how to play football and attack properly. This transitional period before hiring a top manager needs to be done. The team needs serious work in training. Zidane won't solve this as much as Mourinho looked clueless in it.