What next for Mourinho?

Maybe but I’d trade our results over the past several seasons for Liverpool’s any day.
That shouldn't even be a question. They've gone on a path which has ended with title challenge and being genuine contenders for PL and CL. We are in same position we were before- challenging to get into top 4. I know which position I'd rather be in.
 
Losing the final makes it feel bad, but it's a higher level of competition and harder to reach.
Agree.
In terms of toughness, yes.
But in terms of history, I would say winning any competition that we are in is a bigger achievement that being an almost there.
Which is why I don't like throwing away matches in cups by purposefully fielding a weak team.
 
But in terms of history, I would say winning any competition that we are in is a bigger achievement that being an almost there.
Which is why I don't like throwing away matches in cups by purposefully fielding a weak team.
True. Especially don't understand clubs who have a long trophy drought like Spurs and Liverpool doing that.
 
No, not me.
Trophies are trophies. We went to Europa and won it, for the first time in our history. It is a good achievement.
For me a CL runners up medal is hardly anything to celebrate.

I don't think of "Oh! That run we made in CL before getting schooled by Barca" now.
Well I certainly have more fondness for that CL run than I do for the Europa or the FA with LVG
 
Well I certainly have more fondness for that CL run than I do for the Europa or the FA with LVG

Same. Those CL nights give me a lot more memories and reason to celebrate than UEFA trophy. Might be an unpopular opinion but I always saw that trophy as something to just warm us up for the more serious cups and honors.
 
What's interesting is that the "Jose thread" is now 25 pages long and getting longer.
It shows that people have strong feelings about him - for and against.
Somehow, he divided fan opinion like no other. With Moyes and LVG - we unanimously said that they need to go. There was little argument against that, but not with Jose.

I will be watching to see which club he joins and how he does with them. I really don't want there to be a situation where we go up against his new team and lose, followed by him saying, "I told you so".

What are you on about, 75% wanted him out.
 
With Moyes and LVG - we unanimously said that they need to go. There was little argument against that, but not with Jose.
The only argument was whether he should go tomorrow or after 4th is gone or at end of season.
I think 3 months into the seasons, people (except 3 or 4) had pretty much known that he needs to go, one way or another.
 
No, not me.
Trophies are trophies. We went to Europa and won it, for the first time in our history. It is a good achievement.
For me a CL runners up medal is hardly anything to celebrate.

I don't think of "Oh! That run we made in CL before getting schooled by Barca" now.

Getting to a CL final means playing on the biggest stage (along with the WC final) and confirms that you are one of the very best teams on the planet. Winning the Europa League is like winning the Championship - you’ve suffered an unexpected relegation to even be competing in that competition and are now up against teams operating on a fraction of your budget.
 
FA with LVG

That was bloody brilliant though. 10 man and extra time volley in the top corner from Lingard.

Wouldn't change that for Liverpool run.

Although, I do rate FA Cup still a lot and our whole season was a mess. But, that moment along with Everton win in last minutes of the semi-final made it pretty feckin good.

And we even got Mourinho next day. :D
 
This kind of thing drives me crazy. I'm pretty sure any of us would trade our achievements of the past 3 seasons (ie. the Europa and League Cup) for the kind of run LFC had in the Champion's League.

Mourinho will get another big job, but I think his credit is currently lower than Benitez' pre-Madrid (of course there is no denying that Benitez to Real was just a horrible fit right from the beginning.)

Absolutely not.
Infact if you gave Liverpool fans a lie detector test and asked them what would they rather win the league cup and europa league or lose the champions league final most would pick win the league cup and europa league.
Trophies>>>>no trophy
 
Indeed. A DoF is a great thing in conjunction with a sympatico manager, but a terrible thing when paired with a poor or belligerent one... In the end, it ultimately always comes down to the players and the manager. As it always has. A good DoF doesn’t win you titles on their own. But a good manager, and/or good players can.

However much smoke is currently being blown up Klopp’s ass, Brendan Rodgers remains the closest any modern Liverpool boss has come to winning the league, and he did so with no DoF at all!... but also not long after Roy Hodgson had gone full David Moyes under a very powerful DoF in Damien Comolli (who, faults aside, still signed the likes of Suárez, Coutinho & Henderson)

It’s a very relative position.

That said... if there’s one person in the entire footballing world that the very notion of a DoF is objectively ill-suited for, it’s absolutely Jose Mourinho. Because nothing says “Classic Mourinho Meltdown” like “Person appointed to tell him who to buy”...

...but we now live in Bizarro World, where Trump is President, Brexit is happening, and Man United fans think a DoF appointment would’ve not just saved Mourinho, but also acted as some all purpose, deck clearing magic spell of sorts, and instantly restored us onto the path of ultimate righteousness....or something.

Not sure I agree. Mourinho's greatest success occurred at a team where he had minimal input in purchases, and the club bought players for him. Milito, Sneijder, Eto'o, Lucio, Thiago Motta were all Marco Branca and Gabriele Oriali purchases.
 
TBF, If / when we get a DoF, I don't think they should buy players without a manager's approval. Relegating a manager to simply a tactician / psychologist / motivators that just takes whatever players are given to them and gets the best out of them doesn't work.
 
It's only the same structure that brought Fergie a shitload of success.

That's right. But apparently, it is not working again. I'll drop this. Let's keep watching. Pretty certain we will come back to it soon enough.
 
History remembers the winners of trophies not the finalists. No will say in 20 years time 'but you only beat Southampton and Ajax in the final'.
No one will say anything in all liklihood as they're not significant trophies.

Even the FA Cup in terms of legacy is much more regarded than the league cup. Like no one will talk about Chelsea or Liverpool winning the EL when they did.

I imagine United fans will talk more about the 2009 and 2011 CL finals than the EL we won in 10 years time.
 
Absolutely not.
Infact if you gave Liverpool fans a lie detector test and asked them what would they rather win the league cup and europa league or lose the champions league final most would pick win the league cup and europa league.
Trophies>>>>no trophy
I think if you asked those same fans if they would trade their last few years for ours, most wouldn’t. Who really knows though?
 
Yeah. Mourinho's ability to turn toxic has little correlation to a club's structure. That does not alter the fact you're club is still operating under the old british structure, which in today's game is actually very unstable and prone to internal collapses

Based on?
 
Pep and Mourinho are arguably equal in trophies right now, depending on what you value most. They have the same amount of UCL wins and Pep has more league and cup titles in non-Mickey Mouse leagues (the Portuguese one). Mourinho boasts so much about his trophies it's easy to forget that Pep is also very decorated already.

If we exclude Mourinho's strictly Portuguese achievements, he has 1 fewer league title and 3 fewer cup titles than Pep. If Pep gets 1 more UCL or EPL he is clearly ahead, IMO.

Achieved in a much shorter time span
 
Nobody remembers arsenal was a cl runner up
Except literally everybody remembers that. :lol: Can you tell me all UC/EL winners of the 00s without looking it up?
Everybody is free to think that making a final doesn't matter or has no value, but "Nobody remembers who finished 2nd" is just a sports cliche that's straight up nonsense.
 
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His success or failure in the future will have nothing to do with us. His time as United manager should be whats important and we all know what was done and said from day one till sacking.
 
I imagine United fans will talk more about the 2009 and 2011 CL finals than the EL we won in 10 years time

probably not, but we might be talking about us being one of a handful of clubs to have won all three European trophies. Mind you, the EL isn't a patch on the old UEFA Cup, which I think could be a tougher competition than even the old European Cup.
 
Pep's had stronger clubs though so it cuts both ways.

Not necessarily true - Mourinho has had big clubs backed by big money and failed to match Pep success as well as the aesthetics of Peps sides. Pep has also been a pioneer tactically and arguably transformed the global game for the better from a purist point of view.

Jose’s only advantage is that he has performed miracles with smaller teams but then again Pep has not had to manage a smaller side so I guess that comparison is one based on hypothetical rather than actual fact. I would argue that Pep would actually do well but I find it very hard to believe he would win a CL with sides like Porto or Inter like Jose did in his prime.

Based on purely big club management Pep has shat on him quite frankly.
 
You can literally reach the cl final 20 years in a row and end up with an empty cabinet if you dont actually win it.

Nobody remembers arsenal was a cl runner up once or hector cuper is a 3 time finalist

To be fair, I’m sure more people remember arsenal as the CL runners up that year than remember who won the Europa league that year.
 
The guy is just delusional and toxic. I couldn't be more delighted that he's gone from our club. Couldn't care in the slightest about what he has to say. The club can have all sorts of structural problems, but it still doesn't absolve him of the absolute shit stain football he produced for 3 years. The fact that Ole had us playing better football in his first match, just goes to show how fecking dire this man's methods really are. He sucks the joy out of everything. He's a manipulator and a narcissist, still trying to control the narrative about how great he is and how shite everyone else is. Cannot stand him.
 
Odd to hear him talking about the modernity of the game when the underlying problem is that it’s passed his brand of football by. Even if it’s successful, no one wants to watch (or play) that anymore.
 
You keep going on about Mourinho and keep suggesting my post is a defence of him. It is not. I have made it clear that Jose's disruptive nature is obvious.
Where we differ mainly is your view that the United structure is fine as it is and it has only been a manager problem we have had since Sir Alex left. This is where I disagree and Jose's example, while different from the others in specific terms due to his more disruptive nature and ego, mirrors general problems LVG and Moyes also had. A club structure must cater for hiring, disciplining, training, transfers, etc. Again, I repeat, Jose's documented failings or not, we either make the manager more important than any super star player or we hire a DoF to tuck in between the board and the team/manager.

Different paths, same result in terms of losing the dressing room and from there on there's only one possible outcome.

Imo you fail to present any sort of logic, you claim that we need to make the manager more important than any super star player, or that we hire a director of football to tuck in between the board and the team/manager. The manager is already more important, always has been, nothing has changed. How is the latter going to change anything in terms of power struggles anyway ? You present a solution to a make-belief situation (player power > manager power) and your solution won't change anything. In isolated situations, manager vs super star player, the manager will always win. If the case is bigger, like in Mourinho's situation where the manager has lost the players in the dressing room, the manager will always lose. Director of football or no director of football, doesn't matter, you'll never find anyone willing to sack off the majority of the squad because the manager has managed to fall out with the team.

There's no fundamental flaws in our current structure, there's nothing that makes it more or less likely that a manager will fail compared to a club that uses a DoF. Real Madrid had a DoF, Mourinho fell out with him and had him booted out, then he fell out with the rest of the Real Madrid squad, even Cristiano Ronaldo loathes him. The reasons for me wanting a director of football is because i think it's a better way going forward, but it has absolutely feck all to do with power struggles, if anything you just add an extra potential issue.
 
Not necessarily true - Mourinho has had big clubs backed by big money and failed to match Pep success as well as the aesthetics of Peps sides. Pep has also been a pioneer tactically and arguably transformed the global game for the better from a purist point of view.

Jose’s only advantage is that he has performed miracles with smaller teams but then again Pep has not had to manage a smaller side so I guess that comparison is one based on hypothetical rather than actual fact. I would argue that Pep would actually do well but I find it very hard to believe he would win a CL with sides like Porto or Inter like Jose did in his prime.

Based on purely big club management Pep has shat on him quite frankly.
True, but Pep's never dared to take a less fashionable club so Mourinho shits on him there.

All irrelevant though isn't it. Mourinho's style has died out, Pep's hasn't
 
True, but Pep's never dared to take a less fashionable club so Mourinho shits on him there.

All irrelevant though isn't it. Mourinho's style has died out, Pep's hasn't

Agreed, though one has to say if you were having big clubs coming after you guaranteeing high salary, big budgets and you are ambitious (want to win multiple CL's/league titles), not to mention consistently successful - then you wouldn't necessarily want to give up that gravy train unless you absolutely have to. If he does ever undergo a slump in his career, I hope he'll stay long enough in the game to naturally gravitate towards a more smaller side and see what he can do with one.
 
True, but Pep's never dared to take a less fashionable club so Mourinho shits on him there.

All irrelevant though isn't it. Mourinho's style has died out, Pep's hasn't

What unfashionable team did Mourinho take? Porto were the best team in Portugal, I wouldn't call Chelsea's Abramovich unfashionable, then he went to the best and most stable team in Italy (whilst Juve and Milan were still suffering the consequences of calciopoli), then he took over the most successful club in the world with a squad boasting two Ballon D'Ors and a ton of talent, then back to Chelsea and United.
 
Agreed, though one has to say if you were having big clubs coming after you guaranteeing high salary, big budgets and you are ambitious (want to win multiple CL's/league titles), not to mention consistently successful - then you wouldn't necessarily want to give up that gravy train unless you absolutely have to. If he does ever undergo a slump in his career, I hope he'll stay long enough in the game to naturally gravitate towards a more smaller side and see what he can do with one.

To add to your point, I think asking Guardiola now to prove himself with a small club is the updated version of Gray's famous "can Messi do it on a cold rainy night in Stoke". He's at the echelon of coaching, why would he need to take a step down?
 
Based on?
What happened with your last 3 managers...

In general, the more work you have to do, and the least amount of help you have to do it, the more likely you are to fail. The United manager position is the most difficult in the sport. That's down to the lack of structure. Too much distance between the training pitch and the club's decision-makers, too much work put onto the manager's job. What makes it untenable then is the fact the club's higher ups don't actually give full control to the manager
 
What happened with your last 3 managers...

In general, the more work you have to do, and the least amount of help you have to do it, the more likely you are to fail. The United manager position is the most difficult in the sport. That's down to the lack of structure. Too much distance between the training pitch and the club's decision-makers, too much work put onto the manager's job. What makes it untenable then is the fact the club's higher ups don't actually give full control to the manager

Define full control