Jose Mourinho | 2017/18 Assessments | Poll Added

Your stance

  • Top manager in charge of a major rebuild. Needs more time and/or money.

    Votes: 684 43.8%

  • Made improvements but we've stagnated. Sack him if we drop out of top 4

    Votes: 377 24.1%

  • He's not the right fit. Sack him and get someone else who can get more out of our squad

    Votes: 502 32.1%
  • Total voters
    1,563
  • Poll closed .
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el3mel said:
That was at Old Trafford. I won't mention the 100 chances Liverpool got this match and De Gea kept saving them.
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Besides Lvg played at anfeild 3 times and won 2, played at city 2 times and won 1 with a draw, played against tottenham 2 times and won there and also against arsenal.

Simply speaking you can not punt the ball 9 out of 10 times to the striker and hope to win second balls and counter when your wingers are defending at the same moment and hope to attack with only 2-3 men in any away performance.

Jose is also stubborn in his own way like pep klopp and lvg.
 
prtk0811 said:
Besides Lvg played at anfeild 3 times and won 2, played at city 2 times and won 1 with a draw, played against tottenham 2 times and won there and also against arsenal.
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He had good results in big games that's not my point. My point earlier was that he wasn't that dominant in his football in away games against top 6 as people are believing.
 
I love how people mention Juanfield yet fail to remember Liverpool were down to 10 for half that game.

Mourinho goes for draws away from home in the big games. It's his standard approach. Wait for the return fixture - we will have a much more attacking style.
 
What worries me is that he’ll adopt a similar approach vs the rest of the top 6. A draw at Anfield in itself isn’t bad, yet if if you look at our record against the top 6 since Jose’s been here then iirc correctly we only scored 1 goal away to the them last season. We didn’t win any did we? We didn’t look any better today. I actually think our performance at Anfield last time was better.

Not to mention the big games are supposed to be the box office events... if we’re just going to park the bus vs top teams then it’ll be hard to look forward to them.
 
el3mel said:
He had good results in big games that's not my point. My point earlier was that he wasn't that dominant in his football in away games against top 6 as people are believing.
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The point here is he dint go too much defensive but kept too much of the ball and had an attacking threat. We have very little attacking threat because of the way we circulate the ball and keep picking the line ups without creative players who can hold the ball in high pressure and be effective to fashion out a chance.

We cant keep punting the ball long 9 out of 10 times and and 10th time try to build from the back but build absolutely nothing because of that lack of penetrative pass or the will to penetrate.
 
prtk0811 said:
The point here is he dint go too much defensive but kept too much of the ball and had an attacking threat. We have very little attacking threat because of the way we circulate the ball and keep picking the line ups without creative players who can hold the ball in high pressure and be effective to fashion out a chance.
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And that's what I disagree about because as I said he parked the bus in the away games I mentioned it's too obvious for me to deny.

Anfield games are always a smash and grab games for me. You get 1 or 2 chances in the game and if you didn't snatch it you don't win. Has always been like that with very few exceptions. Juanfield is an exception hence it's always remembered. 90% of our other wins at Anfield have came this route.
 
Go check Fergie's last two games at Anfield:
2012 - we won 2-1 after a late RVP penalty and shelvey getting sent off in the first half
2011 - we lost 3-1

Going through the threads on the Caf today, you would be under the impression we should've walked one of our two toughest fixtures of the premier league campaign.
 
el3mel said:
And that's what I disagree about because as I said he parked the bus in the away games I mentioned it's too obvious for me to deny.

Anfield games are always a smash and grab games for me. You get 1 or 2 chances in the game and if you didn't snatch it you don't win. Has always been like that with very few exceptions. Juanfield is an exception hence it's always remembered. 90% of our other wins at Anfield have came this route.
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No way LVG is a bus parking type manager.

The ball circulation was much better under him than jose in big games. We dont know how to create chances without playing long balls this season against high pressure.
 
AXVnee7 said:
What worries me is that he’ll adopt a similar approach vs the rest of the top 6. A draw at Anfield in itself isn’t bad, yet if if you look at our record against the top 6 since Jose’s been here then iirc correctly we only scored 1 goal away to the them last season. We didn’t win any did we? We didn’t look any better today. I actually think our performance at Anfield last time was better.

Not to mention the big games are supposed to be the box office events... if we’re just going to park the bus vs top teams then it’ll be hard to look forward to them.
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Well, i wouldn't mind him doing that away, it's important that we don't lose. at home, it's another story, we didn't play defensively at home last year, we lost against city yes, but won against Chelsea, Tottenham, we drew against Arsenal after battering them (Giroud's goal) and we drew against Liverpool when we were the better team.
 
prtk0811 said:
No way LVG is a bus parking type manager.

The ball circulation was much better under him than jose in big games. We dont know how to create chances without playing long balls this season against high pressure.
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I didn't say he's a bus parking manager in general, but he himself adopted that strategy some times and it got neglected because of Juanfield.
 
Traub said:
Go check Fergie's last two games at Anfield:
2012 - we won 2-1 after a late RVP penalty and shelvey getting sent off in the first half
2011 - we lost 3-1

Going through the threads on the Caf today, you would be under the impression we should've walked one of our two toughest fixtures of the premier league campaign.
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Its about how you play against a certain philosophy. THis totaly football philosophy is spreading all over the world in big teams. It didnt come to england until lvg and klopp bought it here followed by pep.

Are we going to play this way against Liv , city Arsenal, Barcelona madrid bayern everytime we face one of them is the question. Are we going to be so poorron the ball in the build up?
 
Mr H said:
Well, i wouldn't mind him doing that away, it's important that we don't lose. at home, it's another story, we didn't play defensively at home last year, we lost against city yes, but won against Chelsea, Tottenham, we drew against Arsenal after battering them (Giroud's goal) and we drew against Liverpool when we were the better team.
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Of course, but that means we have to at least replicate those results at home which is no easy feat.
 
prtk0811 said:
Its about how you play against a certain philosophy. THis totaly football philosophy is spreading all over the world in big teams. It didnt come to england until lvg and klopp bought it here followed by pep.

Are we going to play this way against Liv , city Arsenal, Barcelona madrid bayern everytime we face one of them is the question. Are we going to be so poorron the ball in the build up?
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Yes we will play like this but we won't necessarily be as poor on the ball.
 
AXVnee7 said:
Of course, but that means we have to at least replicate those results at home which is no easy feat.
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I think we we'll, i'm pretty sure that a part from city, we're not going to lose against the other top 6 teams. chelsea (without morata) and arsenal don't look like a match to us.

We'll play chelsea at the bridge with Morata out, and they don't look that much without him.
Arsenal well, they are bang average.
Spurs at home are Spurs, and away we'll play them at Wembley.
Liverpool and the city games could go either way. so we'll see.

i'm fairly confident about our chances against the top 6.
We could have won if we played today but we could have lost and there was more at play than the 3 points.

We didn't have all our guns, say what you want about Pogba but he is our best player, it's like city without de bruyne, or Spurs without Ericssen.
If we lost, it would have given confidence to Liverpool + only 4 points between us and them.
if we lost, it would have kind of shattered our confidence as people kept saying we haven't been properly tested and all. we go out of this game with the confidence that we're the closest challengers to city this year.

It's a good begining to a run of 4 games away, and Spurs and Chelsea. it was very important to not lose today, we need to look at the bigger picture.
 
LVG was also manager when we put in an absolutely disgraceful performance at Anfield in the Europa League.

I'd like Jose to be more positive in these away games against our rivals but let's not act like Van Gaal had us dominating teams regularly away.
 
I was expecting this approach before he arrived and I'm still left disappointed.
People can bash the players all they want but Mourinho is a coward in big games. We all knew this.
If I'm a player, I would be flabbergasted at my manager telling me to approach a game in this manner, against a team every man and his dog knows we're better than and has one win in seven.
Why the feck should we be playing reactive football against this Liverpool side?
I didn't watch the game, glad I didn't.
The reports from the match have left me fuming.
 
He’s in his second season. Building a great squad and we had a lot of injuries in central midfield.

Good result.

The only coward was Klopp for not actually going for the win by taking one of his three midfielders off for an attacker.
 
Adisa said:
I was expecting this approach before he arrived and I'm still left disappointed.
People can bash the players all they want but Mourinho is a coward in big games. We all knew this.
If I'm a player, I would be flabbergasted at my manager telling me to approach a game in this manner, against a team every man and his dog knows we're better than and has one win in seven.
Why the feck should we be playing reactive football against this Liverpool side?
I didn't watch the game, glad I didn't.
The reports from the match have left me fuming.
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Dont watch it, you'll be more fuming.
 
prtk0811 said:
No way LVG is a bus parking type manager.

The ball circulation was much better under him than jose in big games. We dont know how to create chances without playing long balls this season against high pressure.
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I signed in just to ask - are you on fucking drugs mate?
 
We will need to get wins in the big games, because City are beating up the small teams like us, but they look capable of beating all the big teams. We don't at the moment.

I don't buy this revisionism that Fergie parked the bus. I only recall 2 games where we looked devoid of ideas going forward and no intent to even attack. The game vs Barcelona at the Nou Camp in 2007-2008(and we had a penalty early on) and the O'Shea winner at Anfield in 2007(ironically).

It's not about going out there and playing like Brazil 1970. It's about having some intent to attack. We've shown none of that in most of our big games under Jose.

300m+ spent and 1 away goal in 6 away matches to the top sides? That's awful.
 
The usual hyperbole every time we go away to city or Liverpool, play defensive and get a 0-0 draw. As if there was a period in time where we would play these fixtures all out attack and outplay these lot. Most of the PL era I mainly remember us stealing barely deserved wins at Anfield through scrappy set pieces. I also remember losing numerous times away to city even before they got the take over.
I get it, people want us to go out and attack but I seem to remember a certain Pep Guardiola doing this with the greatest club side in recent memory and yet his Barca side had a pretty pathetic away record in the CL knockouts. If we're playing like this away to Huddersfield next week I'd understand the hysteria.
But if for two games a season we go for a pragmatic approach and get away with a 0-0 and in the progress completely pissing off the entire fanbase and manager of our biggest rivals it really doesn't call for an Armageddon like reaction. That's three trips to Etihad and Anfield with three draws and none conceded, you only have to look at some of the results big sides have picked up at those grounds this season, mainly due to them going in with reckless abandon.
I also don't think Mourinho instructed 3/4 of our players to repeatedly pass the ball to Liverpool players. It's not like we were dropping really deep and had everyone behind the ball, there was a number of times Young, Martial and Rashford were in good spaces, ahead of the ball but the likes of Herrera, Darmian, Mkhitaryan just couldn't find it in themselves to pass the ball to their team mates.

AXVnee7 said:
What worries me is that he’ll adopt a similar approach vs the rest of the top 6. A draw at Anfield in itself isn’t bad, yet if if you look at our record against the top 6 since Jose’s been here then iirc correctly we only scored 1 goal away to the them last season. We didn’t win any did we? We didn’t look any better today. I actually think our performance at Anfield last time was better.

Not to mention the big games are supposed to be the box office events... if we’re just going to park the bus vs top teams then it’ll be hard to look forward to them.
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Should be some context there. Firstly the Spurs and Arsenal away games we basically had other priorities, rested players and were more concerned with staying injury free. On the face of it 0-0 draws at Anfield and Etihad are fantastic results. Chelsea was bad but we conceded after 17 seconds so we don't really know how the team would have approached the game. In the FA Cup game we were actually playing quite well until the referee decided he needed to hand Chelsea the win.
 
amolbhatia50k said:
It's not that strong. It may make them favorites but we definitely have a chance to win the league this season.
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Don't think we have much of a chance. Their fullbacks are on a completely different level to ours (if you can even consider what we have fullbacks) Our defence is better, but Jose could make a bunch of ducks hard to break down. Our midfield is better with Pogba, worse without him. They have essentially the best striker in the league who has been tearing this league a new asshole for years now. They've got probably the best player in the league in KDB. They've got Silva who has been one of the most effective players in the Prem era. Not to add their depth if one of them gets injured.

I thought as much before the season even started, they strengthened the squad extremely well. I still think our squad isn't finished. We need a LB, we need competition for Valencia and we need a proper right-sided attacker. Mkhi is also looking underwhelming, even in the games we are dominating. Not to say our squad isn't very good too, it is. City's is just far superior imo.
 
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Such bollocks written/spoken about these type of games. It's one game. People respond to them like they're Sean Bean narrating an erection.

Point at Anfield isn't to be sniffed at.
 
Eddy_JukeZ said:
I don't buy this revisionism that Fergie parked the bus.
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It's nonsense, pure and simple. We could get outplayed and beaten on occasion but to approach a game without the intent to win or score is something we weren't about during the great man's reign. I honestly only remember the Barca one that you mentioned and that's about it. Even against the great Barca sides during the Pep era we were throwing our weight around to no avail. Anyone using that to defend Jose's tactics is just reaching.
 
We played defensive loads of time under Fergie and we had poor attacking displays at anfield loads of times under SAF but we never went there with the intention of parking the bus and holding on to a draw by defending deep. As mentioned above the only real time he did that was against Barca. We started to play more defensive in away games in Europe to the latter part of SAF's time but he never parked the bus.

Today was definitely terrible.

I didn't mind the defensive approach. But you cannot surrender initiative and just literally try to get out with a 0-0.

We shall see what Jose does against Tottenham at home.
 
Womp said:
Don't think we have much of a chance. Their fullbacks are on a completely different level to ours (if you can even consider what we have fullbacks) Our defence is better, but Jose could make a bunch of ducks hard to break down. Our midfield is better with Pogba, worse without him. They have essentially the best striker in the league who has been tearing this league a new asshole for years now. They've got probably the best player in the league in KDB. They've got Silva who has been one of the most effective players in the Prem era. Not to add their depth if one of them gets injured.

I thought as much before the season even started, they strengthened the squad extremely well. I still think our squad isn't finished. We need a LB, we need competition for Valencia and we need a proper right-sided attacker. Mkhi is also looking underwhelming, even in the games we are dominating. Not to say our squad isn't very good too, it is. City's is just far superior imo.
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Their left fullback is better than ours (and injured for a long time). Right fullback Valencia is very good.


Our defence is clearly superior and it's nothing to do with Jose getting lots out of average players. Our defence was good under LVG too. Albiet he's added Bailey who is fantastic. We have better options in Bailey and Jones than they do. Hopefully Lindelof soon as well. Smalling has been poor in recent times but when in form he's brutal.

Our central midfield is comfortably better than theirs on paper. Matic, Herrera and Pogba is better than anything any of our title rivals have. Pogba isn't out forever. He'll be back soon.

They have Aguero? We have Lukaku and Zlatan will be rejoining soon.

They have Silva and we have Mtya and Mkhitarian. They've got more playmaking quality there but if Jose can get more out of Mkhitarian (Dortmund form) he'll be creating chances for fun.

We have the best goalkeeper in the world.

I think you're making excuses for Jose to be honest. We have the squad to challenge for and win the league title and our excellent start under mourinho this season shows. He knows we can win it and I doubt even he'd feel we don't have the squad for it.

The big area where city are better than us IMO is in their playmakers. De Bruyne, Silva and Silva are better at playmaking than Mata, Mkhitarian and Pogba.
 
RooneyLegend said:
It's nonsense, pure and simple. We could get outplayed and beaten on occasion but to approach a game without the intent to win or score is something we weren't about during the great man's reign. I honestly only remember the Barca one that you mentioned and that's about it. Even against the great Barca sides during the Pep era we were throwing our weight around to no avail. Anyone using that to defend Jose's tactics is just reaching.
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mav_9me said:
We played defensive loads of time under Fergie and we had poor attacking displays at anfield loads of times under SAF but we never went there with the intention of parking the bus and holding on to a draw by defending deep. As mentioned above the only real time he did that was against Barca. We started to play more defensive in away games in Europe to the latter part of SAF's time but he never parked the bus.

Today was definitely terrible.

I didn't mind the defensive approach. But you cannot surrender initiative and just literally try to get out with a 0-0.

We shall see what Jose does against Tottenham at home.
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Exactly.

I don't know why people can't just accept Jose being a defensive coach. Instead they look for ways to turn Sir Alex into one. Next I'll hear than our 1-1 draw away at arsenal during the 2002/03 epic title win where we soaked up pressure due to how good Arsenal were at the time was also parking the bus.
 
Eddy_JukeZ said:
We will need to get wins in the big games, because City are beating up the small teams like us, but they look capable of beating all the big teams. We don't at the moment.

I don't buy this revisionism that Fergie parked the bus. I only recall 2 games where we looked devoid of ideas going forward and no intent to even attack. The game vs Barcelona at the Nou Camp in 2007-2008(and we had a penalty early on) and the O'Shea winner at Anfield in 2007(ironically).

It's not about going out there and playing like Brazil 1970. It's about having some intent to attack. We've shown none of that in most of our big games under Jose.

300m+ spent and 1 away goal in 6 away matches to the top sides? That's awful.
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This.

I'm fine with the result. No problems. We take our point and look to go on a good run now. But long term this it isn't feasable to go away to the better teams and look fecking useless in attack. Maybe it would work in the PL of the 2014/15 and 2015/16. But we've got a quality title contender in city now. They will get some away wins against the top 6 and have already beaten Chelsea way. Well need some wins too imo.
 
All 3 United said:
He’s in his second season. Building a great squad and we had a lot of injuries in central midfield.

Good result.

The only coward was Klopp for not actually going for the win by taking one of his three midfielders off for an attacker.
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Jose mentioned this in the comments. What on earth is he talking about? And why is Klopp the coward when his team played most of the game in our half. His midfield three was working. And Jose seemed to bemoan them not changing it so we obviously wanted them to.
 
amolbhatia50k said:
Their left fullback is better than ours (and injured for a long time). Right fullback Valencia is very good.


Our defence is clearly superior and it's nothing to do with Jose getting lots out of average players. Our defence was good under LVG too. Albiet he's added Bailey who is fantastic. We have better options in Bailey and Jones than they do. Hopefully Lindelof soon as well. Smalling has been poor in recent times but when in form he's brutal.

Our central midfield is comfortably better than theirs on paper. Matic, Herrera and Pogba is better than anything any of our title rivals have. Pogba isn't out forever. He'll be back soon.

They have Aguero? We have Lukaku and Zlatan will be rejoining soon.

They have Silva and we have Mtya and Mkhitarian. They've got more playmaking quality there but if Jose can get more out of Mkhitarian (Dortmund form) he'll be creating chances for fun.

We have the best goalkeeper in the world.

I think you're making excuses for Jose to be honest. We have the squad to challenge for and win the league title and our excellent start under mourinho this season shows. He knows we can win it and I doubt even he'd feel we don't have the squad for it.

The big area where city are better than us IMO is in their playmakers. De Bruyne, Silva and Silva are better at playmaking than Mata, Mkhitarian and Pogba.
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The fact that you compared Lukaku to Aguero is enough evidence that we obviously have very different opinions on the strength of our squad. Also, how is playing down the strengths of our squad making excuses for Jose? If anything it's a slight on him for not spending the money better. He's the one that didn't pursue a LB and a right sided attacker for whatever reason. If it was to give Shaw another chance, so far it's been proven to be the wrong decision.
 
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I can understand United parking the bus against a strong Barcelona unit in the semi finals of the champions league. I can understand parking the bus against City, with the league title at play. I can never understand, parking the bus against a clearly inferior Liverpool team, with a defense leakier than a sieve and an attack that can't score in a brothel while also missing their best player. Mourinho encouraged cowardice today. Don't you dare compare him to Fergie. Mourinho has and will receive a lot of compliments, but he needs to be called out when he sets up tactically like this. We are a big club with a small team mentality now. And that should not be deemed acceptable in a club like Man United.
 
It'd be a tad weird to hire a guy who's done this his entire career in away games vs rivals and then brand it unacceptable when he does it here.
 
Varun said:
It'd be a tad weird to hire a guy who's done this his entire career in away games vs rivals and then brand it unacceptable when he does it here.
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TBH he's never done it as ugly as he has done it here because his previous sides always offered something on the counter even Inter v Barca before sending off. It's like he doesn't trust the quality of the side enough to put a few men in attack.
 
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