He's from a different era, where the word of the Manager was law, and you just shut the feck up and did your job.
Things have changed, and I think clearly for the worse, but, whatever I may think on the subject, or whatever Neville might, times HAVE changed, and things are not going to roll back. Athletes now have to be handled with kids gloves, because like it or not, the athletes ultimately have all the power. Either collectively, as in enough to sabotage results, or individually with superstars.
A 33 year old SAF walking into this team, right now, would get fired within a couple of seasons. Why? He practically wrote the book on hard nosed, no-nonsense managing. Pogba would throw a fit the first time SAF told him to do something he didn't want to do, and boom, he would start losing the team, and then what? Management is left with firing the manager, or firing half of the team.
The truth is, the culture of Manchester United is compromised by the players, and enabled by upper management. Maybe Mourinho wasn't the right fit, I have no problem with failure, when the reasons for the failure are understood, when the players give it their all day in and day out, and live and die by the managers call. That isn't what happened was it? If Mourinho failed and had that support, that's an honest failure, and we can go about honestly appraising what the issue really is, and how to address it. That isn't what happened though, that isn't what has happened for 3 consecutive managers now. The team has been a combination of a) Not good enough and b) rebelling against the Manager. So what is the real issue? Do we know? Is it upper management not being willing to dump the problem players? Is it spoiled players? Is it terrible managers? Is it players half assing it?
I don't know, neither does anyone else but maybe some insiders.
At the end of the day, however, no matter how much I think the older school mentality that was still around in the 90's is the better way to do it, that way is gone and teams need to grapple with this change. United was sheltered from this, because of SAF. SAF was able to do it old school right up until he retired, because he was beyond reproach. He was an institution and even though the culture around United had changed, United was inside a SAF bubble that his career had created.
Now we're living in the real world, where the inmates run the asylum, and you need to find that balance between managerial authority and respect for that authority, and not pushing the players too far that they go on de-facto strike.
