It's crazy, when Mourinho took over, I thought the naysayers were totally mental. For me, his last season at Chelsea was down to player power and an owner that didn't back him / is renowned for being trigger happy. I was actually delighted when Chelsea sacked him as I fully believed that he would turn it around. So when we appointed him, I was absolutely delighted and I thought we had finally gotten a proven winner in with good leadership qualities and a manager who would be able to attract the best talents to the club. How fecking wrong was I?
Early on in his reign, Jose was saying all the right things and looked happy to be here. But slowly but surely he started to make negative comments about the squad being pretty shit and any failures would have to be attributed to them and not him. That should have been a massive red flag but I think plenty agreed that the squad did need a shape up. Well, he's now into his third season and the football is worse than when he took over, he's causing nothing but drama and giving the media ample opportunity to slate us at every turn, the squad looks a disjointed mess akin to LvG's reign and the tactics and team selections seem utterly directionless ans he is hanging players out to dry / exiling players etc.
Funnily enough, all of this is happening and Jose wants to be exonerated from, and absolved of any blame for the current state of affairs. He played his cards well, before the season started and was already sniping at Woodward, then the insinuations that squad isn't good enough started, then the Pogba fallout got far worse and is being played out in the public domain. Don't get me wrong, Pogba can feck off too, but Mourinho has handled the situation - the situation that he created - absolutely woefully. At the end of the day, he's the manager, he's there to manage players, these types of situations etc, but he's acted like a petulant child.
Then we had that famous half hour against Spurs: Oh that half hour. For me as a United fan, it was one of the most surreal reactions to a game that I have ever witnessed. I'm convinced some people are more Jose fans than United fans. We got mauled at home by Spurs and some were celebrating the game because eh Mourinho 'tried' to play the right way. I'm sorry, but the actually feck? Do people not think at home we should be going out and attacking teams every single week? Remember the days when Old Trafford was an absolute fortress and teams would be shitting it going there. But nah, now we celebrate a defeat to a massively out of sorts Spurs, because y'know, we tried to attack them. Funnily enough, once they sussed us out, they cut us open time-and-again. But I mean, this is where we are at for some people, they want to celebrate utter mediocrity and failure, all in the name of backing their man.
If I thought for a second that Mourinho could turn this around, transform our style of play and stop with the negative bullshit, I would be happy to keep him to save us from more upheaval. The thing is, I just don't see it happening and I believe the rot has well and truly set in. I'm sure his biggest defenders will be calling people 'kneejerk' etc, but they're deluded if they think people have reached this juncture after like 4 or 5 games. We may have finished 2nd least season but it was a most un-inspirational 2nd place finish and the cracks were clearly starting to appear. Some have also bought into this rhetoric that Mourinho is some sort of martyr that is fighting a crusade against the big bad anti-United media. Erm, I hope these people realise that Mourinho is the cause of the negativity in the media and once he goes, I'm confident that all this supposed 'anti-United' stuff will stop. The media are loving this as he is giving them nothing but ammo at every single turn and for some reason Mourinho continues to feed them on a near daily basis.
This won't get better until he is gone and that's my viewpoint that is only being strengthened by the week. There's plenty of collective blame though and Woodward needs to be moved to a commercial role with a DOF coming in. The squad is also full of players that simply aren't good enough and need to be moved on, too. I'm sure most fans that want Mourinho out can also see this, despite what the apologists will try to insinuate. Is he solely to blame? No. Can a huge part of the blame be apportioned to him? Yes. He is a massive part of the problem and as such, he should be removed from his position. Do I expect us to become a swashbuckling machine that will storm to the PL title when he goes? Nope, this is just a silly claim made his fans that people think this will happen. However, I do think we will start to play better football and a-lot of the media circus will cease.
