I don't even expect us to win trophies to be honest. We should be qualifying for the CL every year and winning trophies occasionally. But we should definitely be able to expect decent football. If people think that's unrealistic, I'd question their own expectations tbh
Jose Mourinho | 2017/18 Assessments | Poll Added
- Thread starter Suedesi
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Great post.
It seems the critics are the ones coming out with the coherent arguments and the apologists are the ones resorting to silly name-calling.
100% this.
Jose mourinho had 10% of the contrubution of the bad result last night , which was playing for the point in final minutes. Rest 90% was the Players who dint have the effing knowledge of the importance of the game last night.
There was nothing decent about city vs fayernoord game too for majority of the match was pretty much the same as this one, The difference was we plaed for a point in the end and the defenders bottled.
You've missed the point of the part of the post you're referring to though, whats being said and i agree with, is that this thread is only ever popular when we lose. When we beat Newcastle, and as i said elsewhere that result should have been a given, this thread had very little activity, yet when a result doesnt go our way everyone on this forum rushes to criticise Mou's tactics and question his ability.
I'm not saying i disagree with your final point by the way, our performances away from home havent been good and we need to improve. Having said that, if you take a step back, we're in decent shape at the moment in all competitions, could and should be better but could be a hell of a lot worse.
I feel for you if Jose leaves (potentially having achieved nothing of real significance and team plays like it is currently). I think you should slightly tone down the pro Jose rhetoric as it comes across as propaganda and Castleish.
Look who it is.. the guy who ended up losing his rag and crying in my thread. Pot calling kettle black. There are some very valid points being made by a lot of posters who are generally pretty patient and not drama queens.. funnily enough you and Haram in your extreme defence of Jose come across as more drama queenish than others.
You dont expect a club like Manchester United to be winning trophies regularly, and you're suggesting others have unrealistic expectations?
Bizarre.
Mourinho has really lost that air of invincibility that he used to have.
His tenure at United so far has been incredibly underwhelming.
His tenure at United so far has been incredibly underwhelming.
He’s saying that he’s not a spoilt little brat of a fan and understands that the PL is now more competitive than ever.
Like most of us though, he expects us to play entertaining football as a bare minimum.
We missed a lot of opportunities to open the game up in the first half and got punished for it in the second. Other than not subbing off Lukaku for Ibra I don't think he did a lot wrong. The second half performance is on the players.
It's more difficult now though isn't it. City have limitless resources, Tottenham and Liverpool are major forces, Chelsea still have Abramovich behind them.
The only one who could really dominate, like United used to, is City, because they can afford to stockpile players and blow the rest out of the water. But even they will find it difficult as there are so many other good teams around.
How exactly was this apparent yesterday? I'm not having a dig at you, it's just that i hate when people come up with this whenever we play badly. In modern day football every manager's staff have the means to watch and micro analyze even the tiniest bit of detail and work on it. How can a manager achieve what Mourinho has if he doesn't pay any attention whatsoever to what is basically half the game (what do we do when we have the ball)? I believe it was Guardiola himself who once said that the manager's job is to teach the players how to get the ball to the final third but from that point onward it's the players' job to find the killer pass or the move that will eventually lead to a clear-cut chance. Was it Mourinho's fault that that about 4-5 times during the first half Lingard (and Martial) got on the ball in between the lines, passed it to Lukaku and attacked the space in behind the defence but Lukaku failed miserably to make the half-turn and complete a one-two that would lead to a good chance? Was it Mourinho's fault that most of our players seemed to always need an extra touch or an extra second to think when they had to create while running with the ball?
The problem is that we got ourselves a 90 million poacher last summer and we can't get him to score goals lately. He's clearly trying to become a better footballer overall but these things simply don't happen overnight. Until then he needs someone to feed him. Last time Mourinho was at Chelsea he had Hazard who can draw opponents and create in tight spaces but, most importantly, he had Fabregas on incredible form, especially during the first half of the season, doing two jobs simultaneously on the pitch: he was at the epicentre of the counter-attacks deep in Chelsea's half but he had also managed to develop an excellent understanding with Costa at the end of their team's attacking moves.
Now, how much we've missed Pogba as our orchestrator in deeper areas of the pitch has been discussed to death. As for the second part, we started the season with the hope that Mkhitaryan would be the one who would connect the midfield with the attack when we transition the ball quickly from the back and that Mata would be the one who would be able to get the ball to our main man whenever we had to face 10 men behind the ball. They have both performed poorly thus far in the season. Lately, we've seen Mourinho trying to figure out if Martial can be the player who can link-up with Lukaku efficiently (you see Tony trying to occupy spaces closer to Romely in the last matches). We're also trying to see if Zlatan can play any role in the attacking half. We're trying to do stuff, it's not like Moyes or LvG when we were constantly trying to break through a concrete wall.
He's struggling with this squad, which is something for which he has to share the blame, but we're not a ship without a captain wandering in the wilderness. That's my take on it, anyway. Some players improving over the course of the season, a couple of new additions and i can see us getting (or coming close to) where we want to go. Whether some of us would prefer a different approach in terms of footballing style is a different matter. For example, Spurs haven't created more chances than us this season (statistically) but their game looks far more smooth an easy on the eye because Kane is constantly adding things to his game and because Erikssen has developed, over the last seasons, a very good understanding with both him and Dele. And this season they have relied heavily on Kane to score goals out of nothing and win them matches. What we lack is this type of understanding between our creative players. But these things usually take some time to function well on the pitch.
Yeah that's fair enough but then some of those fans (and I'm just generalising here) with these high expectations jump on other fans who say we should be doing better than the likes of Lingard, Fellaini, Smalling etc. You can't have it both ways.
Can you hand on heart, honestly say that the 'biggest club in the world' should have Lingard, Smalling, Fellaini, Darmian etc., starting for them??
I'm just glad we got out of the game with no injuries. Terrible pitch.
Obviously I want us to top our group, but seeing some of the teams that are finishing 2nd in their groups, it might not be the worst thing if were we to come 2nd in ours.
Obviously I want us to top our group, but seeing some of the teams that are finishing 2nd in their groups, it might not be the worst thing if were we to come 2nd in ours.
All this bleating on about "agenda" from posters who blindly defend/praise everything about Jose is amusing.
Also can we stop using Sir Alex, the biggest legend in Manchester United history and the greatest manager in football history, and cherry pick from his career (wrongly) to defend him? It's a bit shit to be honest.
Also can we stop using Sir Alex, the biggest legend in Manchester United history and the greatest manager in football history, and cherry pick from his career (wrongly) to defend him? It's a bit shit to be honest.
Let's also stop pointing to squad players as the problem. We have a squad up there with the best in English football and yet people calling our players average/shit.
It's not cherry picking. Sir Alex played different away in Europe and we all know it. When Mourinho loses one game he is accused of being negative and defensive. It's ridiculous. When I bring up the CSKA game I'm apparantly licking Jose's arse.
There is a clear agenda against Mourinho from some people.
Huh? They are squad players and they don't always start. They sometimes start in some games like last night which is what they are for.
Even if jose starts smalling or fellaini over some in most games, who are we to question him? right?
How many years did Sir Alex compete in Europe? And how many years out of those did he play pragmatically. And forget that how often did he park the bus?
I didn't even watch last night's game so I won't say anything about that but it's clear as day that Sir Alex was an attacking manager whereas Jose is a defense first one. Sir Alex only changed a bit at the end but even then he'd attack 99/100 times.
Also I don't have an issue with being conservative in certain games. I dislike parking the bus, prioritising defence over everything and being conservative as a whole.
Fellaini starts because Jose is fond of him. He isn't here despite what Jose thinks of him.
Even the best clubs have squad players who are not great. It's not possible to have top squad players. Smalling and Darmian have many games for England and Italy respectively, it wasn't long ago when the caf thought that Smalling was one of the very best CBs in the league. Is Mangala better than him? Is Delph a better defender than Darmian? Is the current version of Gundogan better than Herrera?
Jose has not parked the bus in Europe either. He only really did it against Liverpool and the ending of the Southampton game. We battered Basel and because we lost control after Pogba went off people are trying to say Mourinho was being defensive.
Battered Basel - what the bleeding feck..
We did batter Basel in the first half...
Right if that means batter them into submission by hitting them in the shins with misplaced passes. We were bad in the first half and godawful in the second. In no world did we batter them. We created chances yes but it was not a cohesive performance by any means and there was lots of sloppy touches, bad passes and plenty of anonymous performances. We were better than them in the first half but honestly this is a very poor Basel side.. they looked technically as incompetent as us for alot of the game.
Even guys like Pogba and Martial while being better than the rest were below par.
Well no, he's accused of being negative and defensive away from home because he's regularly played negative and defensive football away from home, often without reaping the rewards. Already this season we've had a 0-0 draw away to Liverpool, lost 1-0 to Chelsea, and lost 2-1 to Huddersfield. Since arriving we've scored quite literally one goal in seven games away to the other top six sides in the league and haven't won any of those games. Which demonstrates that complaints as to how we play away from home certainly have a reasonable basis.
Yes we played defensive against Liverpool. We did NOT do that yesterday. So why are people trying to spin it that way? Our away performances have been impacted by our best player being missing.
We might not have been deliberately negative but it was still a poor away performance in which we didn't score any goals. And we've spent hundreds of millions on top players over the past couple of seasons; we should be able to cope when one is missing and if we're so dependent on our best player that our attack falls apart when he's not there then that's on Mourinho.
What is Mourinho supposed to do about us missing all of those chances in the first half? If we are 3-0 up no one calls it a negative or poor performance. The second half was bad, I accept that.
We were not bad in the first half thats complete horseshit.
He obviously can't fix individual chances but the entire point here is that criticisms of our away performances aren't being based on one game but are instead being based on a series of games in which we've been poor and away from home.
People are crying about the Basel game in particular as well. They are trying to spin it into Mourinho being negative and defensive.
Because Mourinho regularly plays negative football away from home. You're citing the first half but conveniently ignoring the second half here where it's widely agreed upon we were very poor.
We were bad. I was watching the game with some caftards and we were just looking at each other constantly during that first half as we just kept losing the ball and making silly decisions in possession. We defending well in first half and towards the end we began to create chances but to say we battered them is complete horseshit. We were the better side in that half in what was a shitfest of a game.
We were poor the second half. NOT defensive. People are saying we were defensive and negative last night which is false.
Okay, then, even if we weren't necessarily negative (which I'm sure others will disagree on) we were still poor. Which is the key issue. I don't see why that's somehow been spun as if it isn't a bad thing.
Go read the post match thread for the game. NO ONE said we played bad in the first half.
No one said we battered them either.
I accept we were poor. It's the fact that people have this thing about Mourinho being defensive and they dont like it. Fine, have that opinion, but dont try to spin defeats into "oh we were defensive" to fit your agenda.
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