Yeah I've always maintained that he should get one more year to have a go at winning the league. However if there's a standoff between player and manager, I'd have no issue with him going.
Mourinho's post match comments
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I’d have no issue backing a manager over a player, but if we’re talking half the squad v a manager, than the manager must go, imo. And it sounds like it’s more than 1 player, if it’s going to come down to that.
I hope he wins the FA Cup and fecks off.
We all knew he wasn't going to be long term anyway, he's achieved his objective in my eyes. He's given us a team capable of qualifying for the Champions League and challenging for trophies. If he stays any longer we will start to lose our better players because he's slowly poisoning the squad.
It's the Mourinho show, everything is about him all the time. He's clearly freezing Pogba out and he's destroyed the form of Martial by forcing him out of position in favour of Sanchez.
We all knew he wasn't going to be long term anyway, he's achieved his objective in my eyes. He's given us a team capable of qualifying for the Champions League and challenging for trophies. If he stays any longer we will start to lose our better players because he's slowly poisoning the squad.
It's the Mourinho show, everything is about him all the time. He's clearly freezing Pogba out and he's destroyed the form of Martial by forcing him out of position in favour of Sanchez.
I was just thinking the exact same thing. Agree completely.
Actually @Mickeza, of the side that started yesterday, he signed just:
Bailly, Matic & Lukaku.
So your point is total bollocks.
I suspect he was in a roundabout way, protecting the big players like Pogba and Sanchez, because these boys never go hiding. Yet every media outlet, fan, pundit, ex player has been banging on about how he should drop them etc.
He was probably saying "look at Young, yes he's not a left back and you all want me to play Shaw, but he fecking wants the ball and puts a shift in.". "Look I dropped Pogba and Sanchez like you all wanted and started Martial and were we better? were we feck".
No he wasn’t, that’s simply not true. He was, however, rightly proud to become the first United manager to win a European trophy in his first year. Honestly some of you have no patience. Mourinho is clearly trying to build a world class squad, one worthy of United’s stature in the game, yet two seasons in you are not prepared to give him time? It’s daft. He’s a proven winner and his ambition for the club is spot on.
Well said.
Unfair and inaccurate comment on Mata. He’s one of our most composed players on the ball and when getting pressed.
They're professional footballers who have worked on patterns and systems all of their careers, since teenage years. This is what they are paid to do. They would have worked free flowing attacking processes at other clubs so it won't be like you and I having to learn runs or positions...
thing is if you wanted to get deeper you could.
there was an interesting mini-documentary last year with Rio and him talking about his tenure. Mourinho made the point during it that he needed to instill a sense of achievement in a squad that was completely devoid of confidence. He said something about removing pictures of previous title winning sides from the training ground and encouraging the players to replace them with pictures of themselves and their own victories. This has stuck with me and there's no doubt in my mind Mou banging on about '3 trophies' last year was his attempt to give his squad confidence and re-enforce their capabilities, a manager of his capabilites doesn't care about the charity shield but he was bigging it up on purpose for the sake of his players confidence.
This season he's constantly been at pains to remind everyone of the positives, more points, better position, less goals conceded, more chances created trying to encourage his players all the time but when the crunch time came against Sevilla they let him and themselves down leading to this change in tact.
no doubt i'll get called a Mourinho apologist or something but i'm far from that. I dont think i've been 100% convinced of him but i'm sure he's not an idiot, and he's doing all this for a reason. for the good of the club i hope it works is all
Agreed.
Yes, because he dropped his 89m signing and his 500k a week signing who he swapped for his failed 30m pound signing to the bench because they haven’t been performing well enough. Another 30m signing in Lindelof is being kept out of the side by the much maligned Smalling and if either of Jones or Rojo were fit he wouldn’t even be getting in the squad. So care to explain to me how Mourinho deeming all these players not good enough for use in our biggest game of the season is an argument against my point that he’s spent 300m and only thinks Matic and Lukaku are currently up to the required standard? How exactly have his comments and yesterday’s team selection made this point “total bollocks!?”
Your posts are fair and are not really apologetic, it makes sense but we still have the problem that it doesn't work, the players don't have more confidence, they don't have more intensity, not more passion or hunger and it's not something that just appeared last week, it has been like that almost since the beginning.
I think he benched them to prove a point, and I think his comments after the game were also to prove a point.
Say what you want about Sanchez or Pogba, they never go hiding. All these ex-players, media outlets, fans etc wanting them dropped should be careful what they wish for. It's all well and good calling Mourinho out for not playing Shaw, "but look at him" and look how much hungrier Young is when he comes in.
Another good post and good points.
Don't get me wrong I was fuming after the Sevilla games (still am) and Jose must take some responsibility for that, however the lack of drive and fight in some of the players is worrying. Crash out but crash out and leave it all on the pitch. The manager can prepare for the game and motivate but they have to pull on the shirt and step up and they aren't.
It's an odd one really. We should have been buoyed by beating Chelsea, Liverpool and the nature of the fightback against Palace but we werent. The squad confuses me. I know some will argue it's down to the manager to motivate them, and I partly agree, but there's also something called personal responsibility and we haven't seen much of it since SAF.
You're right about the players. Look at Pogba for example, a cocky inconsistent footballer without discipline and knowledge to play centrally. Looks like a lost case at the moment, like it was Mkhitaryan. Such a weak guy without enough "class and personality", and had to be sold already. There's also Ibrahimovic at his 80 years old, incapable of helping us in any sense, such a surprise. Oh, or the pointless Lindeloff. Poor Mourinho can't do anything in these conditions.
You're wrong with Real dressing room though. They publicly backed Ancelotti when he was sacked, and they seem to be protective with Zidane too. Then the club is free to decide who they hire or fire, but the reaction of the players is not always the same. Mourinho is the common point since he was at Real. He's repeled after some time by the players and the club doesn't have any margin to decide when it becomes an open war.
Because being realistic you can't change around 12-14 players in a summer, and he's pushing the club to that direction with his attitude and the way he's approaching things. I'm sure that after every press conference he has less and less suport inside, and it's a normal thing. People get tired of his negative approach, added to his bullshit deflecting all faults away from him and blaming everyone else.
Some people talk like he was a saint and did nothing wrong, Mourinho the poor victim, but some managers earn the respect of his players day by day with his attitude, methods and being reasonable, and others (like LVG and Mourinho) seem to be abrasive, arrogant and never at fault according to themselves. So after some time they have to pack and move elsewhere because nobody can't stand them for too long.
Depending on how he manages the current situation Mourinho will last more or less. It's on his hands and the rest are poor excuses. By the moment he needs to tone it down a bit and show more respect and commitment to the club. His "me against the world" approach is not going to do wonders for him, you can bet on it.
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I'm not sure what we really need then.
A) Some kind of motivator who will get what we have playing better
B) Tough love and move on those who are happily cruising along without meeting the requirements
Jose looks to be going down the B route and has even chucked (rightly) his own signing Mkhitaryan.
We fans need to decide where we stand on this as I'm not sure option A is viable given both Moyes and LvG have already tired and failed with this bunch.
There's an awful lot of assumptions inherent in that. The reality is we don't know how secure Mourinho's job is, how strong his relationship with the team overall is, how many of these players that he's openly ridiculing he will actually be able to replace etc. We can't predict the outcome knowing so few of those pretty decisive variables. It's entirely plausible that this is the beginning of him alienating members of the team that he still needs to play an important role for at least the next season, sowing discontent in the wider team as a result, ultimately alienating himself from the team before blowing it all up and moving on. We've seen all of that happen before. It's not like we can say Mourinho is careful about how he handles these things.
Pretty much this. Good post.
The reality of the fact is that a lot of these players don't have the mentality or mettle of a Manchester United player. Who's there when the going gets tough? DDG, Lukaku, Matic, maybe Bailly? There's nobody to pull us out of a hole anymore. Players need to step up.
Are you serious? Sign who?
Almost all Mourinho signings have ended up performing worse than they did at their previous club, especially the attacking signings.
Sanchez: compete shit. He might become better but he’s never gonna be as good as he was at Arsenal.
Lukaku: average striker, below average if you consider the money we paid and our expectations. He has scored 14PL goals this season with 8 games to go. Meanwhile, he scored 26PL goals at fecking Everton the season before.
Mikhitaryan: Shit. The less said about him, the better.
Pogba: The most expensive player in the world at some point. Good player but his performances have been average overall. He was far better at Juventus. Mourinho either wasted such large amount of money on a player he has no clue on how to use or Pogba is simply shit.
These are Mourinho attacking signings. Why do should we let him sign more players?
He either signs good players who become shit under his system or he simply signs shit players. It’s not a coincidence.
It’s certainly not the players. I think Mourinho is the one we need to get rid off.
Id love to know Fergies stance on all this commotion atm. I imagine his opinion would probably sway a lot of posters on here, whichever way that may be.
“You’re job now, is to get behind our new manager”
At this point I think that the option doesn't really include him. It's a locker room culture problem and there is only two ways to instill it, the manager act like the leader and creates that culture like Simeone did or you bring bona fide leaders like France did before the 2006 WC when Zidane, Makélélé and Thuram came back and took total control of the team.
Now, that's easier said than done, who are these leaders and how do you bring them? It's generally easier to bring a manager that can build that culture but same question who are we talking about?
I just added more questions than answers.
In all this turmoil we have had good contributions in here on all sides of the debate (I include the above post in this). I know many will not agree, but now that he’s gone, I realise this was one of the reasons I liked Wayne Rooney. He cared. It really mattered to him. He gave little team talks. He was more than willing to put his body on the line for the cause. Now when I think of Pogba and Lingard what do I see? Rehearsals for goal celebrations; hipster presence - hours preening on social media, cars, haircuts. But Pogba does care. It’s just that his ego is in the way. It’s hard for him to defend, to be part of a system to be corrected. He would do better under Zidane or Pep. Jose is more comfortable with the merchant classes of football than the aristocracy. Give him Matic, Fellaini, Drogba. Pogba ain’t quite at the top table yet. Jose is not the coach to get him there.I cannot believe people are buying this obvious charade
He's once again done what he's really good at which is deflect any criticism or blame away from him and throw everyone else under the bus.
What a load of nonsense. He had these players with such a restrictive and negative style for a long time, ask them to be more offensive after the while world been on his back due to his lackluster display in the CL. Naturally players fail to execute that due to obviously not being coached in much in attacking plays and then want to throw all the blame at them.
He's also started his small wars with his own players. Ripping into some publicly while backing other which will only obviously create fractions.
He basically want to pretend that this luckluster performance and lack of any cohesive attacking plays is the players fault and not him just because he worked with the on some fast plays for 2 days. And some people are actually buying that drivel.
Make no mistake, we're luckluster, negative and cowardly in our play due to Mourinho. He's had these players play this way for most of his time with us that asking them to suddenly turn into this scentillating attacking force after a 2 days training on quick interplays is a joke.
Rooney was far from being a good captain IMO. I didn't see anything in his 2 years as captain that suggested otherwise. He was more enthusiastic and caring when he was younger. When he got older and got the band he became a zombie.
@Gbenger was said tongue in cheek.
And its back to the haircuts again. Seriously?
Having a snazzy haircut doesnt mean you dont care about football results.
And by the way, Rooney got hair plugs. So he also cared about his hair. He just didnt have as much of it to get a flash haircut.
Not that Rooney didnt care, of course he did. And maybe Pogba doesnt care enough. There is a conversation to be had about that. But for goodness sake, let's not bring the haircuts or the clothes into it, its a red herring. Just be happy he isnt getting drunk or getting done for reckless driving.
FWIW I think it has more to do with frustration at what they are being asked to do than anything else. That in itself is an issue and you can look at it two ways. You can have some sympathy and say Pogba (might, because I am speculating) looks at it the same way the fans do. He might not want to play this kind of stiffling, defensive football, just like the fans dont want to see it. Or you can say Mourinho is the manager, Pogba (and others) is the player, he should do as he's told and be grateful he is paid a fortune to play football. And leave it to the fans to grumble and it, and Woodward to make the decision.
For me there is a lot of blame to share out here. If the players arent giving 100% they deserve criticism for that but they arent the ones deciding how we play. And from what I see most of the fan fraustration hasnt been about the commitment of the players but the style of football. That's on Mourinho. He is trying to change the debate to deflect attention away from himself.
Having a snazzy haircut doesnt mean you dont care about football results.
And by the way, Rooney got hair plugs. So he also cared about his hair. He just didnt have as much of it to get a flash haircut.
Not that Rooney didnt care, of course he did. And maybe Pogba doesnt care enough. There is a conversation to be had about that. But for goodness sake, let's not bring the haircuts or the clothes into it, its a red herring. Just be happy he isnt getting drunk or getting done for reckless driving.
FWIW I think it has more to do with frustration at what they are being asked to do than anything else. That in itself is an issue and you can look at it two ways. You can have some sympathy and say Pogba (might, because I am speculating) looks at it the same way the fans do. He might not want to play this kind of stiffling, defensive football, just like the fans dont want to see it. Or you can say Mourinho is the manager, Pogba (and others) is the player, he should do as he's told and be grateful he is paid a fortune to play football. And leave it to the fans to grumble and it, and Woodward to make the decision.
For me there is a lot of blame to share out here. If the players arent giving 100% they deserve criticism for that but they arent the ones deciding how we play. And from what I see most of the fan fraustration hasnt been about the commitment of the players but the style of football. That's on Mourinho. He is trying to change the debate to deflect attention away from himself.
You honestly think he cares about us having never won the UEFA cup/Europa League before and ‘completing the set’? This was something he found out and then span the shit out of to deflect from the fact we were 6th in the league and winning the Europa was the only thing to stop the narrative of the season being a complete disaster.
You’ve assumed that because I find Mourinho’s behaviour post Sevilla rather concerning and his comments about his players perplexing that I want him sacked. I don’t, it’s possible to have a nuanced opinion. I didn’t want him as manager, I thought he was finished after Chelsea, his style outdated and a busted flush. I was wrong, we can’t be second in the league ahead of Spurs and Liverpool who are both good teams with very good managers by chance. Mourinho must also still be a very good manager, and his work here has shown that Chelsea season was an abboration and not his new norm. He also deserves credit for Lingard, Rashford (and now McTominay), whom many thought would be finished here when he was appointed.
The issue I have is we’re second and in an FA Cup semi-final, so why is everyone acting like we’re in the midst of some massive crisis? And the answer to that is solely because of the manager and his behaviour. We lost against Sevilla, just say we underperformed and were beaten by the better side on the day and then move on. Instead he takes zero responsibility, goes on a crazy tirade about football heritage, brings Fergie into it, says he needs more money and “everything” needs to change, states we had no chance of winning the competition anyway, claims Sevilla have many players better than ours and then to top it off after the match yesterday slates everyone except lukaku and Matic, publicly questioning the squads desire, commitment and quality. There really is no need for a scorched earth policy, we’re having a good season by any realistic measure, so why does it seem like our manager is creating a crisis out of nothing!? As for the squad, it’s the first time since Ferguson left where I don’t think we need 8 new players so it would be quite nice if instead of alienating the majority of them by telling them they aren’t good enough he could try getting the best out of them. It could be that he’s decided slating them publicly is the way to do that, but it all just seems unnecessarily risky to me.
Because the media acted like that, and have been for months. Because Scholes and a tonne of ex-pro and pundits, hell even Frank fecking De Beor have been at Mourinho like a bunch of vultures on the African savanna.
In actuality, it's because we watch the games. I don't read the English press or listen to pundits, I'm only influenced by what I see. Which is a disjointed team that has no playing style other than bypassing the midfield with long balls towards a target man.
It also feels like we're in the midst of a massive crisis because our manager had a complete meltdown in a pre-match press conference and then attacked his players to deflect blame from himself. He contributed to this narrative more than anyone else.
He’s José Mourinho, we’re Manchester United, and City with Pep are currently miles ahead, media criticism is part of the course and has been there all season. There are threads on here about our “deep rooted issues” as a club, they weren’t happening before Sevilla, the current narrative about us being in crisis is because of Mourinho, people are back to counting how many players are good enough and thinking a clear out has to take place, be it manager or players, and it’s all on him. He’s the one creating conflict everytime he speaks.
I don't agree with the tone he talked with the presser but at the same time, I remember Pep getting eliminated from the exact same found last season against Monaco and he wasn't slaughtered by the same degree Mourinho was after Seville in the media (not talking about fans here). The media looked like as if they were hiding all their slaughtering when he was beating Liverpool and Chelsea and couldn't wait to unleash it after Seville. Fans have the right to moan but what the media did was a disgrace if you compared it to what happened to Pep last season after Monaco loss. Mourinho felt he had to defend himself. This presser was all about him defending himself from the media more than us.
Some united fans are so fecking thick they would change the manager every week whilst failing to spot it’s the same group of players who consistently underachieve.
At least half our squad, maybe more, are cowardly flakey peices if overpaid shit but that’s ok, let’s change the manager again, aye.
At least half our squad, maybe more, are cowardly flakey peices if overpaid shit but that’s ok, let’s change the manager again, aye.
oh i'm still fuming too and Mourinho absolutely shares the blame with the players.
what disappointed me during the Sevilla game was he was sat on his hands for the most part when he should've being going mental on the sidelines, he didn't pick his best side nor did he look to change it early enough only reacting when we were facing the exit.
like i said i'm not sure I've ever been 100% Jose but what i don't agree with is this idea that he's bumbling along or not really bothered if we succeed. I believe he's doing the job to the best of his ability and trying all he can to make us successful, i think he deserves another season based on results so far but the honeymoon is over now and i think this change of approach shows he knows that
That’s probably where you and I disagree most. I agree with Mourinho, we need to spend more to catch city.
Monaco were a great team that season. They beat the powerful PSG to win their league and got to the semifinals of the CL. They are in no way comparable to this shit Sevilla team who are 6th in La Liga.
Having said that, City scored 6 goals over two legs against Monaco and lost on the away goals. The aggregate score was 6-6. City won 5-3 at home and lost 3-1 away. Their performances in that CL tie are incomparable to ours.
If we went out in the same circumstances, I don’t think a lot of people will be complaining. But as usual, you’re one of those too deep in Mourinho’s ass to reason objectively.
Monaco were destroyed by the first good tactical team that they met, Juve. They were very naive, the only way the underrated City was because City were more idiotic. Juve played tight and on counters and easily destroyed them in both ties.
The last paragraph is laughable and just shows you have nothing to talk about so you get to the insults route.
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