The Jose Mourinho Appreciation Thread

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Soldato
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Look at Argentina. On paper their squad is in the top 5 in the world easily yet they are awful on the pitch. How does a team that contains:

Messi
Aguero
Romero - hasn't played for Argentina for....5 months...
Otamendi - Questionable on his best day in the PL
Icardi
Dybala
Di Maria - found his level....in the French League....one of the best leagues in Europe....not
Benega
Higuain

play so badly?
.

No decent midfield at all and a a "new" gk just before the tournament....always going to be shaky....all the talent is centre forward / No 10 very little elsewhere, that's how


the only way the Man Utd squad has the makings of a decent side with only 3 or 4 additions is if you are a complete lunatic.

DDG, Dalot (hopefully), Shaw (hopefully), Pogba, Lukaku, Martial (hopefully, needs to be conistant), Rashford (ditto), Lingard ( decent squad player at the very least), Fred (Hopefully), Matic (very short term solution if he recovers fully from surgery, hasn't yet), Periera (hopefully) with Chong and Gomez as highly promising kids

been here before with Sanchez several months ago, so not expecting anything from him. Herrera is seemingly on his way out (unfortunately was pretty inconsistent), most of the squad is prospects for one reason or another and highly unlikely they will all develop to be top level players (or even top level squad players come to that) - that's barely 1/2 a typical sized squad
 

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No decent midfield at all and a a "new" gk just before the tournament....always going to be shaky....all the talent is centre forward / No 10 very little elsewhere, that's how

In the past few years they side could have been

Romero

Zabaleta Otamendi Rojo LB

Benega

Di Maria CM Dybala

Messi

Aguero

How is that a bad team.


the only way the Man Utd squad has the makings of a decent side with only 3 or 4 additions is if you are a complete lunatic.

DDG

Dalot Smalling New CB Shaw

New DM

New RW Fred Pogba Martial

Sanchez

Thats ignoring Lukaku, Rashford, Matic, Periera, lingard, Fellaini ( who I think has improved his all round game under Mourinho to be fair to him). Its not the best squad in the league but its a good team that with the right manager could be doing what Liverpool do. Dalot looked good when he played, Shaw is a good LB and Smalling is a decent defender he just needs someone good next to him. A more mobile and active DM will protect the defence and transition us into attack faster. A proper RW will give us some threat down that side and avoid the left hand side being our only threat. With Fred, Pogba and Martial supporting Sanchez we will have a dynamic and pacy attack again. I don't buy into the idea that Sanchez is suddenly rubbish. Hes playing in a **** system where no one no whats supposed to happen and who will be where"
 
Soldato
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Unfortunately I think Mourinho has taken us as far as he can. Even if the Newcastle win turns things around and we go on a winning streak, we'll still do it playing **** football. We brought in Jose to steady the ship and stop us from slipping into irrelevance, with his biggest positives being that he's won a lot of trophies as a manager and always gets his teams playing tactically astute and defensively solid football. This season we've conceded more than twice as many goals as Wolves, a newly promoted side in their first season in the PL, and we're already 50% of the way to our total goals conceded for the whole of last season, in the space of eight matches. Mourinho is pointless as a manager if he can't get teams playing compact, smart football and he's seemed to really struggle to do that this season with United. At least last year we were hard to beat, even if we were boring to watch. This year teams are opening us up with ease and we're also dull to watch.

I think you can see based on the PL table that the modern way to play is high energy, pressing the ball when you don't have it, then be composed on the ball and either break with pace or build towards the opposition penalty area, utilising width and overlaps from either wingers or wing-backs, with plenty of movement from all the attacking players. United don't seem to possess any of these qualities under Mourinho, and it's evident in the way we play and our position in the league table. I reckon Mourinho is already gone, it's just that the board don't really want Zidane and so, barring another atrocious run of results, I think Jose will see out the season and then be sacked in the summer. That would give the club more time to line up his replacement, whoever that might be.
 
Don
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Because he is in a brand new job and is probably quite optimistic and massively arrogant. Nothing has happened, nothing has gone wrong at this point. Who knows, maybe they were the 2 that he wanted out of all the defenders he could have had.

Nothing had gone wrong in the summer before his 3rd season at Chelsea the first time around too, they'd just won back to back titles in fact but that didn't stop all the reports coming out that he wasn't happy with Abramovic signing Sheva & to a lesser extent Ballack at the expense of players he wanted. I don't believe for one moment that Mourinho wasn't onboard with the Bailly signing and given how Castles regularly does Mourinho's dirty work for him in the press, considering how your first season under Mourinho went, had Mourinho not wanted Lindelof then Castles would have let us all know but we'll never know for certain anyway.
That's totally ignoring the fact that actually working with a player is completely different from watching him play external to the club (one of the many factors why transfers aren't perfect)

PL experience as a player is massive, as a manger its a factor but not major (there's the old " does he know how to prepare a team for a wet mid-week night in Stoke" which comes into managerial experience a little bit, the players gaining PL experience is more a factor I value more highly)

Klopp has still replaced players he bought, yet everyone is expecting JM to get it right first time and every time. That's never going to happen even SAF seemingly got more wrong than right in the last few years before he retired.

Matip has also come in, is he really anything other than a barely adequate stand-in? He may not have cost anything but he still got a huge contract on Klopp's say so.
Obviously it's an advantage to work with a player day to day but lets not try to pretend that Mourinho rocked up in July without a clue about Utd, the squad they had and of course the league. And I'd love to know why you think Premier League experience is so vital to a player but not a manager - I'd actually suggest it was more important for a manager as they're the one that ultimately sets up the side to play a particular way, makes decisions on resting/rotating players and of course signs the players (how suitable a player is to the PL etc). From a Liverpool perspective, I think both Benitez and Klopp took their time to adjust to the League - iinm Benitez says in his book that in his 2nd summer he looked to bring in more physical players as this was something we lacked, clearly underestimated when he first took over.

Re replacing signings, you've not quite understood the point. If Bailly/Lindelof weren't Mourinho's choices or they were signed because Mourinho didn't have the funds to sign better players as well as Pogba/Lukaku - why sign them at all then? Because Mourinho will sign anybody, for any amount of money if it improves his options for today, regardless of any long-term consequences. And if they were his first choice targets, along with Mikhi, Sanchez and possibly a few others too, then he's spent incredibly poorly. Why would you continue to back somebody that's either happy to spend £30m+ on a player that he doesn't want and or has such a patchy record in the transfer market?

He is the polar opposite of Klopp in regards to transfers. Unless we've been desperately short of options and needed somebody just to bolster the squad then Klopp has refused to settle for the next best thing. He's shown that when he couldn't get VVD or Keita (and others previously), he won't blow £30m on Johnny Evans or any other midfielder, even though it meant being slightly short for a period of time. He went without and got the player he wanted later. You say he's still replaced players he's bought but both Klavan and Karius were bought for rock bottom prices because we were short in both areas (since Klopp's first summer we've always had 2 if not 3 senior keepers at the club). They were all we could afford/were all we were willing to commit on players Klopp didn't desperately want - we didn't spend significant sums on them, expecting them to be the long term solution. Obviously in Karius's case the hope was he would become the long term answer but he was a calculated gamble for £4-5m in the hope that he'd become first choice and when his deal becomes permanent, we'd have made a profit on him. Touch wood it continues but everytime Klopp's spent a significant amount on a player they've been successful.

So you've got one manager that will sign anybody (he openly admitted he gave Woodward 4-5 names for 1 position) and or has a poor record in the transfer market, with multiple £30m+ players flopping and you've got another who won't just spend for the sake of it and his unsuccessful signings have totaled less than £10m and will be sold on for a profit. Surely you can see why a board wouldn't trust the former as much as they would the latter when it came to signing players in the future?
 
Soldato
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Dortmund seem to consistently find managers who are not complete ***** who slot into their system reasonably seamlessly. I want us to create an environment where a manager can come in and he isn't inheriting a complete mess.

All very good but Dortmund are not a club that demand instant success from their managers and have a club that's geared to be that way. Creating that sort of environment would be very difficult at Man Utd. You're still suffering from the loss of Ferguson. It's not just influence and how profoundly the club became entwined and relient on his charisma, it's all pervasive, even down to how your fans think and feel.

It took Liverpool (and arguably is still taking Liverpool) nearly 30 odd years to re-establish a winning club mentality. There's a lot to change at Man Utd, it's not going to get fixed with change of manager or a change of chief exec. Ultimately I don't think anything will change until the current owners sell up and the club can re-establish itself as a football club run by football people and the support gives them the breathing space to rebuild. At the moment Manchester United is a mere self regarding brand. Tail is wagging the dog.
 

fez

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All very good but Dortmund are not a club that demand instant success from their managers and have a club that's geared to be that way. Creating that sort of environment would be very difficult at Man Utd. You're still suffering from the loss of Ferguson. It's not just influence and how profoundly the club became entwined and relient on his charisma, it's all pervasive, even down to how your fans think and feel.

We don't demand instant success, we just expect a bare minimum of CL football every season. If you are giving a manager a squad that was good enough for top 4 the previous season ~£150m each year to improve the squad you aren't asking much for them to keep the team in the top 4 of the PL.

Our managers get sacked for playing **** football and failing to meet even basic targets. Thats no unreasonable. There comes a point where time and patience doesn't bring you anything but issues as a football club. Klopp has been supported by Liverpool because you could see he was improving season on season and doing good things for the club. Have they won anything? No. That doesn't matter so much when you are keeping your fans happy with good football and season on season improvement.

It took Liverpool (and arguably is still taking Liverpool) nearly 30 odd years to re-establish a winning club mentality. There's a lot to change at Man Utd, it's not going to get fixed with change of manager or a change of chief exec. Ultimately I don't think anything will change until the current owners sell up and the club can re-establish itself as a football club run by football people and the support gives them the breathing space to rebuild. At the moment Manchester United is a mere self regarding brand. Tail is wagging the dog.

It makes no sense to me when people say this. The owners are ploughing plenty of money back into the club for players and managers. If they didn't care then they would be doing what Arsenal did for years. Spend the bare minimum required to maintain top 4. The past 5 seasons have generally been ones to forget so what about their current strategy is helping the bottom line of the club. They want a stable long term manager. They want to be able to spend £100m a season on a marquee signing to keep them at the top of the league. They don't want to spend £150m a season to potentially scrape top 4 while they constantly look for new managers.
 
Soldato
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We don't demand instant success, we just expect a bare minimum of CL football every season. If you are giving a manager a squad that was good enough for top 4 the previous season ~£150m each year to improve the squad you aren't asking much for them to keep the team in the top 4 of the PL.

It's not the money spent though really is it? it's how it's spent. And the top positions are relative as there's 6 clubs who all think they should be finishing top 4.

Our managers get sacked for playing **** football and failing to meet even basic targets. Thats no unreasonable. There comes a point where time and patience doesn't bring you anything but issues as a football club. Klopp has been supported by Liverpool because you could see he was improving season on season and doing good things for the club. Have they won anything? No. That doesn't matter so much when you are keeping your fans happy with good football and season on season improvement.

I agree. I'm not saying poorly performing managers shouldn't be sacked. I'm just pointing out that sacking them doesn't solve anything.

It makes no sense to me when people say this. The owners are ploughing plenty of money back into the club for players and managers. If they didn't care then they would be doing what Arsenal did for years. Spend the bare minimum required to maintain top 4. The past 5 seasons have generally been ones to forget so what about their current strategy is helping the bottom line of the club. They want a stable long term manager. They want to be able to spend £100m a season on a marquee signing to keep them at the top of the league. They don't want to spend £150m a season to potentially scrape top 4 while they constantly look for new managers.

Hmmm. The Glazers. What the Glazers want is the Manchester United brand to be strong enough to reap plenty of cash for them to take home and for the club to remain top of the money league. I see no evidence at all that they're actually that interested in doing what needs to be done to win stuff in football at the moment. I certainly see zero evidence (in fact I see evidence to the contrary) that they're interested in developing the kind of club ethos and environment you see at Dortmund. They bought the top dog of English football but then lost the main reason they were top dogs. They've been overtaken in spending power and the game has moved on slightly. They've done nothing to address any of these issues. They know in the short term at least that the cash will keep rolling in, they know in the long term it probably will too, no matter what they do.

I'm sure in an ideal world they'd like a stable manager that wins stuff and can do it on a modest budget, but that's what every other club looks for too. Whoever comes in next will have to finish top 4 in a league with 5 other clubs who are miles ahead football wise. Pochetino would be interesting but there's no guarantees no matter how much is spent. A least that would most likely make it 4 out of 5 rather than 6.
 
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Soldato
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You can say that but Manchester United has won three trophies in the past 5 years which is terrible in United's case but still better than the majority. No matter how good Liverpool and Tottenham play they haven't won anything for pretty much a decade.

I don't hear much from Man U fans who wouldn't swap in a heartbeat those trophies for a feeling that they could compete with the other 5 top clubs. I bet there's some worried about Arsenal.
 

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I don't hear much from Man U fans who wouldn't swap in a heartbeat those trophies for a feeling that they could compete with the other 5 top clubs. I bet there's some worried about Arsenal.

Its nice to win trophies but you will always be fighting for the second tier trophies unless you get the club at the same level as the best in the world. Realistically it seems that only City are able / willing to outspend us these days so we should be aiming to win the PL and CL. You won't do that without being in the top few clubs in the league or world. Currently I wouldn't put us in the top 20.
 
Man of Honour
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Jardim is about to be sacked at Monaco. Could be interesting, he's highly rated.

I do think a great attacking manager who can sign 4-5 players will be able to develop our team to compete with Man City (or close), but with Mourinho we're in limbo for now. I see no way back for him at all.
 
Soldato
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Its nice to win trophies but you will always be fighting for the second tier trophies unless you get the club at the same level as the best in the world. Realistically it seems that only City are able / willing to outspend us these days so we should be aiming to win the PL and CL. You won't do that without being in the top few clubs in the league or world. Currently I wouldn't put us in the top 20.

And neither would anyone else. And it's not Mourinho's fault.
 

fez

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And neither would anyone else. And it's not Mourinho's fault.

Hows it not Mourinhos fault? Hes the guy that decided the style of football we are going to play and is supposed to manage his players. Squad wise we are in the top 20 teams in the world, our issue is having managers who can't seem to get them to play well together. I can almost guarantee you Klopp would have us playing much better football than we have in the past 5 years after only a few months. This is why managers are payed similar sums to the top players.
 
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Jardim is about to be sacked at Monaco. Could be interesting, he's highly rated.

I do think a great attacking manager who can sign 4-5 players will be able to develop our team to compete with Man City (or close), but with Mourinho we're in limbo for now. I see no way back for him at all.
So highly rated that he’s rumoured to getting sacked?? :/. Can’t be that great or highly rated if he is about to be sacked from Monaco :p
 

fez

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So highly rated that he’s rumoured to getting sacked?? :/. Can’t be that great or highly rated if he is about to be sacked from Monaco :p

Wonder how Poch would do if he had to sell Kane, Son, Dembele, Dele, Erikson suddenly. There comes a point where you can't expect miracles when all your best players are poached every season. You can get away with it for a while but eventually your luck will turn. He has over-performed and developed a number of very good young players. Pretty much all the most exciting young talent over the past few years has come from there.
 
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