Surely people aren't questioning our progress to-date....perhaps only annoyed at the speed of the progression.
Basically this. I think the improvements under Mourinho have been obvious on some fronts. Our recruitment under Jose is miles ahead of where it was under Moyes and LvG. He's correctly identified the holes in our squad and mostly signed the right players to fix them.I also think - despite games like Sevilla and West Brom - that the team's mentality and determination seem miles ahead of anything we had under LvG or Moyes.
In fact, overall I think this is genuinely quite a good Man Utd side: Pogba, Lukaku, Sanchez, Bailly, the new and improved Lingard, Rashford, Matic etc. are all very good players and have the makings of an excellent squad. When they turn it on, they can play some very attractive football, and again we don't seem as meek as we did under van Gaal or as lost as we did under Moyes. So just on the management front, Jose has been an undoubted good for us IMO.
But the problem that I have with Jose right now is the thing he gets paid the big bucks for: his coaching. I can't shake the feeling that our improvement on the pitch is down to us having better players and not because of Jose. This United team is certainly the least cohesive team he has ever managed. For all of LvG's
faults, it was clear to see what he wanted the team to be. Jose seems to be relying on the players to figure it out on that front (games like Chelsea at home last season, Ajax in the EL final, Liverpool at home this season being exceptions).
I am most certainly not Mourinho out, I do think we've progressed under him, and think he should very much be backed in the transfer window in the summer; not least so he can identify the right full-backs for us and finally have us in a position where we have a strong starting XI with no makeshifts. But I feel like we'll only see this team flourish and fulfill its promise if we unintentionally fall onto a young, progressive coach.
Or put another way, I don't think another coach would've made the progress as quickly as we've made from where we were under LvG to where we are now with 2 trophies along the way and a potential third this season. But I do think given where we are now, there are other coaches out there who would get more from this team than Mourinho is right now - not least the one across town walking the league.
We may have been knocked out of the Champions League having surrendered to Sevilla with four shots over two legs.
We may have our most expensive player of all time playing awful for months. (Up until this year literally the most expensive player of all time)
We may have DDG having more shots against him than ever before under Ferguson.
We may have spent close to 200 million on attacking players and look offensively clueless.
We may have our most promising young players (Shaw, Rashford and Martial) rumoured to be wanting to leave the club.
We may have a manager that consistently proves to be catastrophic in his third year.
We may have seen signings that as of now rival LVG for wasted money.
But at least we’re second.
I agree with most of what you said except the bolded part. I think we're doing all right on signings.
1. Eric Bailly is a top young defender. I'd argue the same for Lindelof but that one is debatable and not as immediately obvious so plenty of room for disagreement.
2. Matic has been a very solid addition who gives us personality and at long last, a deep lying midfielder who's good on the ball. With Carrick retiring, I think Matic is an important signing.
3. Pogba for all your critique has looked good in many games. He did very well under both Conte and Allegri, so he probably just needs a coach who does the actual coaching part of the job, in terms of developing patterns of play, better than Mourinho is doing right now. On that front, I think Jose is quite lucky that there isn't a glaringly obvious candidate out there: Tuchel is a big risk and is going to PSG at any rate and I haven't really seen Napoli outside the Champions League and twitter compilations of them playing Guardiola-ball better than Guardiola's team, but that really isn't enough for me to be able to give a good judgement of Sarri. Pochettino is by far the most exciting candidate but I don't think he'll leave Spurs for another team in England. He'll probably be at PSG, Bayern or one of the Spanish Big Two.
4. Mkhitaryan was admittedly a disaster but we got Sanchez in return so no harm done.
5. Sanchez seems a bit excessive because of the implications for Martial and Rashford but I feel like they can work in the same team if we find the right system. Who knows though?
6. Lukaku I think has been a definite success. He's scored important goals, lead the line well and brought a lot of desire and personality to the team. Still a lot of work to do especially in big games but signs are encouraging IMO.
7. Zlatan: basically only here as a single season stop gap. Did well, won us the league cup and was generally fun to watch.
Would love to know why you think we've wasted money, especially when apart from Sanchez and Matic, the signings are young players with potential to grow. And if the Tierney rumors are to be believed, we're only gonna add to that. Whoever takes over after Jose will probably benefit from his recruitment if not his work on the training ground.
Does anyone disageee with any of the following;
We are some ways away from competing with Man city. Money isn’t an excuse, we are both absolutely loaded.
City, liverpool and spurs all play significantly more attractive football than us.
Our manager would rather avoid defeat at all costs than throw caution to the wind and go for a result from the 1st minute.
We are right to be concerned and right to wonder if the man in charge is the correct person to take us back to the top.
Agreed especially on the bolded bit. For all the protestations about Mourinho not having 'his' players and having to make do with Blind, Darmian, Shaw etc. I don't think anyone can argue that what Jose inherited was worse than what Klopp or Pochettino inherited. They've both spent less money and got their teams ticking better than Mourinho. I can't see how the gap in quality between Firmino-Mane-Salah-Henderson-Wijnaldum-Oxlade Chamberlain or Kane-Alli-Eriksen-Dembele-Wanyama and Lukaku-Sanchez-Lingard-Pogba-Matic is large enough to justify the difference in the quality of attacking play. Mourinho needs to pull his socks up a bit on this IMO. Hopefully another transfer window and a pre-season with the squad will do the trick and we'll be back where we belong and where Mourinho wants us to be next season.
