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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The way we played after their second goal was ridiculously risky. We were playing with a defense at all and risking conceding a third goal and killing the game. Loved that, brilliant.

We need to start the game better of course.
 
Ban said:
Ups sorry Sir.
:wenger:

Great subs and it was good to see he went for it completely.
I agree we started slowly and that tends to happen. We proved today and vs Chelsea that when we go for it we have it in our locker to be really dangerous.
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Starting slowly doesn't really describe the game does it. We started playing in the 70th minute.
 
The biggest piece of credit I'll give him (and he deserves a lot tonight) is his choice to move Alexis to a CM and Rashford out wide. I've wanted to see Alexis there for ages and we reaped the rewards. More of him there please!
 
Credit for bringing on Mata at least - he changed the game.

Hate that he continues to play shite like Young at left back but I guess when Shaw came on, we saw why.

Definitely a better second half though so he deserves credit for that.
 
Mourinho needs to realise we are not a defensive orientated team. We have amazing attacking quality so let the horses run free. His man management and ability to make game changing subs is second to none but his negative approach is hurting this team. The way we played after going 2-0 down today was exactly what we want to see from the start of EVERY game. If he adapts to this he can stay for as long as he wants but it's down to him.
 
Kicked a water bottle apparently - suspended against Liverpool then :(
 
AR87 said:
He's not getting his starting tactics right but his adjustments the last 2 games have been tremendous.
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AndyJ1985 said:
The football is dreadful and we always start games on the back foot. His subs usually change things but it's worrying that the subs are always needed to change it. Why can't he get it right from the first whistle?
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spiriticon said:
Shite tactics at the start, then decided to go all Fergie when we lose a goal, throw attackers on and we have won the last 2 games coming from behind.

Just do it Fergie's way from the start, Jose.
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I am sorry but its not the tactics that let us down at the start. Our players were getting into the right positions but were either sloppy in their passing or were ignoring passing options to the wing. The problem with Alexis, Pogba, and Jesse is that they all want to play neat intricate passing in the most congested areas. Young and Valencia made some really good runs but were ignored time after.time. Jose tried to rectify this by bringing in Rashford to maintain the width, which completely transformed our play. This wouldn’t have been necessary if our players stopped playing Fifa football and really utilised the width of the pitch.
The other really glaring issue is our concentration and intensity. The concentration for the second goal was just not acceptable. These defensive lapses our becoming all too frequent.
We played with intensity after going 2 goals down but as soon as we equalized, the players let up. You could see Pogba strolling around after the second goal as if we were in the lead. This is not a coaching issue. The coach cannot remotely control the intensity from the sidelines. For me, we have big question marks over the mentality of these players and their desire to win.
 
Abhinav said:
I am sorry but its not the tactics that let us down at the start
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They did. The attack today was far too narrow to start with and Young's continued inclusion over Shaw is nonsensical.

The players were awful and deserve more blame than Mourinho today IMO but when you're that open every time Palace come forward there are very real structural flaws in how United setup.

The lack of confusion in what was expected of them through much of the first half against Chelsea also speaks to issues with the players executing the manager's instruction which is also something he must deal with.
 
Good thing is - the players are playing for him.

But we still look like a sack of shit when attacking.

For God sake. Get an attacking coach in.
 
I thought the rubbish first half was a lot to do with playing three in center mid. In the second half when we had Rashford on and went two in the middle we looked a lot better. I don't remember Palace doing much (apart from DDG save) to trouble us.

Thing Jose needs to do is get the balance right of when to play two or three in center mid.

I would say have a midfield three in your harder games, your Spurs, Liverpool, City away in the Prem etc. In games like this I think the extra attacker helps a great deal.

I fancy us against anyone at home. So next two games are huge. But good work from Jose tonight. Especially the 2nd half.
 
:devil: Easily our MOTM tonight.

Critical changes made immediately, extreme passion to win, bollocking our rubbish players.

First half, our players betrayed his expectations, but meh fine, good redemption second half.

That calling De Gea to the sideline while everyone else is busy celebrating is classic Mourinho. :lol:
 
EyeInTheSky said:
@Adisa looking forward to your post mate. Sounds like you had something important to say.
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Was going to complain about ceding territory to Palace.
Once again, we pushed him higher in the second.
Either intentional or the players are extremely stupid.
 
He definitely won us the game tonight, although the way we start games is still far too conservative for me.

I still think he should get next year but we’ve a long way to go.
 
Adisa said:
Was going to complain about ceding territory to Palace.
Once again, we pushed him higher in the second.
Either intentional or the players are extremely stupid.
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Players are stupid. Also smalling was doing my fecking head in. Did well to get us back in their but we can't keep allowing players to stay in the team just because every once in a while they do something decent. Surely on the balance of things they take away more than they give? For me, we need to either put Lindelof to replace him there so at least we have decent distribution and bringing the ball forward if were not going to get a consistent defender there.
 
He has always been a reactionary coach, but I wish he'd be more adventurous in his tactics and make them play how they did in the 2nd half but from the start in games. Happens far too often but we only turn it on when we have no choice but to do it. 2nd half against Chelsea was a must win and we were losing. Same with today. We need to show the intensity from minute 1 and show the positive tactics, not be so passive in games and hope they'll be easy. Win it in the first then you can coast a little. We almost never do that, as Mourinho has them being solid and not taking many risks from the start, until we inevitably concede. There's no way that I'm believing that he tells them to play like that from the start (how we should), but the players only do it in the 2nd half. Mourinho wants us to be a solid, defensive and organized team, but we just aren't that. At all. We are brutally shite at trying to be organized and play slowly. It never works. We need to take the front foot from the first minute and go at teams from the start, not wait for us to concede a goal and then change into how we should've started.

Anyway, I criticized him for that but have to praise him for getting it right eventually. He knows how to change games through subs better then pretty much any manager. Just wish he would have this effect from the start and he became more proactive.
 
I take all the credit, it's my positivity that drove us to success, Mourinho had nothing to do with it. Good subs though and his reaction after kicking the bottle is priceless.
 
Yagami said:
The biggest piece of credit I'll give him (and he deserves a lot tonight) is his choice to move Alexis to a CM and Rashford out wide. I've wanted to see Alexis there for ages and we reaped the rewards. More of him there please!
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Alexis was as bad behind Lukaku as he was on the left, there was definitely no rewards reaped from that, we got lucky his shoft deflected off the bar and then to Lukaku but apart from that he was woeful all game.
 
I am worried about our approach to the first half of games.
We really shouldn't have let Palace come on to us. Same thing against Chelsea.
 
Love/Hate thing I have with Jose. He somehow brings it back just when I'm ready to break it off with him.
 
Adisa said:
I am worried about our approach to the first half of games.
We really shouldn't have let Palace come on to us. Same thing against Chelsea.
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It's not our approach, so much. We couldn't even pass the ball, and when we managed to make a successful pass, the recipient couldn't hold on to it. The players were awful in that first half.
 
Di Maria's angel said:
It's not our approach, so much. We couldn't even pass the ball, and when we managed to make a successful pass, the recipient couldn't hold on to it. The players were awful in that first half.
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I have to disagree. The abysmal amount of loose passes and poor first touches today in the first half cannot disguise the fact that in general we have been crap in the first half for a lot of games recently.
 
RMD83 said:
I have to disagree. The abysmal amount of loose passes and poor first touches today in the first half cannot disguise the fact that in general we have been crap in the first half for a lot of games recently.
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I won't disagree with being crap in most first halves in recent games, however, today, I felt there was a little more to it than simply our tactics.
 
We were pressing and having our fullbacks high up the pitch was partly the reason for the 1st goal we conceded. The second is not anything tactical. We probably would have won the game by just bringing Mata and Rashford on anyway.
 
I've not criticised Jose much...but we need to approach games in a higher gear, instead of hoping the opposition settles into our tempo and we nick a goal or two because we've got better players.

We seemingly don't have another gear to move into when that goes wrong either. Thankfully Palace moved on to the back foot, we went into a more attacking shape and Mata sharpened us up a bit (the perfect sub for that moment), but the goal was hardly definitely coming because our intensity was still the same. Credit for the changes he did make, but that alone wouldn't work every time.
 
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