Mourinho : "Transfer spend is not enough"

I thought that Sterling was a Pep signing, but you're right and forgot about Otamendi and Fernandinho. Still, we have more players in the team that Jose inherited than Pep does. They have 3 absolute quality players in Aguero, De Bruyne and Silva, while we have only one in De Gea, but we have more inherited depth than them.

Jose hasn't spent the money that wisely and now is complaining. Conte had less last year and won the title.

Conte also had Hazard, Costa, Pedro, and Fabregas. That lot is remotely better than what we got. He also spent £120m that summer on Kante, Alonso, Luiz and Batshuyai. Then you have Matic, Azpillicueleta and Courtois. He also spent £180m this summer. The net spend is dubious because of the ridiculous Oscar fee.

We spent £90m on one player. Then £60m on two others and Ibra on a free. Also consider Conte also had a title winning team who just downed tools. He improved the midfield with Kante. Had to just motivate Costa and Hazard which he did as they were two of the best attackers in the league.

Conte did a great job last season. But let’s not make out he had a poor team. He had a better team than the one Jose took over. We’d kill to have a player like Hazard in our team. In fact I would happily swap DDG if it meant we got Hazard. He had a 30 goal striker in Costa all Conte had to do was motivate him, which to his credit he did.

What Jose took over was a shot shy team with no world class player in attack. Big difference from Hazard and Costa with Fabregas supplying them.

The issue I have with Jose is he should have addressed these attacking issues. Stop using Rashford as a winger and sign proper wingers.
 
It was a bit of a false position. The players down tools. It was not to do with them not having good players. They just had won the league the year before. They still had top players like Hazard, Costa etc. It's not like Conte had to go out and sign these players.

Jose had to go out and sign Lukaku and Pogba. The only top outfield player we really had was Martial. And he has never challenged for the league anyway.
So Jose fecked up at Chelsea despite having a brilliant squad. So turned the gold into shite? Toxic man? Cant handle the squad for a long time and implodes? Same happened at Real, no? I also like how you treat most of our players as average. Feck, I can tell you that Pogba despite being the most expensive midfielder in the world and most expensive player at the time, still is not good enough to play in a midfield duo, as our midfield is bypassed pretty easily. And the problem is not Pogs quality but Mou's system. On paper Pogba+Matic should be able to hold their own against any other midfield duo out there. The problem is that they are usually left 2 vs 3 and Mou still has not fixed that, despite having bought both of these players.
 
Jose decided to stick with most of the deadwood fergie, VG and moyes left behind, he wants a better playing staff but we saw very little changes from 2015 to currently, he spends 86 million of it on lukaku, where was the plan B beyond perisic? we moaned our attacking players need improving, yet we still see lingard, young, mata, rashford playing on the wings, now we are seeing valencia and young has our fullbacks. I do feel some of our attacking players our no10 and 9 in mkhi and lukaku may look like busted flushes, we have very little quality out wide so we reduce ourselves to mata, mkhi, martial and rashford on the wings yet again just like last year. I do question why smalling, jones, valencia, young, blind, mata, fellaini, lingard, were not improved upon, and we pile on martial, lukaku and mkhi are also have not improved the side going forward, while throwing in an ageing zlaten, problems pile up. It feels like another 5 year rebuilding plan on top of our poor planning of summer 2009-12 transfer recruitment, which were exposed against city when we lost 6-1 at OT in 2011. Not to mention appointing Moyes and VG has set us back years, and Jose not really seeing the deadwood moved on, but embracing it, has just added insult to injury.

I think you are forgetting that he did sell some players, it's just that you cannot replace everyone at once.
 
So Jose fecked up at Chelsea despite having a brilliant squad. So turned the gold into shite? Toxic man? Cant handle the squad for a long time and implodes? Same happened at Real, no? I also like how you treat most of our players as average. Feck, I can tell you that Pogba despite being the most expensive midfielder in the world and most expensive player at the time, still is not good enough to play in a midfield duo, as our midfield is bypassed pretty easily. And the problem is not Pogs quality but Mou's system. On paper Pogba+Matic should be able to hold their own against any other midfield duo out there. The problem is that they are usually left 2 vs 3 and Mou still has not fixed that, despite having bought both of these players.

So now you want to make this discussion into something else now? You can admit you are wrong, or just agree that you want to look for ways to bash Mourinho.
 
I think you are forgetting that he did sell some players, it's just that you cannot replace everyone at once.

No you can't, but we needed better wingers, we did not look at plan B beyond perisic, Jones, smalling, rojo and shaw still failing to impress, at most RB, LB and RW needed new blood, and what we got was not enough. Now we need far more because we under recruited in the summer, just like summers 2009,10,11,12,13 and we know the drunken mess in 2014 and 15, so yeah we still paying the price from those summers
 
So looking at 75 million for a defender at Pool, looks like Jose has a point.

Spend to succeed or make do and be a contender for European qualification.
 
So thats your answer. Still waiting on those numerous games.

I'm not going to go through and list all of the games, I haven't kept track of all his saves :wenger: however can recall he has won us some close games. Also highest rated player in the Cafe match day thing. The argument was that he is our best player this season and I have seen no argument against that. The fact he has made the 2nd highest number of saves in the PL is evidence enough that he has been our best player this season.
 
So now you want to make this discussion into something else now? You can admit you are wrong, or just agree that you want to look for ways to bash Mourinho.
Re-read what I said. And show me how and where did I derail anything. Everything is related to Mou and his management skills. I quoted your posts and provided my opinion on them. Anyways, agree to disagree and move on. Have had enough, I am sure it is mutual.
 
No you can't, but we needed better wingers, we did not look at plan B beyond perisic, Jones, smalling, rojo and shaw still failing to impress, at most RB, LB and RW needed new blood, and what we got was not enough. Now we need far more because we under recruited in the summer, just like summers 2009,10,11,12,13 and we know the drunken mess in 2014 and 15

Which is why we will sign players this summer. Half of Jose's spending was on teo players. We couldn't just fix everything at once. We will probably sign a RW, AM, another CM and a fullback. The squad will continue to be built and show growth. As you know Van Gaal cause a lot of damage and we are seeing the steps to fix that.
 
No you can't, but we needed better wingers, we did not look at plan B beyond perisic, Jones, smalling, rojo and shaw still failing to impress, at most RB, LB and RW needed new blood, and what we got was not enough. Now we need far more because we under recruited in the summer, just like summers 2009,10,11,12,13 and we know the drunken mess in 2014 and 15, so yeah we still paying the price from those summers

I am not sure how the likes of Liverpool scout Firmino and Salah, but we don't seem to get such transfers right, ever. Mourinho has his targets of course, but what the feck are our scouting network doing? You cannot expect the manager to come up with all the right targets all the time.
 
Maybe he's just letting Woodward know it's transfer window time and he needs some cash for January.
I hope we'll buy a player or 2.
Summer is going to be very, very important. He must be spot on with transfers and with cutting out deadwood.

Problem with our fanbase here is if they don't like the guy they'll go to great strengths to bash him as it's showed here.

I mean is he wrong? You can treat it like moaning but he's not wrong.

Saying all that he must buy 3, 4 new players, CM, RB, maybe AM and most importantly RW. Just one more offensive player won't do either so 2 wingers even since we dont have any to begin with. And he must turn things around cause it's beginning to feel like we're in a crisis.
 
Re-read what I said. And show me how and where did I derail anything. I quoted your posts and provided my opinion on them. Anyways, agree to disagree and move on. Have had enough, I am sure it is mutual.

It was about the state of the squads left for Jose and Conte. The fact is the Chelsea squad had title challenging quality left in it. There was none of that left for Jose by van gaal.
 
@Oneunited26
I'm not so sure that it was totally voluntary, holding on to most of those players. It would have proved very tricky for Jose to join in the summer and ship 10 players immediately. Not exactly the way to get into the dressing room. And it's like that for all managers taking over a team. He did however do us the biggest favour possible by phasing out Rooney with minimum fuss. That was something we had been needing to do for 3 seasons.
If he's told he's got an x amount to spend, then he'll presumably act accordingly, holding on to players he knows aren't good enough but he doesn't have the money to replace.
 
Highest transfer spend in the summer:

MANCHESTER CITY £221.5M
PSG £214.2M
MILAN £178.4M
CHELSEA £155.4M
EVERTON £149.1M
MANCHESTER UNITED £145.8M
FC BARCELONA £143.6M
JUVENTUS £136.7M
BAYERN MUNICH £94.9M
AS MONACO £91.8M
AS ROMA £85.7M
LIVERPOOL £82.9M
TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR £82.1M
INTER £79.4M
BORUSSIA DORTMUND £67.8M
SEVILLA £56.7M
REAL MADRID £56.7M
LEICESTER CITY £55.4M
WATFORD £53.2M
ARSENAL £48.8M

I'm impressed with how Bayern conduct their business. Always spend wisely and get top players.
 
Why is a striker who scored 20 goals in 32 matches considered as one of Mou's flops?
 
I find it tedious when people praise Burnley and say "it only cost x % of what some other side cost". This fails to acknowledge any context whatsoever.
1. Lesser sides have very low expectations, which we have found with United destroys quite a few players who can't live with the expectation.
2. Anyone who watched the Burnley game will have seen a team that got one lucky goal and a free kick, without really doing anything other than defend the whole game.
3. What a team cost does not thereby indicate its quality or balance. Especially if the combined amount is accrued under 4 different managers with different approaches (and ability).
4. What a player costs for a big club and for everyone else tends to be drastically different.
5. When a manager for a small club is praised for good results that's due, but when pundits ask why such and such isn't given a chance for a big club, when said manager has only ever played defensive football, it is a repetition of the Moyes-mistake. If you bring on a small club playing good football, it is a different story.
There are other factors, but I wanted to lay out a few. I also thought Joey Barton would have realised that it is very different to perform for a club with no expectations and a big club with big expectations, he never managed the latter.

It seems we have the small club mentality when we play the big teams. So in essence, under mourinho, Pogba and Lukaku are our very own Joey Barton.
 
I'm impressed with how Bayern conduct their business. Always spend wisely and get top players.

Bayern is in a totally different situation than the PL clubs, they can cherrypick the best talent from their domestic league constantly. The prices internally in the BL is totally different to the PL, besides Bayern just strongarms the seller, with the player often running down their contract to join.
 
Jose is rebuilding a team damaged by van gaal and filled with players not suited to title challenging. We can ring off names like Depay, Darmian, Schneiderlin etc. We were behind everyone to begin with when Jose came in. In terms of how we were playing AND personnel.

Conte did not spend peanuts. Kante, Luiz, Batshuayi, Alonso were not cheap.
You seem to be trying too hard to give Jose credit. Almost a crusade to protect him from any form of criticism, blaming just about everyone and anything for our current state off affairs.

Jose took over a team in 5th ( due to goal difference) from City and a team that won a trophy. So in respect to other teams there was little difference between City and United. Looking like for like, one could argue they had slightly stronger first 11, but slightly worse squad depth.

Jose First year did a klopp and gave up on the top four at the expense of the EL. We came 6th, and won two trophies, city made little progress in Pep's first year. Still not a great deal of difference between the sides relative to other teams. Doesn't matter whether you beat Sunderland 1-0 or 6-0 you still only get 3 pts.

Jose has continued his tradition of buying established players, not building a team. You often talk of perspective, well Jose has purchased 7 first teams players, supported by DDG. So he has probably 3 or 4 first team players to look at in terms of picking a side, all internationals, mainly Fergie players but a smackering of other managers. Yet, he appears to have no style, no formation, and no tactic to beat most teams. When things go wrong he does not appear to change a great deal.

Sure we have points on the table so far, but it does not feel as though everything is coming together. He talks a lot about attack as team and defend as a team. I for one have not seen that. We are better at full on jattack, than full on defense. But it appears the former is not in Jose coaching manual.
 
@TheGame
They are a super well run club. It does help they have a monopoly on talent in Germany (rarely do they have to spend big to get the best players there).
 
It was about the state of the squads left for Jose and Conte. The fact is the Chelsea squad had title challenging quality left in it. There was none of that left for Jose by van gaal.
It was the fact that Jose fecked up with his own squad, leaving them in shambles. It was not the first time he picked a wrong battle and was told to feck off by clubs' management. Is it not a part of managers job to get the best out of players? Also, the reason LvG was fired not because of poor players, but because he underachieved with players at his disposal, so to speak. So, players were supposed to finish higher than they did under LvG. Louis was fired, not players sold.
 
Jose decided to stick with most of the deadwood fergie, VG and moyes left behind, he wants a better playing staff but we saw very little changes from 2015 to currently, he spends 86 million of it on lukaku, where was the plan B beyond perisic? we moaned our attacking players need improving, yet we still see lingard, young, mata, rashford playing on the wings, now we are seeing valencia and young has our fullbacks. I do feel some of our attacking players our no10 and 9 in mkhi and lukaku may look like busted flushes, we have very little quality out wide so we reduce ourselves to mata, mkhi, martial and rashford on the wings yet again just like last year. I do question why smalling, jones, valencia, young, blind, mata, fellaini, lingard, were not improved upon, and we pile on martial, lukaku and mkhi are also have not improved the side going forward, while throwing in an ageing zlaten, problems pile up. It feels like another 5 year rebuilding plan on top of our poor planning of summer 2009-12 transfer recruitment, which were exposed against city when we lost 6-1 at OT in 2011. Not to mention appointing Moyes and VG has set us back years, and Jose not really seeing the deadwood moved on, but embracing it, has just added insult to injury.

So in short
- summer 2009-12 poor planning in recruitment and selling ronaldo
- fergie leaving we made catastrophic error's who we appointed since
- Jose not replacing the mediocre players
- still playing players out of position
- and the previous managers players still stinking up the place


A- That's the wisest decision. AC Milan replaced an entire squad at one go. Look at them now.
B- Lukaku was the best option available. 86m is a lot of money but 20 goals in 31 matches show that is money well spent.
C- Perisic was plan B to Griezmann
D- Those are the best players we have (Lingard, Mata, Rashford etc)
 
Bayern is in a totally different situation than the PL clubs, they can cherrypick the best talent from their domestic league constantly. The prices internally in the BL is totally different to the PL, besides Bayern just strongarms the seller, with the player often running down their contract to join.

Yes I did think that although even foreign buys such as Thiago for £22m, Vidal - £33.7m, Coman £18.9m and James on loan show for £11m show good value. Their most expensive player is Tolisso at £37.3m.
 
I am not sure how the likes of Liverpool scout Firmino and Salah, but we don't seem to get such transfers right, ever. Mourinho has his targets of course, but what the feck are our scouting network doing? You cannot expect the manager to come up with all the right targets all the time.


Scouting network is a catastrophe, while we get held to ransom over perisic, there were plenty out there which proved to be the case with firmino and salah we continue trying to get him with no success. This is the story of MUFC the past 4 years, we never seem to get any of our transfer targets right 80% of the time lol.
 
You seem to be trying too hard to give Jose credit. Almost a crusade to protect him from any form of criticism, blaming just about everyone and anything for our current state off affairs.

Jose took over a team in 5th ( due to goal difference) from City and a team that won a trophy. So in respect to other teams there was little difference between City and United. Looking like for like, one could argue they had slightly stronger first 11, but slightly worse squad depth.

Jose First year did a klopp and gave up on the top four at the expense of the EL. We came 6th, and won two trophies, city made little progress in Pep's first year. Still not a great deal of difference between the sides relative to other teams. Doesn't matter whether you beat Sunderland 1-0 or 6-0 you still only get 3 pts.

Jose has continued his tradition of buying established players, not building a team. You often talk of perspective, well Jose has purchased 7 first teams players, supported by DDG. So he has probably 3 or 4 first team players to look at in terms of picking a side, all internationals, mainly Fergie players but a smackering of other managers. Yet, he appears to have no style, no formation, and no tactic to beat most teams. When things go wrong he does not appear to change a great deal.

Sure we have points on the table so far, but it does not feel as though everything is coming together. He talks a lot about attack as team and defend as a team. I for one have not seen that. We are better at full on jattack, than full on defense. But it appears the former is not in Jose coaching manual.

What title challenging quality was left for Jose? Martial who has never even challenged for the league and De Gea? In comparison, Pep had De Bruyne, Aguero, Sterling, Fernandinho, Silva etc. All players who were capable of challenging at that level. And then he added to it.

When Jose signed Lukaku and Pogba it was to catch up to City who already had players like Aguero and De Bruyne. We were always playing catch up. Half of jose's spend was on just those two players. It's almost as if people have forgotten the squad that was left for Jose.
 
I'm not going to go through and list all of the games, I haven't kept track of all his saves :wenger: however can recall he has won us some close games. Also highest rated player in the Cafe match day thing. The argument was that he is our best player this season and I have seen no argument against that. The fact he has made the 2nd highest number of saves in the PL is evidence enough that he has been our best player this season.
It's all right. You made a claim but can't back it up.
 
A- That's the wisest decision. AC Milan replaced an entire squad at one go. Look at them now.
B- Lukaku was the best option available. 86m is a lot of money but 20 goals in 31 matches show that is money well spent.
C- Perisic was plan B to Griezmann
D- Those are the best players we have (Lingard, Mata, Rashford etc)

So we could not buy another striker has berbatov was struggling? But we lived in the 2009-13 era of value for money, maybe the club were not ready to adapt to high transfer fees, or the glazers interest rates eat up most of our transfer budgets, so we were stuck buying obertan's and diouffs, while city hit the lottery, either way its going to take a long time to build this team up if we get our transfers right. That is part of the problem, our options are lingard rashford and mata, its why we struggled last season, even though Griezmann is an inside second forward which still does not solve our wingplay problems. No other top club would sell the worlds best player and invest in a quality player, considering aguero was available, that was a mistake
 
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Bayern is in a totally different situation than the PL clubs, they can cherrypick the best talent from their domestic league constantly. The prices internally in the BL is totally different to the PL, besides Bayern just strongarms the seller, with the player often running down their contract to join.

Exactly plus Renato Sanches was a great buy.
 
It was the fact that Jose fecked up with his own squad, leaving them in shambles. It was not the first time he picked a wrong battle and was told to feck off by clubs' management. Is it not a part of managers job to get the best out of players? Also, the reason LvG was fired not because of poor players, but because he underachieved with players at his disposal, so to speak. So, players were supposed to finish higher than they did under LvG. Louis was fired, not players sold.

No, van gaal was fired because he spent a lot of money, we failed to get top 4 and we were playing shite. The players he signed werent good enough either. Also, Jose had won Chelsea the league. The squad Jose left Conte was not comparable to the squad Van Gaal left Jose. That's a FACT.

Complete joke if you think players like Depay, Schneiderlin, Darmian etc were really good enough. Van gaal wasted money on shite and paid for it.
 
Compete how? On a one off game? No team will win every game. Chelsea, Liverpool and Spurs all failed to beat Burnley as well. In fact I think Burnley beat both Spurs and Chelsea. Jose is talking about competing with City.
Even if he is just talking about City - again I disagree. We spent a good amount of money for Shaw - they spent a similar amount for Jesus. They are a hell of a lot better with money than us. We don’t need more - we need to use it better
 
Get all that but you make it sound like Glazers did not back Mou, or is vastly under spending, which is patently not true. He got 7 out of 8 players he wanted in the past two windows. For me, like a lot of others on here, have a problem with the optics which Mou always tries to perpetrate - one of being an aggrieved coach/team that has not been dealt a fair hand. I think all of your arguments are pretty persuasive but they per se do not negate the valid cricitisms posited by others. It is obvious that after two years he has not earned the United supporter’s love (aside from the Mou can do no wrong brigade). Mou needs to really take a look at himself and stop whining because he has been backed. He has achieved reasonable success but could be doing better, both in terms of achieving a more coherent and aggressive playing style and managing his squad and pushing for better performances and consistency.

Mou's optics are not really any different to what Fergie did, i dont understand why people deify one but slate the other for it. They both make spectacles away from the pitch to cover for their players bad performances. Mou is well known for his siege mentality, and its brought him success. He's also turned a 6-7th place team into 2nd and in many other seasons would be in a title winning position.

We dont know that he got 7 out of 8 players he wanted. For all we know they could have all been 3rd in his priority list. Who's to say he didn't go to Edd in the summer and say Neymar's moving, get him, and Edd said nah mate, pick a cheaper version, nah not that one either, go even cheaper. Maybe Mou wanted Kane because he's the best striker in world football at the moment, and Edd said Levy would be difficult about it so here's Lukaku instead mate, make it work.

And who's to say he's not in there every day tearing his hair out trying to get them to play better, and they just ain't good enough.

Too easy to blame Mou for everything. Club seems like from the top the idea is to make money, not win titles.
 
Even if he is just talking about City - again I disagree. We spent a good amount of money for Shaw - they spent a similar amount for Jesus. They are a hell of a lot better with money than us. We don’t need more - we need to use it better

Yeah, but Jose didn't sign him. Van gaal wasted a lot of money in general and Jose is trying to fix it. The damage Van Gaal caused has set us back and is part of the reason why we are lagging behind right now.
 
Also for the spending table, Milan have tried to buy their way out of trouble however it has not worked.

If you good at transfer recruitment and tactics, then its money well spent. If you not good at spending with confusing tactics, then the money is wasted
 
This is one of those arguments wherein if you look at the 'facts' (without trying to go all Rafa), it's probably true. But the bottom line is it still doesn't matter. Should do better with what you've got. Should be able to pick the right players. No excuses, just accept that sometimes you haven't done well enough, and that one team in particular is having somewhat of an anomaly of a season so far.
 
Highest transfer spend in the summer:

MANCHESTER CITY £221.5M
PSG £214.2M
MILAN £178.4M
CHELSEA £155.4M
EVERTON £149.1M
MANCHESTER UNITED £145.8M
FC BARCELONA £143.6M
JUVENTUS £136.7M
BAYERN MUNICH £94.9M
AS MONACO £91.8M
AS ROMA £85.7M
LIVERPOOL £82.9M
TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR £82.1M
INTER £79.4M
BORUSSIA DORTMUND £67.8M
SEVILLA £56.7M
REAL MADRID £56.7M
LEICESTER CITY £55.4M
WATFORD £53.2M
ARSENAL £48.8M

I'm impressed with how Bayern conduct their business. Always spend wisely and get top players.

That's because they gut every other german team of their best players. Cannot compare.

This whole spending story is just Jose's way of putting the pressure on himself and taking it off the players. If you look at the news it's all about Jose and very little about how shit the team has been.