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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Everything is a cycle. Whatever's trendy now, go the other direction and you will be an innovator (usually reaping big rewards).

Back then, attacking football from Brazil, Netherlands, Argentina enthralled the world. Along came Italy, a solid unit of footballing resiliency, and shocked the world by beating the best team and winning the World Cup. Going against popular styles won.

When 'hard-to-beat' was an in thing, when solid teams like Arsenal and Liverpool were winning every game 1-0, along came Sir Alex Ferguson with a swashbuckling style of football and rewrote football history.

When others zig, you zag.

Today, attacking football seems to be the play of the day. Jose is zagging when every other lemming is zigging. Jose has a clear plan. Make United a solid, hard to beat team first. Form the midfield with giants that other players fear. We have a lot of powerful players. Jose will rely on the talented strikers upfront, (from Drogba to Costa) to Ibramovich to Lukaku will do the job.

For United, this is but a speed bump.
 
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prtk0811 said:
Then there is KDB situation where a potential like that is going unchallenged to direct rival. We'd never now if moyes caliming toni kroos as true and lvg override that one as well.
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I was really pissed off at the way we sat around and let City waltz in and take him away from Wolfsburg. We had CL that season and if only our manager could scout better, KDB would have been ours with some persuasion. Kept checking the gossip for anything to suggest we were in for him.

Woodward should definitely have overrode LvG's idiosyncrasies. We made more efforts to sign Depay and Schweinsteiger while we happily let KDB go. I remember it was the first time I had a slight doubt over LvG's suitability for the job.

Like Moyes who signed Ex-Everton players for Sunderland, LvG either signed players he had worked with, or were his countrymen, or those whom he saw at the WC. I don't think the manager should have all the say on transfers but I am not sure how efficient Woodward is either.
 
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Vinnie Peetang said:
Everything is a cycle. Whatever's trendy now, go the other direction and you will be an innovator (usually reaping big rewards).

Back then, attacking football from Brazil, Netherlands, Argentina enthralled the world. Along came Italy, a solid unit of footballing resiliency, and shocked the world by beating the best team and winning the World Cup. Going against popular styles won.

When 'hard-to-beat' was an in thing, when solid teams like Arsenal and Liverpool were winning every game 1-0, along came Sir Alex Ferguson with a swashbuckling style of football and rewrote football history.

When others zig, you zag.

Today, attacking football seems to be the play of the day. Jose is zagging when every other lemming is zigging. Jose has a clear plan. Make United a solid, hard to beat team first. Form the midfield with giants that other players fear. We have a lot of powerful players. Jose will rely on the talented strikers upfront, (from Drogba to Costa) to Ibramovich to Lukaku will do the job.

For United, this is but a speed bump.
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Jose's time to impact the game from a tactical standpoint has come and gone, no coach has gone past their tactical cycle. People talk about Sir Alex's ability to adjust to where the game is going, one thing he was different at than the rest of them is that he changed coaches ever so often in order to adjust to where the game was going. Sadly for where the game is, what Jose does seems a bit archaic. We've seen what's happened to him ever since he's come to the prem again. The younger managers with fresh ideas basically have him on toast. None less more obvious than when he managed against a coach he trail-blazed for in the CL(Simeone).

In order to stop his teams from countering, the attacking clubs that his tactics draw in tend to work exceptionally hard to win the ball back immediately which renders the whole sitting deep thing pointless especially since Jose never sets his team up to play under pressure. He never signs players who are elite technicians on the ball cause it's never been necessary for him. Now we in an age where those qualities are necessary. the only way Jose does an amazing job here is if he's a manager and not a coach, sadly that's something i doubt he'll ever be.
 
Vinnie Peetang said:
Everything is a cycle. Whatever's trendy now, go the other direction and you will be an innovator (usually reaping big rewards).

Back then, attacking football from Brazil, Netherlands, Argentina enthralled the world. Along came Italy, a solid unit of footballing resiliency, and shocked the world by beating the best team and winning the World Cup. Going against popular styles won.

When 'hard-to-beat' was an in thing, when solid teams like Arsenal and Liverpool were winning every game 1-0, along came Sir Alex Ferguson with a swashbuckling style of football and rewrote football history.

When others zig, you zag.

Today, attacking football seems to be the play of the day. Jose is zagging when every other lemming is zigging. Jose has a clear plan. Make United a solid, hard to beat team first. Form the midfield with giants that other players fear. We have a lot of powerful players. Jose will rely on the talented strikers upfront, (from Drogba to Costa) to Ibramovich to Lukaku will do the job.

For United, this is but a speed bump.
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I doubt football fans have ever preferred winning with defensive football over winning with attacking football. Who the hell prefers winning 10- over winning 5-0, no one. Teams like Italy just showed it's possible to beat an, on paper, superior team with defensive tactics. All (fine, most) immortal footballing moments in history are attacking related. Maradona's solo, his hand of God, Ronaldinho smiling after nutmegging someone, Van Bastens final winner in 88. I can't name a single tackle or defensive positioning sequence that has garnered the same attention and praise.

Ranked from best to worst since the dawn of time:
winning attractively
winning pragmaticly
losing attractively
the away match against Chelsea
 
The funny thing about all of this is, Mourinho can play good football. The media has brainwashed you all with the phrase "Park the bus".
 
haram said:
The funny thing about all of this is, Mourinho can play good football. The media has brainwashed you all with the phrase "Park the bus".
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Everyone can play beautiful football with a vastly superior team. Playing beautiful football against equal, or slightly better teams, is where the problem is.

Mourinho gets results, sure, but you can't deny he cares little about the way he gets them. Which is fine ofcourse, but if you take away the results it leaves you with, well, nothing
 
KirkDuyt said:
Everyone can play beautiful football with a vastly superior team. Playing beautiful football against equal, or slightly better teams, is where the problem is.

Mourinho gets results, sure, but you can't deny he cares little about the way he gets them. Which is fine ofcourse, but if you take away the results it leaves you with, well, nothing
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Any style of football leaves you with nothing if you take away the results.
 
shaky said:
Any style of football leaves you with nothing if you take away the results.
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True, but at least you may have enjoyed the ride to ending up with nothing if you watched a good game of football is what I meant.
 
Fergie also whined like a little bitch and threatened to leave for Barcelona/Madrid when Mourinho and Chelsea came in and spent a feckton of money back in 2005. This is just another one of the things Mourinho and Fergie do. Amirite guys?
 
Skills said:
Fergie also whined like a little bitch and threatened to leave for Barcelona/Madrid when Mourinho and Chelsea came in and spent a feckton of money back in 2005. This is just another one of the things Mourinho and Fergie do. Amirite guys?
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Actually, Ferguson leaked to the media that Chelsea wanted him when Roman took over, in order to leverage a better contract.

According to a recent article by Stuart Mathieson.
 
sammsky1 said:
With the likes of Carrick, Ibra etc approaching retirement and Mata, Valencia, Young, Fellaini etc reaching the end of contracts, there is some very fundamental squad strategic planning that is required.

I suspect that is what the board is alluding to, and makes perfect sense.
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I thought same things, it's suspicious when the board wasn't bothered about Young, Fellaini, Mata, Herrea, Blind and Luke Shaw's contract is expiring in 2018, they seem to be happy to lose much money by letting all of them going to be free in 2018 summer. The board have told Jose that he needs to sell some of the players to free up 25 man max squad before he adds new players but didn't say how much Jose can only spend. If we didn't sell some players in January then we're likely to overhaul the squad next summer with around 200-300m.

I can't believe the amount of people believing that we are skint just because the board didn't give Jose full backing.
 
deafepl said:
I thought same things, it's suspicious when the board wasn't bothered about Young, Fellaini, Mata, Herrea, Blind and Luke Shaw's contract is expiring in 2018, they seem to be happy to lose much money by letting all of them going to be free in 2018 summer. The board have told Jose that he needs to sell some of the players to free up 25 man max squad before he adds new players but didn't say how much Jose can only spend. If we didn't sell some players in January then we're likely to overhaul the squad next summer with around 200-300m.

I can't believe the amount of people believing that we are skint just because the board didn't give Jose full backing.
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We are neither skint nor lacking financial planning: Manchester United is possibly the very best commercially run and financially aware club in the world ... Our CEO is an ex banker!

Maybe most fans don’t know how such organisations are run; it would mimic a FTSE 100 company.

Given City’s current superiority, perhaps Mourinho is concerned about future levels of investment. But it will be a planned and grown up professional conversation and nothing close to the tabloid media hyperbole.
 
sammsky1 said:
We are neither skint nor lacking financial planning: Manchester United is possibly the very best commercially run and financially aware club in the world ... Our CEO is an ex banker!

Maybe most fans don’t know how such organisations are run; it would mimic a FTSE 100 company.

Given City’s current superiority, perhaps Mourinho is concerned about future levels of investment. But it will be a planned and grown up professional conversation and nothing close to the tabloid media hyperbole.
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City have spent much as we do but we didn't manage it properly under LVG, that doesn't mean we are lacking investment in a squad where we need to improve. There are a lot of people thinking City have unlimited fund and can outspend us which is not true because they have to play by FFP rules. Our revenue is much bigger than their and we have a financial power to outspend City. Only that holding us back from spending much as we like to because of the debt interests instalment we have to pay annually and City has zero debt.

I get your point, I didn't see it coming either after City's performance when they destroyed Liverpool and Watford, I don't think Jose knew it either, it was unexpected. He has every rights to feel concerned about an investment where we can spend and how much it does take us to challenge the City because he wants to win a title badly with Manchester United, he couldn't do it if he didnt gets backing by the board.
 
Start of the season: " We have a great squad" "We'll push hard for the league" "Our new signings makes us favourites"

Now "The squad isn't good enough to win the league" "top 4 is what we should expect" "Mourinho wasn't backed in the transfer market and cannot hope to outspend evil City"

So many excuses and moving goalposts in this thread
 
I thought it was merely paper talk before, but I just saw that apparently Emery is out of contract with PSG in the coming summer. There may actually be something in these Jose PSG links
 
Vinnie Peetang said:
Everything is a cycle. Whatever's trendy now, go the other direction and you will be an innovator (usually reaping big rewards).

Back then, attacking football from Brazil, Netherlands, Argentina enthralled the world. Along came Italy, a solid unit of footballing resiliency, and shocked the world by beating the best team and winning the World Cup. Going against popular styles won.

When 'hard-to-beat' was an in thing, when solid teams like Arsenal and Liverpool were winning every game 1-0, along came Sir Alex Ferguson with a swashbuckling style of football and rewrote football history.

When others zig, you zag.

Today, attacking football seems to be the play of the day. Jose is zagging when every other lemming is zigging. Jose has a clear plan. Make United a solid, hard to beat team first. Form the midfield with giants that other players fear. We have a lot of powerful players. Jose will rely on the talented strikers upfront, (from Drogba to Costa) to Ibramovich to Lukaku will do the job.

For United, this is but a speed bump.
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:lol: What nonsense is this? Everybody zigs you zag. fecksake.
 
Donovan_red7 said:
I thought it was merely paper talk before, but I just saw that apparently Emery is out of contract with PSG in the coming summer. There may actually be something in these Jose PSG links
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Non sense International break attention grabbing headlines.
 
Hawks2008 said:
Start of the season: " We have a great squad" "We'll push hard for the league" "Our new signings makes us favourites"

Now "The squad isn't good enough to win the league" "top 4 is what we should expect" "Mourinho wasn't backed in the transfer market and cannot hope to outspend evil City"

So many excuses and moving goalposts in this thread
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We lost our midfeild balance when 3 of our midfeilders got injured and the player which needed to deliver in mkh had flopped.

It's still just November you know.
 
Very tricky situation. If things go south, and by that I mean not getting into QFs in CL and City increasing their lead in the EPL by 10+ points, I can see Mou fecking off to Paris. So much for staying for 15 years at OT. Woodward needs to be ready for a manager change and prepare his plans B and C.
 
Water Melon said:
Very tricky situation. If things go south, and by that I mean not getting into QFs in CL and City increasing their lead in the EPL by 10+ points, I can see Mou fecking off to Paris. So much for staying for 15 years at OT. Woodward needs to be ready for a manager change and prepare his plans B and C.
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Not happening. Papers create headlines out of nothing. There is no need to panic with players comming back from fitness.
 
prtk0811 said:
Not happening. Papers create headlines out of nothing. There is no need to panic with players comming back from fitness.
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I hope you are right, but let's see. The manchester derby will show lots of things, should we lose it and we will be 11 pts behind City. Lets see how Pog does in the derby.
 
prtk0811 said:
Yep we have got to do double on city.
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You see that happening? Very difficult if you ask me. City move the ball very fast and press well in their own half. With the amount of attacking power they posses, I doubt that sitting deep will help. Long balls, maybe, but again, will we commit enough men forward to get something out of it. I believe the man who will be under most pressure in the derby will be Mou. Here's hoping that we win all our games before that match.
 
Hawks2008 said:
Start of the season: " We have a great squad" "We'll push hard for the league" "Our new signings makes us favourites"

Now "The squad isn't good enough to win the league" "top 4 is what we should expect" "Mourinho wasn't backed in the transfer market and cannot hope to outspend evil City"

So many excuses and moving goalposts in this thread
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Don't think many were calling us the favourite. Maybe title contenders, definitely not the favourite. The clamour was always for City. But I agree with the rest of your post. A lot of people who called for a serious title challenge are now backtracking with excuses.
 
Water Melon said:
You see that happening? Very difficult if you ask me. City move the ball very fast and press well in their own half. With the amount of attacking power they posses, I doubt that sitting deep will help. Long balls, maybe, but again, will we commit enough men forward to get something out of it. I believe the man who will be under most pressure in the derby will be Mou. Here's hoping that we win all our games before that match.
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At oldtrafford first so i can see us winning , and besides we can play proactive football too and press high ourselves provided we have all the crucial players fit.

If anyone can beat them , it will be us.

Lack of balance was a problem for us in the midfeild battle I can see it back in shape after International break.
 
AN17 said:
Don't think many were calling us the favourite. Maybe title contenders, definitely not the favourite. The clamour was always for City. But I agree with the rest of your post. A lot of people who called for a serious title challenge are now backtracking with excuses.
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It's bollocks, most on here were convinced City were favourites given their business and if anything were disheartened with how well they strengthened. The consensus was that we did improve very well and that we would be there or thereabouts and given any other season, that would have been the case. Our start has been extremely good, people are just in meltdown as City have had like one of the best PL start's of all time.

Our squad isn't as good as some of the other top teams, if we were to win the title, it'd be down to squad management, luck and consistency rather than quality imo. We've got a good squad, which is capable of being very good with some experience (they're still very young) but we still have a few positions where we have players who aren't good enough. Fullbacks, no. 10 etc.
 
haram said:
The funny thing about all of this is, Mourinho can play good football. The media has brainwashed you all with the phrase "Park the bus".
Click to expand...
The media haven't brainwashed me with the phrase 'park the bus', I've just watched United under Mourinho and made the impression that his brand of football is dull as shit to watch with the players he has at his disposal. I am struggling to remember how many times this season I've looked forward to watching MOTD. Just my opinion but I think 'Park the bus' is exactly what Jose does.
 
soapythecat said:
The media haven't brainwashed me with the phrase 'park the bus', I've just watched United under Mourinho and made the impression that his brand of football is dull as shit to watch with the players he has at his disposal. I am struggling to remember how many times this season I've looked forward to watching MOTD. Just my opinion but I think 'Park the bus' is exactly what Jose does.
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No he doesn't.
 
I'm nowhere close to questioning the manager yet, we've hit a blip having done relatively well for the most part in coping without our best midfielder. However, if we get Pogba back, and the results continue being poor, things will start to get very heated. Nobody expects us to start playing amazing football when he returns, but it should give us the boost we need to get our act together. This was the season we were truly meant to kick on, and another battle for the top four would be downright painful and unacceptable.
 
soapythecat said:
The media haven't brainwashed me with the phrase 'park the bus', I've just watched United under Mourinho and made the impression that his brand of football is dull as shit to watch with the players he has at his disposal. I am struggling to remember how many times this season I've looked forward to watching MOTD. Just my opinion but I think 'Park the bus' is exactly what Jose does.
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Not that it matters, but that’s wrong. Mourinho have always played decent football except against the big teams.
 
Hawks2008 said:
Start of the season: " We have a great squad" "We'll push hard for the league" "Our new signings makes us favourites"

Now "The squad isn't good enough to win the league" "top 4 is what we should expect" "Mourinho wasn't backed in the transfer market and cannot hope to outspend evil City"

So many excuses and moving goalposts in this thread
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I'm gonna have to call BS on that. It was difficult to call between City and United and in the expectations thread for every person that had us 1st there was one that had city 1st.

In the expectations thread it self there were many that felt our transfer window was not good enough, that we had missed an attacker and fullback.

Sorry but your agenda posting was too obvious.
 
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