BBC: United hold talks with Mourinho

Would you be happy to see Jose Mourinho become next United manager?

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To be fair with Yahoo, Mourinho was working there analyzing games during the last World Cup. There's probably some link between them, but it doesn't mean the wanker who wrote this was right.

Because he starts writing what it seems to be some informative piece, but then he mixes some conspiracy theories, guessing games and subjectivity everywhere, including a personal attack to Fellaini, totally out of place. It looks like a random fanboy blog instead of a proper webpage to be honest, it's difficult to take it seriously.
 
Steven Seagull said:
:lol: love the vitriol on here towards pretty much any article.

"Wanker!" "Bullshitter"
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They are the reactions to a positive article. Any article which puts the club in negative slant is immediately taken as true irrespective of the source.
 
The article is pretty crap, tbf; a ton of assumptions and speculation. Besides, it's incredibly weak stuff to state 'the players have given up on van Gaal...oh, except for that match against West Ham when they didn't give up on him...even though losing might've got rid of the bloke they've given up on'.
 
Well, everyone is catching on now. Almost all the Daily Rubble have started paraphrasing it and making it an exclusive.
 
The thing is so many places and journos have caught wind of the story in a variety of different forms, even if some of the sources are bollocks and some of the outlets full of shit, not all of them will be - in this case there surely must be no smoke without fire.
 
Adzzz said:
The thing is so many places and journos have caught wind of the story in a variety of different forms, even if some of the sources are bollocks and some of the outlets full of shit, not all of them will be - in this case there surely must be no smoke without fire.
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It feels almost as certain as Pep to City at this point.
 
I doubt many of the articles actually know or have any contact with anyone close enough to Mourinho to say anything for sure. Personally I try to avoid most tabloid newspapers etc but I do think when pretty much all of them are saying the same thing there must be something behind it.
Plus, even if there isn't when we all click on to say its rubbish or bullshit then they're getting money per click for ads so it would be more fool them to not publish those kinds of articles.
All we can do as people not in the 'football loop' is hope and pray Mourinho is going to be here next season, or of course that he won't be if you don't like the cut of his jib.
 
DrunkenBeaver said:
It isn't really.

What' absurd is this idea that if someone doesn't name sources they're lying. There are rather obvious reasons why a journalist wouldn't blurt out his sources for reasons that even a child should be able to understand. Yet all the time you see:

"No named sources, bullshit"

News journalists read by proper people don't suffer this when they write: 'A Downing Street source' or 'people close to the Chancellor' as people who read the news tend to be less thick than the average football fan.

Not to say you believe everything you read in the papers but if people can't see why there are obvious reasons why a source shouldn't be revealed in many circumstance they shouldn't be allowed to leave the house to buy a newspaper in the first place.
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To be fair, it is.

There are of course good ones, very good ones in fact. However, the majority are just as clueless as your average football fan. There are simply just too many sports journalists out there - which means that a lot of them are just going to be shite. It's a case of someone thinking "Oh I love footie so I'll become a journo so I can write bollocks about football all day long - excellent!".

A huge part of the job seem to be to just translate articles from other countries as well.
 
As someone who's worked in the football press, I thought I might offer an insight into how this industry actually works.

In my first job we had a sit-down meeting once where everyone tried to come up with plausible links between players and clubs. It was a case of 'ok, Hulk's looking for a new club and United don't have a partner for Rooney, so we'll link them together.' There was no evidence for any of the links we came up with. I stress that I wasn't working for one of the big boys, but I think it happens all over the place, particularly the tabloids.

Then you've got the cowboy journos. There was one guy, called Ben Fairthorne (I think his stories are banned on the Caf), who used to cut-and-paste bits of existing interviews and pass them off as his own. So his 'exclusive' with, say, Messi would be a patchwork quilt of five or six different interviews Messi had done over the years. I don't know how many such cowboys are currently operating within the football world, but I guess there's quite a few.

Another place I worked simply copied articles from other papers, although I guess this is a bit more transparent as they are obliged to name and link to the source in the story. Loads of titles operate in this way - it's far easier to rip other people's stories than it is to actually do the work on your own. So you get the sort of wildfire spread which has erupted over Mourinho today. One paper claims the exclusive (which could be complete bollocks) then everyone has it.

Occasionally someone actually has an inside source (such as the guy who was leaking lineups at United under Moyes) but these avenues generally get shut down very quickly. All journos have to go on is the mixed zone, where you might get five minutes with a player; the corporate press day, where you're given a player and a list of questions to avoid; and the press conference, where most interesting questions are banned and the heavyweight journos have a pact to share the same the information they receive. One of the journos actually writes up everything that's said in the press conference and sends it to the other journos.

So basically, 90% of what you read is BS. The foreign journos are far more clued-in than the British ones tbh - people like Balague and Di Marzio actually have contacts. I wouldn't read anything into the UK-based reports.
 
JohnnyKills said:
As someone who's worked in the football press, I thought I might offer an insight into how this industry actually works.

In my first job we had a sit-down meeting once where everyone tried to come up with plausible links between players and clubs. It was a case of 'ok, Hulk's looking for a new club and United don't have a partner for Rooney, so we'll link them together.' There was no evidence for any of the links we came up with. I stress that I wasn't working for one of the big boys, but I think it happens all over the place, particularly the tabloids.

Then you've got the cowboy journos. There was one guy, called Ben Fairthorne (I think his stories are banned on the Caf), who used to cut-and-paste bits of existing interviews and pass them off as his own. So his 'exclusive' with, say, Messi would be a patchwork quilt of five or six different interviews Messi had done over the years. I don't know how many such cowboys are currently operating within the football world, but I guess there's quite a few.

Another place I worked simply copied articles from other papers, although I guess this is a bit more transparent as they are obliged to name and link to the source in the story. Loads of titles operate in this way - it's far easier to rip other people's stories than it is to actually do the work on your own. So you get the sort of wildfire spread which has erupted over Mourinho today. One paper claims the exclusive (which could be complete bollocks) then everyone has it.

Occasionally someone actually has an inside source (such as the guy who was leaking lineups at United under Moyes) but these avenues generally get shut down very quickly. All journos have to go on is the mixed zone, where you might get five minutes with a player; the corporate press day, where you're given a player and a list of questions to avoid; and the press conference, where most interesting questions are banned and the heavyweight journos have a pact to share the same the information they receive. One of the journos actually writes up everything that's said in the press conference and sends it to the other journos.

So basically, 90% of what you read is BS. The foreign journos are far more clued-in than the British ones tbh - people like Balague and Di Marzio actually have contacts. I wouldn't read anything into the UK-based reports.
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My point exactly.
 
JohnnyKills said:
As someone who's worked in the football press, I thought I might offer an insight into how this industry actually works.

In my first job we had a sit-down meeting once where everyone tried to come up with plausible links between players and clubs. It was a case of 'ok, Hulk's looking for a new club and United don't have a partner for Rooney, so we'll link them together.' There was no evidence for any of the links we came up with. I stress that I wasn't working for one of the big boys, but I think it happens all over the place, particularly the tabloids.

Then you've got the cowboy journos. There was one guy, called Ben Fairthorne (I think his stories are banned on the Caf), who used to cut-and-paste bits of existing interviews and pass them off as his own. So his 'exclusive' with, say, Messi would be a patchwork quilt of five or six different interviews Messi had done over the years. I don't know how many such cowboys are currently operating within the football world, but I guess there's quite a few.

Another place I worked simply copied articles from other papers, although I guess this is a bit more transparent as they are obliged to name and link to the source in the story. Loads of titles operate in this way - it's far easier to rip other people's stories than it is to actually do the work on your own. So you get the sort of wildfire spread which has erupted over Mourinho today. One paper claims the exclusive (which could be complete bollocks) then everyone has it.

Occasionally someone actually has an inside source (such as the guy who was leaking lineups at United under Moyes) but these avenues generally get shut down very quickly. All journos have to go on is the mixed zone, where you might get five minutes with a player; the corporate press day, where you're given a player and a list of questions to avoid; and the press conference, where most interesting questions are banned and the heavyweight journos have a pact to share the same the information they receive. One of the journos actually writes up everything that's said in the press conference and sends it to the other journos.

So basically, 90% of what you read is BS. The foreign journos are far more clued-in than the British ones tbh - people like Balague and Di Marzio actually have contacts. I wouldn't read anything into the UK-based reports.
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But... should we believe you then?
*confuzzled*
 
Thanks @JohnnyKills - thats interesting.

Good to know the Mourinho link has legit credibility behind it despite all this!
 
That Yahoo article doesnt necessarily fall into any of the categories mentioned above though. It isnt claiming to be anything more than it is, its just an op-ed piece, in essence its no different to any one of us posting our opinions here, its just this writer is lucky enough to get paid for sharing his opinions.

The only crumb of "news" in there is that Mourinho has been in contact with some unspecified players, all it takes for that to be true is for Mourinho to have texted Rooney or De Gea, which is actually quite possible. I dont find it hard to believe that a paid football journalist has sufficient sources to get wind from a player or an agent that Mourinho has texted Rooney, say, to ask him his thoughts about this that or the other. Or texted De Gea to ask him what his plans are, in terms of whether he is looking to move or is open to staying or whatever.

I guess what Im saying is people get worked up about these kinds of articles but I think it comes down to what people expect from an article. Me, I just get bored and want to read what people think about United, that's why I come on here. And just as I dont get into a rage because a poster on here speculates about what is going on, equally I have no problem with journalists doing the same as long as they arent making stuff up and trying to pass it off as fact. This doesnt read like that to me, with perhaps the exception of the bit that says SAF has softened his anti-Mourinho stance. But my own filters just automatically assume this is something he has heard, it may be true, it may not be, but either way its not hard to believe this writer at least heard that.

It just reads like a journalist who has no idea what's going on, just like the rest of us, but who has spoken to a few sources connected to the club in various ways - who themselves dont know much about what's going on either - and is speculating about what might happen. If I found that objectionable I wouldnt read articles about football, but then I wouldnt come on here either.
 
Lurpak99 said:
It's that old theory about Ferguson being a control freak who can't let go.
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I wouldn't be surprised if there is something to it. Imagine what its like for him seeing how shit all the teams are, 250m of his credit been spent on pish and Leicester winning the league. No wonder he wants back in! :lol:
 
JohnnyKills said:
As someone who's worked in the football press, I thought I might offer an insight into how this industry actually works.

In my first job we had a sit-down meeting once where everyone tried to come up with plausible links between players and clubs. It was a case of 'ok, Hulk's looking for a new club and United don't have a partner for Rooney, so we'll link them together.' There was no evidence for any of the links we came up with. I stress that I wasn't working for one of the big boys, but I think it happens all over the place, particularly the tabloids.

Then you've got the cowboy journos. There was one guy, called Ben Fairthorne (I think his stories are banned on the Caf), who used to cut-and-paste bits of existing interviews and pass them off as his own. So his 'exclusive' with, say, Messi would be a patchwork quilt of five or six different interviews Messi had done over the years. I don't know how many such cowboys are currently operating within the football world, but I guess there's quite a few.

Another place I worked simply copied articles from other papers, although I guess this is a bit more transparent as they are obliged to name and link to the source in the story. Loads of titles operate in this way - it's far easier to rip other people's stories than it is to actually do the work on your own. So you get the sort of wildfire spread which has erupted over Mourinho today. One paper claims the exclusive (which could be complete bollocks) then everyone has it.

Occasionally someone actually has an inside source (such as the guy who was leaking lineups at United under Moyes) but these avenues generally get shut down very quickly. All journos have to go on is the mixed zone, where you might get five minutes with a player; the corporate press day, where you're given a player and a list of questions to avoid; and the press conference, where most interesting questions are banned and the heavyweight journos have a pact to share the same the information they receive. One of the journos actually writes up everything that's said in the press conference and sends it to the other journos.

So basically, 90% of what you read is BS. The foreign journos are far more clued-in than the British ones tbh - people like Balague and Di Marzio actually have contacts. I wouldn't read anything into the UK-based reports.
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This fella posted something similar a couple of years ago in the noobs
Cro said:
Sorry, but goal.com is the most crappy side in the world.

I work in the media business and when I was studying, goal.com searched for freelancers. My first thought was "give it a try to fill your CV with something sport related and to get some extra money", as they were searching for students and "no working experience wouldn't be hindrance". On my first day we were having an online hangout with a few "editors" all over Germany and it was even worse than the muppetry in the caf. First of all, they consciously invent all sorts of stupid rumours themselves and pick up nearly every rumour from other sites. They don't have any contacts to Agents, clubs or other media people at all. The whole business model is about getting clicks and as the silly season feeds desperate muppets all over the world, they are pretty successful with that.

Stories like "Ronaldo back to United" or "Manchester United launch stunnig bid for Falcao" just gets muppets wet and even though they know that it's pretty much crap, they click it. All in all, I quit there 5 days after I joined them, because it was just like a bad dream and not worth the little money they paid.

Also, the media normally don't know any of the wages for sure, as it's always just speculation and mostly when they level out through several articles, people take it as a fact. But now almighty goal.com knows the wages even before the deal is actually concluded ... yeah, right.
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JohnnyKills said:
As someone who's worked in the football press, I thought I might offer an insight into how this industry actually works.

In my first job we had a sit-down meeting once where everyone tried to come up with plausible links between players and clubs. It was a case of 'ok, Hulk's looking for a new club and United don't have a partner for Rooney, so we'll link them together.' There was no evidence for any of the links we came up with. I stress that I wasn't working for one of the big boys, but I think it happens all over the place, particularly the tabloids.
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I appreciate your inside information, but I reached almost the same conclusion by reading transfer news, and not just in the English papers, it's the same everywhere. There's a certain structure to it that gives away the origin.

First their is no mentioning of something that actually happened and could have been witnessed, like this agent met that board member on that location that day or something like that. Every serious news item has a fact like that somewhere in it, transfer news in general doesn't have that. Also there's standard a sentence in it with an undefined source. That can be just 'a source tells...' but also there are sentences like '... has been linked to...' '...it's said that... without stating anything about who said it. It's not just the absence of first and last name, it's the absence of any reference to an individual. For the sake of variety, sometimes a player is on a list of transfer targets, that's of course because professional board members or sporting directors can't remember all those names without a written list.

Next there has to be something that the reader recognizes for a fact and would make the transfer 'sensible', like the player and the manager have worked together before, they are from the same country, or the player is on the bench or has had a conflict with his current manager so he wants to leave. At least all those already known facts add a bit of text to fill the space and appearantly poses for substance. Even a former transfer news report that turned out to be bull shit will do, like after the deal with club A or player B fell through, now club A aims for player C/player B aims for club D. To make it even more specific they sometimes name an activity regarding the transfer, like the club is preparing a bid, of course we're not supposed to think about the specifics of that specific activity, like what a club would actually have to do to prepare a bid, checking the bank account? Put a number on a small piece of paper and ponder over it?

So probably the difference between a fictitious report about a transfer that makes it into the paper, and any other fictitious transfer that doesn't make it into the paper is a false sense of credibility by it making sense in someway. The reason you're tempted to believe it is the only reason it exists. If you could make it up yourself, the journalist probably did and it's not true.
 
Like I mentioned some time ago in whatever discussion ... wilfully fabricating lies to scam people so they can make money = fraud, and this is unacceptable everywhere except for in journalism it seems. It's even a profession where people are hired specifically to scam people.
 
Ventura said:
... wilfully fabricating lies to scam people so they can make money = fraud,
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I believe the term is "sexing up".
So, you take a (benign) story/headline and start adding to it, until you reach a point where it becomes a worthwhile read and supports your exclusive headline.

This happens in politics, too. The Iraq war was based on a lie (weapons of mass destruction) and Tony Blair specifically asked the intelligence report to be sexed up, to ensure he got the majority vote in the commons, to go to war. Tony Blair ended up making a lot of money from that lie and to this day continues to make money off of that back of the work he did.
 
So.. Season ticket deadline pushed to June 1st. Part of me thinks that's because we'll announce Mou and hope to take advantage of the interest he'll generate.

Noone else? Alright then..:nervous:
 
Fabregas saying Jose's problem was that he trusted the team too much, was too lenient and gave them a longer holiday following their title win and the team didn't repay that trust inferring that they relaxed too much. Whilst we must take it with a slight pinch of salt it does go against the current theory of Jose burning out his teams.
 
macheda14 said:
Fabregas saying Jose's problem was that he trusted the team too much, was too lenient and gave them a longer holiday following their title win and the team didn't repay that trust inferring that they relaxed too much. Whilst we must take it with a slight pinch of salt it does go against the current theory of Jose burning out his teams.
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He gave them all that because he ran them into the ground in title winning season but in their case he fecked them so hard that he was forced to extend their rests and have one of worst pre season ever. At the end all that wasnt good enough for squad to get back on 100%.
 
What do people mean exactly when they talk about Mourinho running his players into the ground. Not having a go at anyone I'm genuinely curious..

Is it physically as in he works them so hard over the course of a title winning season or the whole siege mentality stuff that the dressing room just becomes unbearable?
 
R'hllor said:
He gave them all that because he ran them into the ground in title winning season but in their case he fecked them so hard that he was forced to extend their rests and have one of worst pre season ever. At the end all that wasnt good enough for squad to get back on 100%.
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Realistically the squad wasn't good enough for a title defence abit like us when Moyes took over. He got all he could out of that squad and when he wanted the correct reinforcements he wasn't backed. A striker, centre back, left back probably a winger.
 
Riz said:
What do people mean exactly when they talk about Mourinho running his players into the ground. Not having a go at anyone I'm genuinely curious..

Is it physically as in he works them so hard over the course of a title winning season or the whole siege mentality stuff that the dressing room just becomes unbearable?
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I've wondered this myself a few times. Players being worked 'too hard' should surely not be possible.
 
R'hllor said:
He gave them all that because he ran them into the ground in title winning season but in their case he fecked them so hard that he was forced to extend their rests and have one of worst pre season ever. At the end all that wasnt good enough for squad to get back on 100%.
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But then with that, what are you supposed to do as a manager, not run them into the ground and not win the title? They are professional athletes, a month off is enough to re-cooperate. I'm more inclined to believe that quite a few players in that team have a poor mentality (which you could fault Jose for), were complacent about how they walked the league and then could never recover from the shell shock of the first few games.
 
Cee90 said:
Fair enough, I understand where you are coming from.

Although a part of me feels that Mourinho would be a different kind of animal at United. He has gone on record to state that he and his family are very happy in the UK and would like to stay here for the foreseeable future. There are not many other clubs I can see him managing in the Premier League, and with Pep arriving at City, he will have another chance to get one over on him.

He's very much an egotistical character, so I feel his vendetta towards Pep/Barca will still be apparent should he join us. Can you imagine how great the Manchester derby would be?

Saying that, I feel he actually respects United as a club, so I can see us getting a more mature and tamed Mourinho so to speak.

That's what I'm hoping for anyway, it's probably all bollocks and he'll shout abuse at Fred the Red on match days causing a mass revolt within the club.



Yes, this is very much my thinking too.

Over the years he has always spoken very highly of United as a club and I think he appreciates that we didn't sack Moyes and LvG straight away, when the likes of Chelsea and Madrid would have easily without question.

Maybe he is looking for that security so he can build his legacy properly? At Chelsea and Madrid he didn't have time to build a team over the years as they both demand instant success.

As a result of this, he has had to do his best to win things as quickly as possible, which is why he has often bought a lot of players in immediately, whilst neglecting youth players who'd likely take a while to get to the level required.

At United I can see him developing players, in addition to buying new ones, as he'd know there would be more time to do so.
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He was made for United and in 5 or 6 years the naysayers will be eating their words. I would have Mourinho over anyone in the world at this point and next season he will run the touch line for us at Anfield and gouge the eyes out of their new signing Vardy after The Zlatan overheads in to the top corner from a 10 yard kick out from De Gea.
 
R'hllor said:
He gave them all that because he ran them into the ground in title winning season but in their case he fecked them so hard that he was forced to extend their rests and have one of worst pre season ever. At the end all that wasnt good enough for squad to get back on 100%.
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A manager worked his players hard to win a title is a bad thing? Costa even said he came back overweight from his holiday and that they players thought it would be easy to retain the title.

Diego Costa admits he was overweight and out of shape when he returned for pre-season and that Chelsea’s players thought it would be easy to defend their title.

Costa spoke out in defence of manager Jose Mourinho on Thursday, claiming the players had been complacent and must shoulder more of the blame for a terrible start to the campaign.

‘I’m going to be very honest,’ said Costa. ‘Five or six weeks ago, I was not on top of my game, at least physically.

‘I got injured at the end of the season and then I went on holiday. Maybe I got out of my diet and when I came back I was not the way I was supposed to be. I was a little bit overweight, and that affected my game.

‘You can be selfish and blame it on the manager but I’m not going to do that. I’m responsible and so are the other guys. We need to blame the players.

‘We know we were not 100 per cent when we got here. We came back from holiday very confident, and thought we could go back into how it was last season. When we actually realised where we were, the team was already in a bad situation.’
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I always thought that if Mourinho is to blame for burning players out it's not physically but mentally, being very very intense.
 
macheda14 said:
But then with that, what are you supposed to do as a manager, not run them into the ground and not win the title? They are professional athletes, a month off is enough to re-cooperate. I'm more inclined to believe that quite a few players in that team have a poor mentality (which you could fault Jose for), were complacent about how they walked the league and then could never recover from the shell shock of the first few games.
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Player of the year, no league goals and it's mid April. They thought they were the cats pajamas and the world would kneel at their feet but the hard work is staying at the top not getting their.
 
Rado_N said:
I've wondered this myself a few times. Players being worked 'too hard' should surely not be possible.
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Probably mentally? Mourinho antagonises his players to get the best of them so much that they actually grew to resent him after a while. Just theorising.

We saw that happened at Madrid where he was demanding his players to have that "us against the world" mentality and they just got tired of not enjoying their football.
 
NinjaZombie said:
Probably mentally? Mourinho antagonises his players to get the best of them so much that they actually grew to resent him after a while. Just theorising.

We saw that happened at Madrid where he was demanding his players to have that "us against the world" mentality and they just got tired of not enjoying their football.
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SAF employed a seige mentality more than anyone and it never did his sides any harm.
 
Riz said:
Is it physically as in he works them so hard over the course of a title winning season or the whole siege mentality stuff that the dressing room just becomes unbearable?
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Surely, if you work someone physically too hard, they end up with constant minor injuries or their performance begins to decline steadily.
 
If I were a sports journalist, I'd hang around various football forums to see what everyone is talking about, write about what they're talking about in some packaged way, and put it out to the public so people on forums can talk about it some more. Then repeat as necessary. We may very well be the "sources" that many journalists are referring to.
 
DrunkenBeaver said:
It isn't really.

What' absurd is this idea that if someone doesn't name sources they're lying. There are rather obvious reasons why a journalist wouldn't blurt out his sources for reasons that even a child should be able to understand. Yet all the time you see:

"No named sources, bullshit"

News journalists read by proper people don't suffer this when they write: 'A Downing Street source' or 'people close to the Chancellor' as people who read the news tend to be less thick than the average football fan.
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It definitely is.

You can't draw a parallel with political journalism either. Sports journalism is fairly unique in that there are never any repercussions for writing made up shite and citing anonymous sources. People don't expect credibility, and don't get credibility. Anyone with a GCSE in English and a passing interest in football could do the job of Ducker/Custis/Jackson/*Insert any other shit sports journo with no genuine sources here*.

Proper journalism is completely different. If you bullshit about a new piece of legislation or a vote in the house of commons or an excerpt from a budget, citing an anonymous source, and it turns out to be nonsense you will not keep your job for long. Sports journos don't have to worry about any of that, all they need to keep their jobs are clicks.
 
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