I guess Woody just gave Mourinho a free pass to fail...... and I am not happy with that. It feels like even coming in third would be an achievement right now.
The beginning of the end... (the original board vetoed Mourinho's transfer wish list thread)
- Thread starter charlenefan
- Start date
It’s not. I don’t understands why people would think it is. No manager gets exactly what they want. Should Poch, Pep, Sarri etc all be sacked as well - as clearly their clubs have had similar challenges.
No problem with the decision of the board to not invest. Cant keep splashing out every summer on a CB. Make him play the two he has bought. We should be planning for the long term and that will be without this manager. The sooner he goes the better all round,
Didn't fancy the prices ? Come on. They've stitched him up here, it's obvious what is happening.
Doesn't he want to play 3 at the back?
The thing that makes no sense in all of this is - why give him a new contract if you aren’t going to back him?
I could possibly understand this if he had one year on his deal and there may he change on the horizon but he just got a new deal.
Half assing it isn’t going to work.
I could possibly understand this if he had one year on his deal and there may he change on the horizon but he just got a new deal.
Half assing it isn’t going to work.
It’s more to do with the club exploring these players and being given prices that are unreasonable. It’s not the the board threw his list in the bin, they explored the transfers, but they were commercially not viable.
Well fair enough but Ed leaking stories he was willing to buy a £100m defender doesnt help the situation.
'Sorry Jose your targets are shite, if only you had Varane on there!!!'
I'd be pissed off if I were Mourinho - Yet another manager that Woodward throws under the bus as he briefs the media why the transfer window didn't go as planned.
The bottomline is though - if the mis-alignment is as bad as the briefs make it out to be, the only sensible course really is to sack him.
I despise how businessmen set themselves up as the final arbiters of what constitutes good value though. If you want a policy, hire a DoF. If you hire a manager, let him do his thing. It is pure incompetence from Woodward, to imagine he is competent enough to make these calls.
The bottomline is though - if the mis-alignment is as bad as the briefs make it out to be, the only sensible course really is to sack him.
I despise how businessmen set themselves up as the final arbiters of what constitutes good value though. If you want a policy, hire a DoF. If you hire a manager, let him do his thing. It is pure incompetence from Woodward, to imagine he is competent enough to make these calls.
Of course they didnt fancy the prices, they were quoted ridiculous ones for the likes of Toby and Maguire. I wouldnt have paid it either if I were them. Also the info about agents fees makes more sense of not signing Mina.
Sounds like a tinhat theory to me
Exactly. It’s an excuse that makes no internal sense. Mourinho said he gave them a list of five players at the end of last season, why didn’t our new uber-scout, Herr Woodward, tell him we don’t want to sign any of them the moment he saw this list?
The timing of the briefing is disgusting too. Why not get the Leicester game out of the way before basically taking the piss out of the manager, in public? Feck it, could this not have waited until the international break? As it stands, he’s rattled Mourinho when our squad is weak and we’re at our most vulnerable.
I’m no fan of the manager but this almost seems calculated to derail our season asap. Either that or Woodward putting his own ego/reputation ahead of the performances/results of the team. Either way, it’s the actions of a devious prick.
A specific one who wasnt available. Not just any
Oh no I'm not saying its on the club I'm saying this is obviously all journalist bullshit, they just copy each other and suddenly its a 'briefing'
They didn't veto his list ffs they just didn't want to pay the fees, like with transfers every fecking window
Still, gives the children on here a chance to call our manager a cnut (which used to be a reportable offence I'm sure)
There is no valid excuse for this nonsense. Of they were not willing to back his market choices. They should have never kept him as manager
He has Rojo, Smalling, Jones, Bailly, Lindelof. Not sure if Tuanzebe has gone on loan, I know Forsu did. Where has this 3 at the back come from? Did he trial it in pre-season which is what those type of games should be for.
Then he shouldn't be at the club. Woodward positioning himself between two stools as he has is probably the worst option he could have picked.
And 2 of those Mourinho bought himself for fairly significant money at the time. No guarantee a new CB even if they cost £75 million was going to fare any better
How can you claim our CBs are good enough when it seems the only thing they're capable of doing on the ball is passing back to De Gea?
My only hope is that Lindelof turns into the CB we thought we bought last year. Otherwise, it's more "long ball from De Gea to Fellaini/Lukaku" football for another year, and an inevitable footballing atrocity like the one we witnessed against Sevilla at Old Trafford.
It’s been reported throughout the summer that Varane was on the list.
I can understand the stance, Utd were prepared to spend £100m on Varane, given his age and profile - but not £75m (my speculated price) on Toby, but would be prepared to buy Toby for £40-50m - but Spurs were quoting far higher than we wanted to go.
Fellaini and Rojo are squad players. And even if their new contracts are mistakes, this still doesn't justify buying for huge money 30 y.o. players who are not really special. It's silly to regard Alderweireld as the best CB in the league. He had one excellent season, that's it. So did Otamendi last season. He's the best around now, isn't he?
Zlatan contributed little for our success in the EL. He wasn't even available for the semis and the final. We didn't need him in the previous rounds as there were no top teams anyway. Rashford did brilliantly vs Celta away which was our best perfomance in the competition.
Board saw City winning the league with many youngish players last season. And not only winning it but destroying it. For half of the games City's attack consisted of players aged 23-21-20. And they had also players like B. Silva (23), Stones (23), Laporte (23), Mendy (23), Ederson (24), Zinchenko (21), etc. United have enough experienced players now. Time to help Martial, Martial, Shaw show their worth and help Pogba and Lukaku flourish.
There's more than 1 defender he could have spent good money on, we wasn't even linked to half of the best defenders in EU just mainly Mina and Alderweirald.
Exactly. Cant keep throwing money at something hoping you eventually get it right, I mean who the feck does he think he is. What p*sses me off most as a Utd fan was this dour tumescent football he served up through the second half of last season and through pre-season. This is much more of a concern than not signing another CB. Christ on a stick we have Sanchez, Marital, Lukaku, Rashford, Mata, Pogba. Why in the hell cant we look like a decent attacking team
Maybe because thats a ridiculously inaccurate statement?
We played 7th highest amount of long balls last season. Thats behind Spurs who were 1st and Liverpool in 5th with a bit more than us. And someone like Toby would have seen us play more longballs not less as he played the most of any CB last season.
But why then is it just Alderweirald or Varane? there's loads of top quality defenders that money could have gone on or atleast tried to sign, it's not like Varane is the only top defender in the world.
It's like we need a top defender...we're willing to spend big money but only identify Varane? fecking daft.
So it was Varane or nothing supposedly for 100 mil? That's a bit silly imo.
Also back him or sack him is a stupid argument as if there's no middle ground. Imagine that, board doesn't buy the players a manager want so has to sack him..
Anyway it's a tuff situation all in all.
Also back him or sack him is a stupid argument as if there's no middle ground. Imagine that, board doesn't buy the players a manager want so has to sack him..
Anyway it's a tuff situation all in all.
Right. But the point is they've been told we would have been up for paying £100 million for 1 specific world cup winning CB who wasnt ever available. That doesnt mean that we'd pay huge money for another CB. Just that we would have paid it for Varane.
Personally I'm glad we didnt do that either.
You change the manager when a better option is available.
Clearly, they are afraid that a Jose meltdown might be probable and are wary to fork huge sums on "experienced" players who could be ditched by next manager.
Also I'm glad some will find a joy in this, cause that supposedly means Jose will have a meltdown which they just can't wait to happen.. But I ask you, Jose leaves and what then?
What other time has this happened?
This is the big issue. Who is overriding jose and deciding that players will not improve us or are too expensive?
Not a football man. A finance guy.
I'm surprised so many are for this. We already have an example of this with Perisic where the fans were outraged at the possible cost but actually, 50 million looks a bit of a bargain in retrospect.
With maguire what happens if continues to grow and be one of the best defenders on the league....with price inflation he will defo be more expensive.
If this came from ferguson the ok but i doubt it given his health issues. And even then, his value in the market comments proved to be massively short sighted....value is not concrete.
Was a record 30 mill on ferdinand value at the time or when he was on the drugs ban? No....but in retrospect hell yes. Was 90 mill for ronaldo value for us when sold....yes...but we got robbed overall.
I'm glad we didn't blow money on Mina or even the inflated fee's for Alderweirald but my point is there are other top CB's in Europe not just Varane, i dont know why our scouting ranged stopped with him.
Koulibaly at Lazio is a good shout, he's a top defender and whilst he would have cost a fortune he would instantly become our best defender. We could have gone the youngster route and signed De Ligt or Upamecano, sign them now before they are £100m defenders in 2 years.
Oh no I'm not saying its on the club I'm saying this is obviously all journalist bullshit, they just copy each other and suddenly its a 'briefing'
They didn't veto his list ffs they just didn't want to pay the fees, like with transfers every fecking window
Still, gives the children on here a chance to call our manager a cnut (which used to be a reportable offence I'm sure)
It's clearly a briefing.
People covering their arses, when the inevitable happens, and, Woodward has to sack the 3rd manager on his watch.
With this approach you may as well give Jose his P45 now and be done with it. You can't have a serious disconnect between what the manager and the club want to do. It just creates frustrations on both sides. There are no winners in this scenario and it hinders progress. If the club want someone to make long term signings, then they need someone more aligned with that vision. If they want Mourinho to be successful now, they need to give him what he asks for. He's been set up to fail with this approach and ultimately that's not good for nay of us.
Moyes
Well at least when he's gone our next manager will have some fantastic players to work with and not a load of past-its.
I agree. The media just want to dine out on anything that's deemed as a failure when we do it. Jose is an employee of the club, not the bloody owner and has to work within its constraints like every other manager...
Shouldn't they have been looking for a better one if so?
This "I am half in" approach is, imo, worse than either backing him fully or sacking him.
Dont understand why we didnt get Enrique in before he took the Spain manager. A young manager who has experience managing one of the biggest clubs in the world, has his side playing football the right way.
This!
I think they kind of had to give him a contract extension. Even if he’s only staying for the 3 years and that was always the plan. There would have been endless speculation this season about whether he was getting renewed. Players might start not bothering too much if they know he’s out of the door in the summer. The extra year stops all of that.
In my head, that also kind of justifies the clubs approach to the outcasts such as Martial and shaw. Why we won’t sign his older transfer targets this window and why he’s never bothered moving his family up here.