Those who don't care about the traditions of the club and say there's no such thing as the United way should jump ship and support City. I care about the romance of the club and the wonderful attacking players we've had over the years as much as anything else. Compromising this for a trophy count is sad to me. It's all well and good to make a case for Mourinho, but don't tell me this club doesn't have a unique history of attacking football with young players. Mourinho would have to change his ways and play an expansive/domineering brand of football. If he came here and did his usual nullify-the-opposition-first nonsense, I'd want him straight back out the door.
Not believing that there's one specific way United should play and it is only possible through employing someone who has been at the club for at least 10 years and is a club legend is not equal to not caring about traditions. There's one team in Europe who has a distinct way of playing and you could hardly ever imagine that team playing anything different: Barcelona. It's difficult to imagine Barcelona parking the bus, even during their worst period in 2000s they still at least attempted to play offensive football with lots of passing. And even in their case the style was implemented slightly over 20 years ago by Cruyff from what I remember, it wasn't there from early 60s or anything.
Attacking football with young players is such condescending nonsense though. Which big clubs are persistently defensive? Aside from Italian clubs who are renowned for their cattenacio (and even they have become way more offensive), all top clubs in the world are mostly offensive. We haven't been ultra attacking during all our time under Ferguson, it's just load of crap. Were we offensive against Real Madrid when we set out to contain them twice (and almost succeeded)? Were we offensive against City when we lost the title? Were we offensive when we scrapped all those 1-0 wins away from home in Europe? Of course not because Ferguson clearly recognized the demands of football and was flexible enough tactically to approach games in a different manner. As I've said, we went through so many styles under Ferguson - from ultra attacking gung ho approach through counter attacking balanced football to a defensively sound side that set the record for consecutive games without conceded goal in 2009 (was that ultra attacking football too?), to even passing side in his final seasons.
Young players is also another thing that bothers me. We pretend to be Barcelona here again, pretend that we've built our success purely on youth products, only blending a few bought players here and there, when the fact is that since class of 1992, which funnily was 23 years ago, we haven't really produced world class players through our academy. A few talented youngsters here and there went on to become squad players here (O'Shea, Welbeck, Cleverley, Fletcher) but none of them ultimately went on to be one of the best in the world in their positions. Which is yet another reason why it'd be good to use fresh approach and maybe modernize our academy a little so we don't need to look at our opponents and see that they produce more complete players through their acadamies. Not saying there's necessarily something wrong with the way we work with youth as it's clearly very difficult to embed a youngster into a team in this day and age, but let's not pretend that our last 10 years were based on promoting from within the ranks - they weren't.
It's a special club with tradition, with amazing stadium that oozes atmosphere, with incredible history with ups and downs, with the most iconic manager in the history of football that we've all had the luck to support. A club with great local support and worldwide recognition. It's truly one of a kind football club, which is why it's not necessary to rewrite history and pretend to be something that we don't even need to be in order to be better than everyone else. If a top class manager comes here with his own ideas (not necessarily Mourinho as I don't believe he'd bring much to the table in that aspect, more like Pep who's more into revolutionizing football) and they bring something fresh and positive, then we should not at all cost defend ourselves by saying it's not United way. It's not United way to have DoF and it's quite evident we need one. There are a lot of things that are not necessarily United way from historical point of view but would actually make us better as a team and better as a club.