That's my list too. Mourinho and Ole were relatively decent. For Mourinho, his anger and the club not backing him was the reason the 18/19 season started the way it did. I actually think his big misstep was signing Lindelof. I also think his tenure spoke to the lack of depth we had. I genuinely believe that with better depth, we wouldn't have tailed off so badly in 16/17 and may have performed better overall in 17/18. He deserved to be sacked because his attitude sucked and was not in line with what we are as a club.
Ole should never have been hired, however the understanding was that he was growing with the club and despite having the weakest squad we've had, he managed to still do relatively decently. We had the best spells under him and he provided the most hope. He was the best symbol for the club and you could tell, unlike the other managers we've had, he genuinely had the best interest of the club in mind with his decisions. He didn't have the attacking tactical knowledge needed to get us to break teams down, but he was much better than people's perceptions of him. The issue with him is that as a club, we knew he wasn't good enough. I believe this is why we weren't willing to invest as much with him as with others at various points. Once we did invest, he proved that he wasn't experienced enough for the job.
Moyes was terrible, should never have been hired. Any other club would have sacked him in December that season. However, he did the least amount of damage to the club. He played poor football with good players, but he didn't waste money.
In comparison, LVG did so much damage to us in the transfer market. Almost all of his buys were mediocre and he did a hatchet job in making it happen. He was a representation of the fan's ire towards the players, and why that line of thinking is always disruptive. He started the trend of Man United managers acting like they were begged to take the position. You can't have managers who behave badly, yet expect players to be perfect, and he was proof of that. He willfully threw our 14/15 season away with his ridiculous test tactics to start the season aand completed gutted our squad of talent. Between December 2015 and May 2016, this was the first time I actively stopped caring about United results. Despite all this, he still had the audacity to act surprised when he was sacked. ETH is a living example of what it would have looked like if we hadn't sacked LVG in 2016.
ETH hasn't had as bad a run in the transfer market as LVG, but the level of disillusionment takes the cake. His first season may have rivalled Jose's 2nd season as our best season since SAF. However, despite the cups, the period between August 2023 and October 2024 has to be the worst I've seen from a big club who is still a financial behemoth. No big club would have kept him past November 2023, yet we managed to drag out poor football for a full season + 9 games with no respite. This period had maybe 4 good games. It's by far the worst football since the SAF era and he put us through that. Despite this, his attitude was as bad as Mourinho's. Making arrogant statements week to week, with people making excuses for him. He provided the perfect example to any club about why Manager's should not be backed when results are going poorly. After his tenure, I think the cult of the manager is finished at United and maybe across Europe, just by how bad and deluded he was. This feeling is not because of being in the moment, but every statistic tells us that he's significantly worse than any of his predecessors. He kept breaking records for the wrong reasons, yet was completely unapologetic about it. He exposed our fanbase. I actually think his failure will have a positive lasting impact.
