Has Jose Mourinho lost it?

I think that we should expect more from Mourinho with the money he has spent. Yes City have spent more but in return they have a team that looks happy, plays brilliant football and has a slew of players that have improved under the manager. Players like De Bruyne and Sane have taken their game to the next level in the last season or so.

In return for our money we have a bunch of players who don't look that happy, don't play very well as a team and the only player I can think of that I think has seriously improved this season is Lukaku and perhaps Lingard. Rashford, Martial, Pogba, Sanchez have all dipped instead of improved and we were soundly beaten in the CL against easily one of the weakest teams left in it.

When you spend as much as we have and you pay the manager as much as we do then simply being better or doing better than the previous season/manager is not enough. We are second in the league partially due to our solid-ish defence and the quality of our squad but perhaps more of it is the issues of the clubs around us. Arsenal are performing very poorly, Chelsea are hot and cold but mainly cold these days and Liverpool love to gallop forwards before shooting themselves in the foot in random games.

I don't expect to win the CL or the league necessarily but I do expect us to play good football that is enjoyable to watch and I expect us to play at least as well as the sum of our parts. I think a manager like Poccetino, Klopp or Guardiola would have us playing great football which with the players we have would be enough to compete for the CL and PL.

The way I see it you are very unlikely to win anything serious at the moment without playing good football and dominating most opponents. You can be there or there abouts by doing what Mourinho does but you can't win things unless the opposition ***** up. You can buy the best players but the best players want to attack. They want to express themselves and enjoy their football. Liverpool and Tottenham play good football with a far inferior set of players because their manager has given the team a style. None of the best teams are just a collection of top players. PSG never do as well as they should for this exact reason.
 
I completely agree fez. Sure, we're probably three or four players off having a fantastic squad, but we should still be playing much, much better football with the players available. I'm sure that the managers you mentioned would be getting more out of our players than Mourinho, particularly the likes of Sanchez and Pogba. Mourinho is far too obsessed with keeping clean sheets and it's stifling our attacking players. He said that the players seemed scared to attack against Brighton but I'm sure part of that is due to Mourinho insisting on being defensively solid. Plus I can't stand the way he's treated some of the players. Throwing Luke Shaw under the bus yet again is clear bullying, and it's not like Shaw was even having a noticeably bad game.

I think if we don't see improvement next year the board really ought to consider his position.
 
It what way has Lukaku improved? His first touch is still crap, his hold up play is still crap and he still only scores multiple goals against the dross. What he can do he does well but he’s the most one dimensional forward I can remember at that level.
 
However you look at it, a better manager could get more out of the players, play far better football and actually show some ambition. I'm all for defensive football when it's required and if it works, but this is just absolutely horrendous, and there are no signs of it getting better. Mourinho's performance as manager is nothing short of an embarrassment and his comments and press conferences are equally bad.

dannyjo22 said:
It what way has Lukaku improved? His first touch is still crap, his hold up play is still crap and he still only scores multiple goals against the dross. What he can do he does well but he’s the most one dimensional forward I can remember at that level.
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His all round game has dramatically improved in 2018, even against better teams. He's mainly feeding off scraps too which is never easy.
 
I just wish he'd quit or get sacked the problem is who'd replace him. He's destroying players not improving them
 
Maybe the harsh facts are that the players/team just aren't good enough to win at the top level.
I'm torn on Mourinho - his antics increasingly irritate me but you cannot disrespect his coaching record. It's as good as anyone in terms of winning things. Ok so we have Guardiola but there is only one of him and maybe he is this generations most successful but Mourinho is close behind. What we see is the difficulties of transitioning a team that was domestically dominant for two decades to one that can challenge again. The money spent on players is a distraction - if he brings in too many Bailly's - unproven at elite level then the fans will say the club lacks ambition. If he brings in Galacticos like Pogba and they don't perform the critics say its the coaching. Perhaps the truth is that Pogba just ain't that good and doesn't have the attitude to improve.

To make a real judgement I reckon Mourinho needs another season. At that point he will have had 3 years and six windows to craft something he feels can challenge. United fans need to accept that they will not out football Liverpool or City but they surely can compete more equally. The club has to get over the Fergie era and in truth there are still many of the last title winning side under pinning the current team. Valencia, Young, Jones, Smalling have not been replaced with better options. Darmian, Lindelof, Shaw, Blind have been found not to be good enough at the top level. In essence Mourinho has arguably 6 defenders to change in the next year plus making big decisions on Hererra, Mata, Fellaini. When viewed in that context I think you can see that the team is still short in many areas.

I think at this stage in Mourinhos's career he is motivated by competing with Guardiola and not the money PSG might offer. His standards are incredibly high and it's clear that he demands a basic level of commitment and performance that many players cannot reach. I think he has improved Rashford, Lingard when most people thought the would be cast aside. He has shown he doesn't pick players on reputation - think how we moaned about Rooney's sacred status for seasons when he stunk the place out week after week.

I'll give him another season and see where it takes us. Surely the only way is up in terms of performance quality.
 
dannyjo22 said:
It what way has Lukaku improved? His first touch is still crap, his hold up play is still crap and he still only scores multiple goals against the dross. What he can do he does well but he’s the most one dimensional forward I can remember at that level.
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I have to think that you haven't been watching him much this season. He has been brilliant in his hold up play and created chances and goals for our other players when no one else is doing anything. His general control and first touch has got a lot better and his passing/crossing is miles better than the start of the season.

Hes got 14 goals and 7 assists and he hasn't exactly had stellar service all season.
 
Transitioning is bs, it's a different manager and what players are left over, Young, Carrick and Valencia, two of which should have been gotten rid of before Fergie even left.

It's entirely irrelevant, fans mean nothing, it's about player and manager and there is basically no connection to the old team, none of them are struggling because they are so used to working with Fergie.

As for arguing with his record, of course you can. He's taken the right jobs at the right time but I don't think he's 'the special one' he anti footballed/cheated and got so many terrible ref decisions to get to a couple CL titles but Chelsea, almost anyone could have won the title with them both times. The first time Chelsea spent more than anyone in europe by a huge margin. No one had billionaire mega owners pumping billions of losses into the club at that time, literally no other team. Teams also take time to gel, PSG shows that, City showed that, Chelsea showed that, even Real showed that. You can't spend 250+ mil and have a team starting the next morning. Chelsea before Mourinho improved monumentally the year before he joined but that was a load of new players. He took over a side that lost only to the invincibles and had his two best players bought for him by Ranieri(both Robben and Cech were bought before Mourinho took over). Half the managers in europe could have won that title. Today there are multiple mega rich teams spending at a similar level but in 04-07 no one came remotely close. The gap between City and Utd today in spending is utterly dwarfed by the gap between Chelsea and everyone else in europe back then. That was football manager level edit the team to give them 10x more cash than anyone else in the world stuff.

Real, again someone spent 250mil and the improvement the year before he joined was the biggest seen by far than anything Mourinho did, Real actually did worse their first season under Mourinho, had a better second year helped by Guardiola doing worse and had a poor third year after which he got fired in that nice way that publicly they said it was mutual, horse ****.

Chelsea again, they weren't great his first year at all, second year he bought an offensive pair in form at a time everyone else had other targets, other competitions, fired managers or new managers rebuilding.

Inter as well were what, 3 time champions when he took over with all the big money rivals relegated, losing players or having points docked due to match fixing so even his time there was easy and plagued with ref errors to help get them to the final in the CL.

Guardiola has taken two teams and massively improved the players, at Bayern it's odd, the team didn't really improve nor did they really get worse, Heynckes was just so good at Bayern that there was room for improvement. Mourinho has gone no where and improved the football on show, the quality of the players and only once in his previous 4 jobs did he not get fired when the teams got hugely worse in his final season there.

Yeah, you sure as **** can argue with his record. If stupid owners gave Ranieri and Pellegrini time to gel the team then take them forward again Mourinho wouldn't have had the luck to achieve 90% of what he has. But the 90% of what he has achieved could have been achieved by almost anyone. LIke I said, a fluke series of events in which he gets fired when the perfect job opens up due to mostly incompetent owners has led him to be one of the most successful yet least deserving managers in history.

I've never seen another top manager so consistently fail to bring through good young players, to improve any/all players at the club and to produce such god awful to watch football that consistently gets worse throughout his tenure.
 
His first touch is still terrible, until about 5 games ago he was getting slaughtered on here by United fans for his terrible work rate, going missing and touch. Stellar service, come off it the clubs he's been at you could use that excuse but he has one way of playing. Running onto through balls and using his flat track bully status. He's great at that. Admittedly he would get those balls at Everton and we played to that strength, well a top flight forward with other top forwards and midfielders around them won't have a team play purely to that one strength, which is why at the end of Feb I think he had scored once against a top 10 side.

Anyway the comment was on him improving under Jose and who Jose had made better, to say that Lukaku although playing better than the start of the season is a better player than he was an Everton is stretching it.
 
Moses said:
People calling it a masterstroke to take the heat off the team will have to explain why he needs to throw them/Luke Shaw under the bus to create drama. He can create drama without sacrificing the people he’s supposedly protecting, no?



:D

That’d be classic. We need Liverpool fans to bombard Sky enough to convince them to run a MNF feature/segment on that.
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I dont know if anyone listens to the Football Ramble here but Pete Donaldson was spot on RE Jose and Luke Shaw. In a society where highlighting depression and bullying is in the news on what seems like a daily basis Id like to see why the FA arent stepping in. He is throwing Luke Shaw under a bus at every single opportunity, god knows what that's doing for the lad mentally, this kind of "motivation" clearly isnt working so how about he changes tact ?

Assuming Shaw leaves in the summer I think there will be a number of suitors, Spurs would be a shout for e.g.

Jose is a dinosaur and if United had anything about them they'd get rid. I couldn't care less what they won last, this or any season under him, he is an embarrassment to arguably the worlds biggest football club (I say arguably because its Liverpool innit xx #YNWA) .
 
I read an article who quoted someone from Soton who stated that Shaw had a questionable attitude at times and did require a blunt comment or two occasionally - he has all the talent but the wrong mindset. Can't find the article now.
 
sigma said:
I read an article who quoted someone from Soton who stated that Shaw had a questionable attitude at times and did require a blunt comment or two occasionally - he has all the talent but the wrong mindset. Can't find the article now.
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The same was said last week on 5live by people who were with him at Soton, that he needs a cuddle and then be told off. They also said his attitude to training wasn't right. Well I'm sorry but if attitude to training is still like that despite trying to become a regular at one of the worlds biggest clubs then to a degree I see why Jose has lost all patience with him and as he's asked every week about Shaw he's probably tired of him. Perhaps he tried the softly softly approach and it's not worked.

But something Ian Wright said I believe is true, if United actually had a big character and a leader this wouldn't be an issue for the manager. Keane would have been booting Shaw around training well before Ferguson had to go public or telling the manager he thought he'd gone too far. The rumours are lots of players are unhappy with how Shaw is being treated but no one is saying anything in the dressing room, who is there, Carrick? Who is after a job as a coach.

I will be surprised if anyone in the top 4 comes in for him. I think he's more likely to end up at Everton level than Spurs or Arsenal.
 
sigma said:
I read an article who quoted someone from Soton who stated that Shaw had a questionable attitude at times and did require a blunt comment or two occasionally - he has all the talent but the wrong mindset. Can't find the article now.
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I read it too. The Guardian I think. I actually think Omnomnom's post is nonsense. Shaw had talent but you need more than that to play for one of the world's biggest clubs. If he was anywhere near the level he wouldn't be being kept out the team by Ashley Young. The lad has looked overweight since his injury and clearly isn't tough enough to make it at the top level. That's not intended to be pejorative but its Man United not Brighton! Stop blaming the coach for an individuals failings. Look at how Rashford and Lingard have responded to the blend of nurture and tough love. Sorry for Shaw but I'd rather he moved on and had a decent career somewhere else,
 
Calpol said:
I read it too. The Guardian I think. I actually think Omnomnom's post is nonsense. Shaw had talent but you need more than that to play for one of the world's biggest clubs. If he was anywhere near the level he wouldn't be being kept out the team by Ashley Young. The lad has looked overweight since his injury and clearly isn't tough enough to make it at the top level. That's not intended to be pejorative but its Man United not Brighton! Stop blaming the coach for an individuals failings. Look at how Rashford and Lingard have responded to the blend of nurture and tough love. Sorry for Shaw but I'd rather he moved on and had a decent career somewhere else,
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Why is my post nonsense? Nor you or I have any idea whats actually going on behind the scenes however what i do know is publicly slaughtering the lad clearly hasn't done any good and isnt going to going forward. It's fine saying he isnt mentally tough enough, i dont think he is either however that doesn't excuse Jose essentially bullying him and putting his teams failings on an individual. What is he looking to gain out of it all? Just don't play the lad if you don't want to. Jose is looking after number one here, if it doesn't work out at United he knows his next job is a massive step down and in my opinion the pressure is showing.


But something Ian Wright said I believe is true, if United actually had a big character and a leader this wouldn't be an issue for the manager. Keane would have been booting Shaw around training well before Ferguson had to go public or telling the manager he thought he'd gone too far. The rumours are lots of players are unhappy with how Shaw is being treated but no one is saying anything in the dressing room, who is there, Carrick? Who is after a job as a coach.
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Agree, perhaps Jose should have signed one with the hundreds of millions he's spent instead of a professional dabber.

They also said his attitude to training wasn't right. Well I'm sorry but if attitude to training is still like that despite trying to become a regular at one of the worlds biggest clubs then to a degree I see why Jose has lost all patience with him and as he's asked every week about Shaw he's probably tired of him
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Again, i agree...not need to hang him out to dry though is there.
 
Im all for the tough love (and yes I saw similar comments from ex Soton staff) but I don't believe it needs to be public.

Any self respecting footballer would feel its tough love to be benched for 2 -3 months at a time, that should be motivation enough without being humiliated in public.

The other thing I would say is that IF a manager values the player enough, then haul off Valencia to show that even one of JM's favourites is fallable (that would surely encourage Shaw more than ditching him at 1/2 time). Shaw is definitely the type of player that needs time on the pitch to show his best, to take him off at 1/2 time was meaningless as well as nasty - even accounting for JM's comments. Personally think we would have scored more from that side with Shaw on the pitch after 1/2 time than it took young to get up to speed before having a hand in the 2nd
 
Its hard to say with Shaw, if he has been given a chance and completely ignored what Mourinho has asked him to do then its hard to have too much sympathy.

I don't agree at all with the way Mourinho has handled Shaw but we don't know what is going on behind the scenes. Hes our best LB by quite a way but if he won't take instruction and Mourinho thinks he will cost us goals/games because he doesn't do what he is asked then he should be sold. Personally I think we need to seriously look at getting rid of Mourinho. He isn't getting the best out of the players and has us playing **** football most of the time. I don't care if we go out of the CL and don't win the PL if we give it our best shot and we play entertaining football while we are at it. Losing and playing bad football at the same time is pretty unforgivable with the players we have and the money we have.
 
Thing is, when he goes on another spending spree in the summer will it just bring in more players that fit his 'style' (if you can call it that) of football, which means any manager taking over in future is going to have more of a task on their hands with getting the attacking football going again?

The longer he sticks around, the more painful and elongated this is all going to be in the post-Mourinho years too I think.
 
omnomnom said:
Why is my post nonsense? Nor you or I have any idea whats actually going on behind the scenes however what i do know is publicly slaughtering the lad clearly hasn't done any good and isnt going to going forward. It's fine saying he isnt mentally tough enough, i dont think he is either however that doesn't excuse Jose essentially bullying him and putting his teams failings on an individual. What is he looking to gain out of it all? Just don't play the lad if you don't want to. Jose is looking after number one here, if it doesn't work out at United he knows his next job is a massive step down and in my opinion the pressure is showing.




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Ok - apologise, a bit harsh.
The point I am making is that this is elite level sport and to make it at this level you have to be tough physically and mentally. Mourinho knows this, he has 25 years coaching experience at top clubs. to suggest he doesn't know how to handle players I think is naive and counter to what we see from his handling of the likes of Lingard, Rashford, McTominay who he clearly sees have a consistently better attitude to go with their talent than Shaw does. What we see is snapshot of the management approach the manager employs. We see the sneering public persona he uses to deal with the press. I suspect Mourinho knows what ti takes to be a winner and doesn't see it in equal measure from all his players. It's a test of how bad players want it
 
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