I’m 100% biased towards naive optimism. Helps keep me sane. So completely understand your take on all of this. Just struggling to get on board, personally.
Jose Mourinho | 2017/18 Assessments | Poll Added
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I’m 100% biased towards naive optimism. Helps keep me sane. So completely understand your take on all of this. Just struggling to get on board, personally.
Before this season, my hope for Mourinho was that he could take us maybe to the quarter or semifinals, and that we'd finish number 2 or 3.
One of these probably turns out true, so the progress is still progress. Sevilla was really disappointing to go out to. Those tournaments are usually where Mourinho does his best.
One of these probably turns out true, so the progress is still progress. Sevilla was really disappointing to go out to. Those tournaments are usually where Mourinho does his best.
I haven't a clue who I want in. I'm just becoming so disinterested with our play that games like yesterday do not surprise me in the slightest anymore.
Watching us now is very nearly as much of a chore as during LVG 2016.That's mostly down to Mourinho.
Agreed. I'm bored watching us.
^^Very good points^^
I feel sure that we have progressed under Mourinho, but this squad is packed full of experienced and talented players, and a bright future should be clear to see, giving everyone great excitement and optimism.
Being able to call upon the talents of Sanchez, Pogba, Mata, Martial, Rashford & Lukaku we really should be playing with so much more purpose than we do, and opponents should see our team sheet and dread playing us, but I don't think anybody does.
Another Summer window just around the corner, and I think it's more crucial than ever that the right players are recruited, and next season sees United playing with verve and swagger.
This is how Brexit came to be!
Next season should probably be his make or break it season.
1) The material is pretty strong. Especially in attack, where other managers might make better use of what we have.
2) The original timeframe of getting us to the top was 3 years.
3) If his playing-style is not succesfull, it's just weighing United as a club and brand down. We've always been associated with attacking football. He'll never get rid of his anti-football brand.
The downside of sacking him is:
1) We might get less control (which after all has gotten us to 2nd. It's been stable)
2) Mediocre defenders might be exposed as terrible, if we don't play compact football no longer.
3) We might have a new manager, who makes us less attractive transfer-wise (Poch)
4) Not many managers can handle the pressure at big clubs like United. If the mentality to win is not strong enough, it affects the players - there's just much more media and fan pressure on us than other english clubs.
1) The material is pretty strong. Especially in attack, where other managers might make better use of what we have.
2) The original timeframe of getting us to the top was 3 years.
3) If his playing-style is not succesfull, it's just weighing United as a club and brand down. We've always been associated with attacking football. He'll never get rid of his anti-football brand.
The downside of sacking him is:
1) We might get less control (which after all has gotten us to 2nd. It's been stable)
2) Mediocre defenders might be exposed as terrible, if we don't play compact football no longer.
3) We might have a new manager, who makes us less attractive transfer-wise (Poch)
4) Not many managers can handle the pressure at big clubs like United. If the mentality to win is not strong enough, it affects the players - there's just much more media and fan pressure on us than other english clubs.
Agreed. If one or two players were not performing it would be fair to think they were not trying, but it seems like no one is in good form and we are talking like half the squad needs to be jettisoned.
If you keep hitting the rest button every 2 seasons, we won't get anywhere.
And Poch, much like Moyes, has never won a trophy in his life. That's a huge problem, when at MUFC, people will demand that he wins trophies.
It's the equivalent of hiring a man for a job, for a particular task, that he has never successfully performed before in his life. It's a huge risk and he is likely to fail. Just as Moyes did.
I said to my mates and bros that this season wouldn’t end up as good as last due to the fact we won two trophies last time out,trophies that we don’t care that much about to be honest but trophies nevertheless.
This season has to be seen as progress due to our league position and let’s face it,who was really gonna keep up with City with the form they have shown?
I agree with the poster above(and others)the way we went out to Sevilla is really the low point(at the moment)of the season.
If we can win the FA Cup and consolidate second then I will happily take that.
This season has to be seen as progress due to our league position and let’s face it,who was really gonna keep up with City with the form they have shown?
I agree with the poster above(and others)the way we went out to Sevilla is really the low point(at the moment)of the season.
If we can win the FA Cup and consolidate second then I will happily take that.
Think it was Spurs again where his Chelsea side got hammered on New Years Day and then the next game they played the most boring 0-0 vs Arsenal and never hit any attacking heights again. Stumbling over the finish line to win it.
Edit: Just looked it up, Spurs blitzed them but the Arsenal result was later in the season.
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Why do people bring up Fergie all the time in this context like they're making some salient point? Like you're uttering something so profound? If you can't see why it makes no sense at all bringing up Fergie in this context then you're either being deliberately obtuse, or genuinely ignorant.
In fairness I voted Remain
I just want to enjoy watching us play again and we are so risk averse and pedestrian that I don't see us improving too much next season. I'm not sure what the answer is, I'm just so disappointed after yesterday.
Not to sound spoiled or anything, but if by winning trophies you mean the odd domestic cup and Europa league then that means nothing to me, especially if we play such tumescent football.
As far as I'm concerned we either play good football while competing for the top honours or if we do persist with this tumescent mourinho style then we could at least genuinely contend for the biggest prizes like the CL or PL. Right now we are doing neither.
Give me attractive football over shit football that garners us the occasional league cup.
You'd be a perfect fit for Spurs. The manager and players deem trophies like the FA cup, Europa League and League cup as irrelevant. They end up winning feck all as a result.
Top managers know the importance of silverware.
Well just as well I'm a United fan then.
This will all look very silly if they end up beating us and going on to win the FA cup. Also as much as we like to mock Spurs trophy haul in recent history, they've gotten alot closer than us to winning the league since SAF retired.
Since when should we accept that it’s an either/or scenario?
The idea that risk averse football will get you better results than being more expansive is flawed anyway. Can anyone remember the last team to win a load of trophies by playing conservative, defensive football? Seems to me all the best teams for the last decade or more have been all about playing great attacking football.
Caftards have been taking the piss out of Liverpool’s inability to defend all season, would anyone seriously not swap their season for ours?
You are really clutching at straws on that 'a lot closer' bit. Spurs have at best put 'pressure' on. At no point in this period where they have gotten 'a lot closer' have they been in 1st place.
That's right, Spurs have not spent a single week in 1st place in this period where they are better than us. They are the ultimate bottlers.
You're preaching to the choir honestly. I do think a club with our resources should offer both. But the only compromise I'd accept with watching the typical Mourinho dross is if we were genuine contenders for the big prizes, which we're not. So yes I'd almost certainly swap our season (and manager) for theirs, irrespective of whether they finish below us.
Bing-fecking-go
I wouldn't touch an Apple product if you paid me thank you.
Are you enjoying your time at Old Trafford this year? Do you walk back with a smile of your face thinking 'well we play awful football, but Mourinho will win something one day'?
They’ve done this on an absolute pittance, compared to the hundreds of millions pissed up a wall by Mourinho et al. Nobody has any clue how well Pocchetino would do if money was no object but I don’t see why any United fan would feel reassured about keeping our noses ahead a team that operates on a tiny fraction of our budget (and scored more goals than us this season)
So? We've spent periods in first only to end the season outside of the top 4.
And last season they finished runners up by 7 points, and for that freak Leicester season they were trailing by a few points until they had a bit of a collapse towards the end. When did we ever get that close ?
It's a risk no doubt but one that other big clubs were willing to make. Bayern, Real, Barca, Juventus have all risked it with young managers.
Moyes was old school just like LvG and Mourinho. We need a modern manager, i.e. someone who plays the high press, attacking football of Pep/Klopp/Poch.
I'm massively jealous of how Liverpool's season has unfolded and the way they play, with numerous examples of their manager improving players - from their 2 exciting full backs to buying the Ox from Arsenal and making Wenger look a fool. Wenger also being a dinosaur manager.
Not just Bayern. Real Madrid have Zidane, a man who has won nothing. Barcelona have had great success with managers who have previously won nothing. But any suggestion on here that we could hire someone who doesn't have a long illustrious career of winning trophies is met with sneering and bemusement.
Perhaps it would be wise to have an actual plan about how we get to the next level, maybe a plan that includes finding the next big thing in management. But instead we'll continue to be reactive and hire the "best" or biggest name available, and we'll keep throwing money at the problem. It's not like we could learn anything from Bayern Real or Barcelona, I mean what have they won?
City are having a record breaking season we were never going to finish above them. I'll take 2nd place and silverware any day.
We won the EL last season which Spurs got knocked out of by Gent. Mourinho decided to scrap the league and go for the EL.
Are you saying Spurs weren't good enough to win the EL last season? Could they not compete with the budget of Celta Vigo and Ajax?
When the manager says that these cups arent important, it's not a surprise when the team don't perform in them.
People dance around this and are very reluctant to examine how much luck (or uncontrollable circumstances) affect results, but Spurs were very fortunate to have Kane suddenly blossom into the best centre forward in world football out of nowhere. You are only ever going to get a true understanding of how well Spurs and Poch are doing if Kane moves onto Madrid or elsewhere this summer. Yes, Spurs and the manager deserve some credit for having nurtured and developed him, but the overwhelming principle ingredient behind Kane's rise is luck. He's probably the second best centre forward in PL history to come through a PL academy. You can hope to have a player like him come through, one who is now worth an easy £150m, but with all the planning in the world it is down to sheer fortune if it eventually comes to pass.
It's easy to point to your net spend at Spurs when you have been blessed enough to have got a £150m centre forward for free. Every other striker they have bought in the last ten years hasn't passed muster. No-one saw them competing for the league with Defoe or Adebayor.
If Kane moves on, and Poch still gets this level of results and Spurs get another striker to get Kane's goalscoring numbers, I'll be very impressed.
People can point towards league table position and fine, yes that is progress. He has also done well in terms of players hes brought in so far. My problem with him is the lack of any progression in terms of play style or improving the side beyond just buying players. It doesnt take a genius to just throw £200m every summer at big name players, put them on the pitch and hope they grind out results. The fact that we struggle, 2 years into his reign, to play any sort of cohesive football and that 2 years into it there isnt any pattern of play, any clear system that we're trying to play or something like that... that's what is worrying.
And what on earth is the reason for him to stay? Because this season hasnt completely flopped? There isnt a single reason to be optimistic next season. You cant just look at points tally and say "yup, 6th to 2nd so that means improvement". In terms of general play, it's about the same, if not worse this season. We won more games because of much better finishing while last season we probably had more dominant performances and just had terrible luck in front of goal. But last season we also missed Ibra the last 2 months, but still won the 2 trophies. Replay last season with the same players and I think we wouldve done better simply because we fecked up games through shit finishing. Not that it was good enough anyway, but good for a post LvG season. This season should've built on it. It should've been an improvement in play style, progressively getting better and showing more signs of consistency and flowing attacks and definitely not getting deservedly beat at home to a relegated side. Instead, we've only gotten worse. Not a single player apart from Lingard or Young have improved from last season. More and more players are showing discontent, and our amazing young players who we thought were the future of the club (pogba, martial and rashford) are looking more and more like they are unhappy and maybe might not want to leave just yet, but certainly are considering their options. And yet people would risk losing all our promising youngsters just so Mourinho can sign "pretty good" 28 year olds like Perisic to replace them, but ultimately do nothing different because let's be honest, Mourinhos lack of any identity or style will ever be good enough to beat Pep.
You look at all the other top managers. They all improve the players they have. It's a fair excuse if you dont have the squad to win things, but you should be able to take them as far as they can go. And then signing some world class players should elevate you. Just like how Klopp has done and how a squad of so many average players but with 3 quality attackers are suddenly looking like they can win the champions league, playing great football consistently and are pretty much in the same position we're in for the league (because really, what's 2-5 points difference over a whole season when the 3 positions you are fighting for mean nothing).
And what on earth is the reason for him to stay? Because this season hasnt completely flopped? There isnt a single reason to be optimistic next season. You cant just look at points tally and say "yup, 6th to 2nd so that means improvement". In terms of general play, it's about the same, if not worse this season. We won more games because of much better finishing while last season we probably had more dominant performances and just had terrible luck in front of goal. But last season we also missed Ibra the last 2 months, but still won the 2 trophies. Replay last season with the same players and I think we wouldve done better simply because we fecked up games through shit finishing. Not that it was good enough anyway, but good for a post LvG season. This season should've built on it. It should've been an improvement in play style, progressively getting better and showing more signs of consistency and flowing attacks and definitely not getting deservedly beat at home to a relegated side. Instead, we've only gotten worse. Not a single player apart from Lingard or Young have improved from last season. More and more players are showing discontent, and our amazing young players who we thought were the future of the club (pogba, martial and rashford) are looking more and more like they are unhappy and maybe might not want to leave just yet, but certainly are considering their options. And yet people would risk losing all our promising youngsters just so Mourinho can sign "pretty good" 28 year olds like Perisic to replace them, but ultimately do nothing different because let's be honest, Mourinhos lack of any identity or style will ever be good enough to beat Pep.
You look at all the other top managers. They all improve the players they have. It's a fair excuse if you dont have the squad to win things, but you should be able to take them as far as they can go. And then signing some world class players should elevate you. Just like how Klopp has done and how a squad of so many average players but with 3 quality attackers are suddenly looking like they can win the champions league, playing great football consistently and are pretty much in the same position we're in for the league (because really, what's 2-5 points difference over a whole season when the 3 positions you are fighting for mean nothing).
I wouldn’t have put all the success we enjoyed with Giggs, Scholes and Beckham in the team as down to “sheer fortune” but I guess that’s one way of looking at it...
Yeah but they finished 2nd in the league last season on 86 points. They ignored the EL because the main draw to it is Champions League qualification. What they failed is in the CL last season. Once you get knocked out of that, nobody cares usually. We cared because it was our only hope of qualifying. Yeah it was nice to win a trophy and get the winning feel which is important, but it's also important to play well and improve as a team.
Arsenal are potentially going to have the same season this season as we had last year (minus the League cup). And they've been horrid and are a mess. Is them winning the Europa league going to suddenly make it a success? Or Wenger winning a few FA Cups suddenly erase that they've had 0 progress the last decade?
Would Mourinho have taken the chance on Kane? Or loaned him out and eventually sold him because of a lack of game time. Probably the latter, as he did with De Bruyne, Salah, and could well do with Martial and what Rashford is possibly complaining about.
Playing boring, unexciting, negative football for me as a United fan is a bigger crime than not winning trophies. Having supported Mourinho and his appointment it is with regret that I just don't feel he's going to put us back on the map now. He's been given money, he's got most of the players he's wanted, he's got his favourite coaches and we should be looking like a team that can be considered serious title contenders next season. We look a hundred miles from that right now which is pretty unacceptable. With the World Cup happening this summer and players playing for longer allowing for less time for rest, I just can't see how Mourinho of his staff can miraculously turn things around in terms of the way we need to play and more importantly, creating a psychological bonding with a ruthless team spirit and ambition.
There was one caf member on here who said that the other day was the first time in 30 years of going to OT that he walked out before full time, so obviously, someone who wouldn't make that decision lightly. To me, that says rather a lot.
There was one caf member on here who said that the other day was the first time in 30 years of going to OT that he walked out before full time, so obviously, someone who wouldn't make that decision lightly. To me, that says rather a lot.
Makes this weekends game a bit more worrying with it being Spurs!
SAF is indeed part of a glorious past, I never understand why he keeps getting brought up.
The isolated results of an academy are in a large part down to fortune. If elite clubs could consistently generate sufficient talent to compete at the top then they would. United have not been able to replicate the Class of 92, Barcelona have not managed to follow up on Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, etc.
United were lucky to have that crop of players come through in the 90s, but they exploited that good fortune to the near maximum. What Ferguson did well was exploit the fruits of the academy through the Class of 92 once they were ready. He then moved them on once they were no longer of the sufficient standard to compete and built further great teams. In all Ferguson's time at the club, we didn't have a single elite centre forward come through. Welbeck was the best with a paltry 20 league goals and no-one else even scored 5.
Mourinho plays you if you're good enough, hence Rashford played a lot, essentially every game until Sanchez joined. Kane proved very quickly that he could cut it in the Premier League.
If Mou knows he's only ever going to be at his current club for a couple of seasons, why would he care about the long term? He was absolutely entitled to not use De Bruyne, Salah and Lukaku at Chelsea, if he felt other players were more likely to deliver the immediate results. Chelsea should be holding their Director of Football to account and not their short term managers for their long term squad management and transfer policy. The fact that Mourinho was sacked months after winning the title shows that he was right to focus on the short term.
If we sell Martial, Shaw or any other talent, it better be because we think the club is better of without them long term either with or without Mourinho.
I'd keep Mourinho. But anyone who believes his position is beyond question may be an even bigger one. The FA cup would be nice and I'd probably keep him regardless for one more year but I can see the argument for letting him go either way as well (regardless of the cup). Not winning the FA cup would apparently make it a 'very poor season' as per our post. Keeping in mind that last season we met our bare minimum objective, that's not great for 2 years given the spending.
Given the state of us when he took over I find your post disingenuous. His playing style is tumescent and needs to improve but City are blinding a lot of people in my opinion.
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