Mourinho broke the world record transfer to get Pogba, smash PL record to get Lukaku amongst other signings and we're acting like 2nd is something to shout about.
That would be the absolute minimum expected with the players at his disposal. We did our big spending and were hardly consistent losing games we shouldn't be losing and generally most of us were happy the season was over. I enjoyed the comeback win vs City though.
So this is the absolute minimum now ? When was this absolute minimum stuff when we broke the English transfer record for Di Maria and ended up scrapping 4th in LVG first season and we were happy and called this progress ? Will this absolute mimmini stuff come in mind when Klopp finishs second or third this season after splashing loads on VVD, Alisson, Keita and Fabinho or it will be called progress and heavy metal football ?
It looks like for me Mourinho is evaluated with different standards than the rest of the managers. What is considered progress for the rest is considered terrible for him. Zero perspective imo.
What's important is the state of the team Mourinho got, which was a team finished 7th, 4th, 5th, qualified to CL once in 3 years and won 1 trophy. He got this team to win 2 cups, then to finish 2nd in his second season with our highest points tally since Fergie and another cup final, this is called progress. The quality of players have improved massively from LVG last season. This is called progress too.
2nd isn't something to be proud of, never said it was, but acting like a team who finished in top 4 once in 4 years then jumped to second isn't being on right track at this time is very arrogant and weird way of looking at it, especially when the same fans who say that keep drooling over other managers who achieve far less in the same league just becase they're telling their players to go forward!
Progress is that the team improves year after year. Where's this progress then? Do we look like the team who finished 2nd? It was a very hollow consolation to me. We were never involved in any title race and we played soul crushing football on top of that. 8th, 4th, 4th, likely 2nd is better than 6th, 2nd, 4th-6th.
Which is what happened in the first 2 seasons, as I said several times. Of course we have regressed this season for various reasons, Mourinho himself included, but the last 2 seasons the team was on the right track and the results were on steady progress. It's illogical to think that a team who was used to finish 7th, 5th and 6th for successive years will jump to 1st immediately. It's not like we were having one poor year like Chelsea or City. It was a period of continuous decline. Mourinho came, first season horrible league campaign but 2 cups, second season improved massively in the league and reached another cup final. Whatever way you look at that, it's called steady progress. The logical next step was to keep improving the team further more to close the gap and jump from second to being 1st or close 1st, something that didn't happen. We decided to stop, and the dilemma between Mourinho and Ed fecked the team up. As I said, both are at fault, Mourinho for issues on the pitch, and Ed for the terrible market.
Even title winning teams when they reach a point they think they don't need to spend anymore and should enter the next season with the same team after a great season, it ends in a disaster most of times. Chelsea under Mourinho and Conte, Madrid this season..etc. You simply can't stop spending and improving the squad farther to not let the players drop their guard down and think they achieved enough. They need continuous competition. Our team meanwhile finished second with 19 points gap from first and we are here giving all excuses in the world for the board for deciding to take their hand off from the team and not spend anymore while the team was steady returning on the right track. It's all because the manager is a hateful figure as Mourinho. Put another manager in charge and let Ed do the same, and everyone will be agreeing on slaughtering one person.
Klopp finished 8th in his first year but that wasn't his squad. Liverpool lacked consistency but he build the squad slowly. Step by step .Liverpool have been on upward trajectory and for that reason their fans showed patience because they saw marked improvement. They're now the strongest theyve been since Klopp arrived and they make their strongest start in PL era. (Contrast with our worst).
Again, you considered Mourinho a failure and didn't progress the team because he achieved the absolute "minimum" by finsihing second after spending loads on Pogba and Lukaku.
Then if Klopp this season, after spending load on VVD, Alisson, Fabinho and Keita finishs second or third while winning nothing, I hope you will keep your same perspective and consider him a failure too.
Otherwise you can use 2 different standards for 2 managers, and Klopp doesn't have the "no money spent" excuse people kept using for him anymore. If he doesn't win anything this year, then I don't see words like being progress, successful or heavy metal football if 2nd is considered absolute minimum and not something to shout about after spending loads of money, or is this applicable to Mourinho only ?
What I'm asking for is some perspective.
Mourinho came and didn't build anything because he sacrifices performances for short term result. Klopp didn't. He made sure the team is performing consistently for 90 minutes first and the results will be a consequence of that. Mourinho doesn't care for this. He brought Ibrahimovic to win straight away. Not to win in 3/4 years time. It only got him the League Cup though. The EL was good as well but it wasn't aanything unexpected. We were the tournament favorites and by far the biggest team in it. Doubt we would've won against City, Sevilla, RM in Liverpool's position.
Ultimately this will be his last season not because of Ed but because he never understood United.
Mourinho isn't an unknown quantity. He did nothing here to surprise us from his natural self.
His teams don't have certain identity. Beside being tight and combact at the back with fast transition, his teams don't imply certain style of play. He can play with 6 defenders in one game and 3 strikers in the following one.
He doesn't hold any kind of philosophy that he defends or wants to apply at each team he manages. He simply wants tight defense that can hold their own + quality attackers up front with individual abilities to finish the game.
This is nothing surprising. If you don't want to see this at Unites, why is Ed escaping the blame for hiring him ? You hire Mourinho, you sacrifice being entertaining for achieving results. He will ask for top notch defense, and quality attackers. He will ask for experienced and leader players. All these are known and we all know it would have happened. Once you hire Mourinho you declare that you're ready to go this route and follow it then.
If Ed doesn't know anything about how Mourinho operates, it's his own fault. Even those who don't know football know him quite well.
We we never in for RB this season and there were none available. Mourinho was happy to continue with Valencia for another year and signed Dalot to be the one who takes over.
He's same age as TAA so if you're good enough you're old enough. We wait and see
CM was Fred and the RW was Sanchez. Or so we expected. Like I already said Sanchez was considered a summer signing. Mourinho said three minus 1 or something like this in January and also indicated clearly he was happy with our attackers and no-one else would be arriving. Sanchez signing completes our attack he said.
The make up of our team doesn't suit wingers anyway but his tactics are too one dimensional and if he actually looked at the players at his disposal he wouldnt need a new right winger. He would've adapted to the players he has already and use any system with two strikers. But no he brings Sanchez and shoehorns him onto the LW dropping Martial and later reportedly willing to swap him for Willian. Luckily board intervened and stopped that from happening.
LB wasn't need after Shaw came back into the contention but cover/competition should be bought next summer.
We were never in for RB but we went on and signed Dalot.
Well that point doesn't make sense. You see Valencia is getting dropped completely now.
Sanchez said in his very first interview with the club that he prefers to play central or cutting from left side.
The question is still there, have we improved our weaknesses from last season, the weaknesses that prevented us from competing on the league ? The answer was no. Meanwhile, City had a problem in defense and GK, improved it in 2 summers, Liverpool had a problem in midfield, defense and GK, improved it in 1 year, Chelsea had a problem in midfield, we had a problem in fullbacks and right flank, we went on and signed a youngster there and thanks. Out of these clubs, we looked the least ambitious of them to overhaul the team or solve our problems. We looked content with second and decided to keep the team up. It's absolutely frustrating that a team like Liverpool who finished way below us, looked more interested this summer to close the gap with City than us.
Then back to how Mourinho operated in his previous clubs, that's very uncharacteristic of him. He usually builds his team fast and wins fast before leaving. He signed loads of players in his first year with Chelsea, completely changed his Inter team in second season, with signings that were all the main reason for the treble (Sneijder, Milito, Motta, Eto'o, Lucio, even Pandev lol) and completely revamped Chelsea (second stint) in his second season, letting all his strikers leave while replacing all of them, and signing Fabregas. Mourinho has never been in for long term building process. He builds his team incredibly fast and wins fast so that the team usually gets bored of him in 3rd or 4th as they did everything, and he leaves. This is the first time I have seen Mourinho so reluctant on getting rid of deadwood, not signing more than 4 players per summer and not letting anyone leave. Very uncharacteristic of him. Either he has become weak and not ruthless enough, or that he's working under certain budget per summer and thus doesn't want to sell much.
Even though I agree that we need to tweak the formation to sacrificd wingers, it's not a solution for long term. No team plays without width with good output, be it backs or wingers. It's merely something to cover for this team, but all teams around us have 90% of their dangerous movement starting from the flanks. One way or another we will have to buy wingers or fullbacks. Shaw's output from the left flank is absolutely terrible and is leaking goals from his flank every game, you see that he needs competitoln, he actually needs replacing and to be a good sub, he's currently our only left back and is doing bare minimum in comparisom to shifted wingers as Young, but ultimately he has too many flaws, and Dalot has played merely 5 or 6 games in first team football, then you have Valencia and Young, the less said the better. Otherwise, teams will learn to congest the center and box as much as possible as they know we have zero output from width anyway and we will focus all our plays central.
There's definitely nothing wrong from wanting actual wingers. This is the permanent solution, not playing without them at all. You see the havoc caused by Martial as left winger, imagine a right winger doing the same on the right then. I'm for playing with 2 strikers and no wingers currently, but that's for a stop gap, not a long term solution and not something we should be building on imo.
The last summer was simply a failure, whoever the manager is, it's irrelevant to me. Moyes summer was failure, it doesn't prevent me from wanting Moyes out or slaughtering him then. Just because I hated Moyes, I wasn't going to miraculously convert a failure of a summer to a succesful one by just talking. It was still a failure. This one is a failure too. That doesn't excuse Mourinho for any blame, the team should be far higher up in the team and that's down to him and his management. No one is saying that we had lost to WHU and Brighton and in 8th thanks to Ed. What we're saying is we didn't make a single try in summer to imrpove the team any farther and were content with 2nd and decided that was enough, meanwhile our rivals looked more interested in closing the gap with City. It's frustrating to see.
Either Ed is clueless about who he's hiring for the job or that was his real ambition, to achieve consistent top 4 finish. I don't find a third option.
And just in case, I want to repeat a point I made im earlier in case you're going to mention it. I'm not saying we should have signed Willian, Perisic and Toby particularly. He should have either told Mourinho to modfiy his list very early im summer with targets with certain criteria, or decided with Mourinho to terminate contract with mutual consent if they reached closed alley. There was 10 better solutions for this problem, and he chose the worst of them.
Finally sorry for any mistakes while writing, wrote all this on tablet.
fecking hell.