Ultimately, we all should have seen this coming. The third-season syndrome. I hoped that it would change, but alas it has not been the case. the blame does not rely on Mourinho's feet alone, but you survey the football landscape and when results start going south, it is usually the manager's head that starts rolling first. I am just sad that club officials have leaked information like this that shouldn't have been leaked. We used to run such a tight ship back then. I was disgusted at the way LVG was sacked even though I literally slept sometimes through the 15-16 season. People say we have to go back to our roots. I just want the club officials to learn how it was during the SAF years and learn to keep their mouth shut in matters that would undermine the manager and tarnish the clubs reputation.
And to people who are saying Mourinho has not been backed, I think their perception has been warped by the football being played. Players play like it is the first time they have played together. There has not been a system or tactics in place that have utilised our player's potential. Except for De Gea, since he gets to make showstopping saves, since our fecking defence concedes so many chances. Mourinho has not even managed to put together a cohesive defence, and he is supposed to be a defensive-minded manager aka keeping it tight at the back and play counterattacking football. The club has invested around 300-400 million pounds since Mourinho became the manager. I am fuming that the morons at the club didn't see fit to back Sir Alex after 2009. We could have been in a much better position( or not, since we hired a go-kart driver to drive a F1 car, after he left).
So given such a high budget, Mourinho has not put together a cohesive defence, a cohesive attack and has smeared the name of our beloved club(remember the heritage rant after the sevilla game). He never truly embraced the club and always talked like he was not a member of the club. Also, his 3 titles rant after the tottenham loss, I believe. We get it, you have won a lot of titles previously. But what are you doing now? Always being defensive and coming of as sort of insecure, in this age where every fecking little thing is magnified in the media, bringing unwarranted negative publicity that the club could do without.
And given that Ed extended his contract this spring, he should maybe not have been pennypinching when it came to toby. but I refuse to believe that we would have been this juggernaut if we had bought him. When Liverpool added VVD, they atleast had a fantastic attack. We didn't have that and I can't see how adding a defender would have changed that. I mean ffs, he ain't Messi.
And finally, our fecking board. No one has a footballling background. Like Neville said, how do you know that Harry Maguire, toby or whomever is not good? There is no plan in place. The time for evaluation was Jan of 2018, when talks of PSG started swirling around. They shoud have come to a decision at that time. They panicked and gave him an extension, and then decided that he was not good enough and went behind Mourinho's back and started leaking information to the media about Varane and all that shit. The board are not fit to run an institution as storied as Machester United Football Club. Woodward, if you are not capable of balancing the money making responsibilities with the decisions related to the club, just delegate them to someone who is capable of doing it. You are trying to do too much and gravelly damaging the standards of the club in the eyes of us fans.
When Mourinho was first appointed, I thought it would have a fairytale timeline where Sir Alex would hand over the PL trophy to Mourinho kickstarting a new era at the club. That has not been the case. We have been through 3 managers in past 5 years ( if Mourinho is really getting the sack), and it's becoming really hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel for our club. You know the famous story about how a fan held a banner saying "3 years of excuses and still crap, ta-ra fergie" ? When I first read the story, I was like " Man, this guy said that to Sir Alex!" But seeing the shitshow at the club now, I think I get what he was thinking. When he was young, he must have lived in the Sir Matt era - the first "golden age" of our club and he became disillusioned with the direction the club was heading when Pool we winning everything in sight. And the same is happening right now, where most of our fans had only lived through the Sir Alex era( myself included)- the second "golden age" and are frustated with the direction that the club is heading. The Man Utd board has a precedent for this, instead of building on what Sir Matt built, we regressed into mediocrity after him and only rose to prominence through arguably, the greatest football manager ever. Now, we again making the same mistake of slipping again into obscurity without proper planning. I hope the board wake up and smell the coffee, as we would not be so fortunate to get a manager of Sir Alex's calibre again. End all this longterm managing bullshit, the fact that we got 2 exemplary managers who stayed for a combined total of 51 years was an anomaly in itself. Put a structure in place, vet all the resumes and get managers who fit our club's vision. Only if the trophies come in, will the Man Utd 'brand' be relevant.
PS: Please no Conte. That guy is the Italian Mourinho, minus the Champions League Titles. I also don't agree that the club has become a graveyard for managers. Chelsea regularly fires managers, and I have never seen a manager publicly state that he would never be a manage that club. Our club still has the pulling power and now is the time to make the right move, otherwise our championship window would close for the forseeable future. There should no stronger motivation for the people at the club than the thought of Pool or Fecking city eclipsing our 20 league titles.
