Caporegime
It is quite sad really. Especially what happened with Ranieri. Players have too much power now.
The Jose Mourinho Appreciation Thread
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It is quite sad really. Especially what happened with Ranieri. Players have too much power now.
Caporegime
Players do have too much power now but how many companies flourish with an awful boss? How many departments are suddenly much better when they have a boss they like. Football just makes this so much more obvious.
Put it this way, how would you like working for a miserable boss who complains that you aren't good enough, tries to replace you regularly, takes you off projects for no reason and then when the work of your team isn't good enough throws you all under the bus and takes no responsibility. Would you give 100%?
Players will support a manager if they feel valued and enjoy what they are doing. We could be in exactly the same position in the table without Mourinho being in any trouble if he had the support of the fans, players and United showed any signs of good football. When you spend hundreds of millions and bring in loads of players and look like a bottom end of the table side playing utter **** you can't blame your players entirely. Your job as a coach/manager is to do just that. When the team is clearly poorly coached and you can't manage the players you deserve to go.
Soldato
Lifetime contract.
that's exactly why Woodward needs to go ....or at least have no decision power on the football side.
Off the top of my head I can only think of one outfield player who doesn't deserve any criticism for this season - and that's Luke Shaw. Everyone else has been incredibly dire on multiple occasions
Highly dependant on how much other people are spending ....and whats more if your players are actually playing to the level of their purchase price (or even remotely near it) on a consistant basis....which they aren't.
Every player at a remotely decent level should always put in 100% when they are on the field, and not just collecting at the very least 100k a week for showing a bit of skill a few years ago , quite clearly they haven't in a number of games recently. Given the board appears to have spent a lot of that "hundreds of millions" on players which JM probably wouldn't have chosen ....and if anyone is, JM is one very picky so and so with the type of players he has (if they are even still in the squad to begin with).
Caporegime
I agree that Woodward isn't helping matters but up to a point I don't blame him as much as some who seem to think Jose is doing the best he can. The only player that Mourinho has "bought" that I think could be considered a Woodward signing is perhaps Pogba and Sanzhez. None of the other players are marquee signings that would further Uniteds global appeal. Based on that I have to assume that Mourinho wanted the rest of them that hes signed. A managers first job is to get the most out of his players. To motivate them, improve them and get them playing as well as possible together. Would you give a manager who is not performing well in any area carte blanche to keep spending massive amounts of money.
Personally I think Woodward told Mourinho to first get the most out of the players he has before spending another £200m only to complain about the players he doesn't have.
They look like a bunch of players devoid of confidence (and rightly so, Martial, Rashford, the entire defence, Mata, Fred, Dalot, Sanchez have all been either publicly chastised or dropped for no reason) and restricted in their ability to play good football. The watch Lukaku play like utter **** week in week out and get picked every game and they are dropped after being one of our better players when they finally get a chance. Mourinho never considers that his methods might be to blame and instead of thinking "perhaps their poor performances are due to me" he simply goes on the attack and blames the players. Everywhere he has been he eventually creates a toxic atmosphere resulting in the team playing awfully and being unwilling to give 100%. When he is winning he is the best thing ever. When he is losing its the players fault and he lets everyone know. None of the best managers are like this.
In just the right circumstances it can work for a few seasons. Give him the best team in the league with a strong team identity and a load of leaders on the pitch and he can be that extra 10% that wins you trophies. Give him a team that needs any real work done and he just can't handle it and is unwilling or incapable of adapting.
If this was the case you wouldn't have managers you would just buy the 11 best players you could and stick them on a pitch. No one and I mean no one works at 100% when they are unhappy. You can pay someone millions and they won't do the best job they can if they are miserable. They might for a while but eventually they will drop their effort levels. Football is also not a simple sport. The best teams don't have 11 guys running around at 100% the whole game. Far more important than pure effort is tactical movement. If you put the best 11 players in the world on a pitch they wouldn't be able to beat a team like Atletico Madrid. When you have players who don't know what their teammate is going to do, if he will pass it, where he will pass it then where do you make your run. If he doesn't think you will make that run then what does he do?
There is a reason we pay managers millions a year. They should be making your bunch of players more capable than the sum of their parts not diminishing their ability. Look at what Pep has done at City or Klopp at Liverpool. Look at how they nurture players and improve them. Look at how they coach their team to play a particular style of football.
Mourinho does none of these things and still finds time to drag every facet of the club down. Fans, players, club name.
Never mind Klopp and Pep, look at Sarri, Emery and Poch. Is anyone going to seriously suggest Mourinho has had less backing than them? Sarri and Emery (admittedly it's early days) are showing how things should be done. As time passes with Mourinho, things get worse.
No matter how you look at it, and no matter how bad the board are, Mourinho has been given enough of a chance and has messed everything up. Gary Neville always defends managers so while I like him as a pundit, his views on managers aren't very realistic. We could be bottom of the table and he wouldn't call for the managers head. That's not to say things don't need fixing at the board level too - they do.
If the board don't get rid of Jose now during this international break, they must have decided to give him a stay of execution in the hope the second half against Newcastle has united the team. Look at our next fixtures:
20th Oct Chelsea (Away)
Juventus (Home)
Everton (Home)
Bournemouth (Away)
Juventus (Away)
11th Nov Man City (Away)
I don't fancy us to win any of these games, we could be in an even bigger mess by the end of it. The one positive I suppose is that this would be a tough set of games for a new manager.
Now there are reports De Gea won't sign a new deal, and who can blame him. He should be playing at the very highest level, not struggling in every game.
While I think Zidane is very risky, there is a hope with the right support he could unite the dressing room, certainly our under-performing potentially world class players like Pogba and Martial.
No matter how you look at it, and no matter how bad the board are, Mourinho has been given enough of a chance and has messed everything up. Gary Neville always defends managers so while I like him as a pundit, his views on managers aren't very realistic. We could be bottom of the table and he wouldn't call for the managers head. That's not to say things don't need fixing at the board level too - they do.
If the board don't get rid of Jose now during this international break, they must have decided to give him a stay of execution in the hope the second half against Newcastle has united the team. Look at our next fixtures:
20th Oct Chelsea (Away)
Juventus (Home)
Everton (Home)
Bournemouth (Away)
Juventus (Away)
11th Nov Man City (Away)
I don't fancy us to win any of these games, we could be in an even bigger mess by the end of it. The one positive I suppose is that this would be a tough set of games for a new manager.
Now there are reports De Gea won't sign a new deal, and who can blame him. He should be playing at the very highest level, not struggling in every game.
While I think Zidane is very risky, there is a hope with the right support he could unite the dressing room, certainly our under-performing potentially world class players like Pogba and Martial.
So what you're trying to say is we'll maybe get 2 points from the PL games and probably severely dent our hopes of getting out of our CL group 
?
Am just looking at 3 headlines now; Utd split ahead of board meeting, Pogba giving instructions in the last game and radical restructure in play at Utd.
This is going to be a long season
.
?Am just looking at 3 headlines now; Utd split ahead of board meeting, Pogba giving instructions in the last game and radical restructure in play at Utd.
This is going to be a long season
.
Caporegime
I like the way that even in victory Jose managed to push rashford and mctomminay and in effect Bailey under the bus!
Caporegime
This is the crux of the issue for me. He has spent hundreds of millions, scraped second place against a bunch of teams having poor seasons and won an easy EL (whilst very nearly getting dumped out of that a few times). To summarise:
Good:
Got rid of some of the deadwood in the team
Signed a few good players
Won the EL
Bad:
Has spent huge amounts of money on what appear to be average players (perhaps this would change under a better manager, its hard to say currently)
Hasn't improved anyone markedly and has regressed a lot of players
Plays dull and negative football
Acts like a ****
Hasn't won us anything of note
Shows no signs of improving
Blames everyone but himself when anything goes wrong
Just look at Jones, smalling, Young, for three other signings that didn't really work out (they were also about £20m each when bought, not completely out of the ball park of £30m when Bailly / Lindelof were purchased years later) ....or at least for player quality that should be below even Utd's squad level - every club gets players that don't work out its the nature of the beast....its just one of the issues with having multiple players bought by different managers in the same squad over a relatively short period of time
Even Lukaku isn't performing right now, and that's not really JM's fault - like many players he is struggling after the WC.
If you aren't going to give carte blanche the manager you have only just gave an extended contract to, at this level, Im not sure the point of giving him the ext in the first place.
Mata hasn't played well for Utd for years - if he ever did do. Sanchez could be described as never consistently played well for Utd. Like all youngsters Dalot has to adjust to the league, with a team with no confidence Sat night would not have been fair at all on the lad. Lukaku is the head of the team, no other striker has his build or can play like him. The way Utd are set up Lukaku HAS to play.
Quite a number of the squad have said its anything but a toxic atmosphere.....but that doesn't stop the media repeating that claim
The basis of Sarri's team has won the league quite a bit more recently (and still has a vast majority of players from that time) than Man Utd and just added one the best players in Europe over the summer.
Emery is undoubtedly doing very well indeed, but under a lot less pressure than is put on every Utd manager...and don't forget, it could be said that Arsenal have underperformed for years so they are probably still in the bubble of the benefit of having the new manager which every team shows for a time.
I don't think any incoming manager would want to come in with that list of games (and I really don't think it will be ZZ anyway) - so if it is going to happen it will be during the next Int break rather than this one.
Arsenal also have one huge benefit - they don't have players from 3 other managers clogging up the squad.
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Caporegime
I agree. Plenty of signings don't work out. The difference is that most managers don't deal with them so badly. You could easily argue that Smalling, Jones and Young have all represented OK to decent value for money. Fergie also know how to get the best out of average players. Very few players ever seemed to suffer from low confidence at United when he was in charge. We had a lot of bang average players in the final years of Fergies reign and he managed to get them doing their job well and contributing.
I'm not sure if its the world cup. He just isn't moving. Against Newcastle he was utterly dire. Didn't compete for anything. It wasn't like he was slow off the mark or a yard off his pace, he just wasn't moving at all.
Looking at the United squad and the players Jose has brought in, Woodward has every right to say "thats your team, you should be able to do well with it". I don't think anyone would have us competing for the title or the CL but we should be easily top 4 and getting to the QF of the CL. Mourinho has us mid-table and playing like a relegation team. Its like giving someone a poor formula one car and watching them get beaten by a ford fiesta. You can complain that you won't be competing with the top F1 cars but you can't complain when you are also getting beaten by the hatchbacks. By any metric, Mourinho isn't delivering.
Mata hasn't ever played well for United. Not sure if its because we have never been setup to get the most from him or he just had those few amazing seasons for Chelsea and has just fallen away since. Sanchez came into the team half way through last year, didn't hit the ground running and has been pushed all over the place in a team that doesn't suit him. We play slow, **** football that doesn't suit him. As soon as we played one twos and faster paced attacking on Saturday he suddenly looked like a class act again unsurprisingly. Dalot I can kind of understand. Lukaku shouldn't be at United and isn't good enough or the right kind of player for us. We can play without him and I think we can play better without him but he seems completely un-droppable regardless of how poorly he plays. He is basically Rooney of the last few season.
Of course they have, very few players are actually going to stick their necks out and say that. Same at Chelsea before he left. There were rumours but no one is going to come out and put their hand up and say it.
If we are completely honest, we haven't seen any improvement from last season. The only difference I can really see is that we have a seriously mis-firing striker in Lukaku costing us goals and games and we have a keeper who isn't making quite as many world class saves that he has no right to make. The issue is that this small change takes us from scabbing our way to wins most of the time to losing and drawing lots of games. Take 10% away from Citys average performance and they lose a game occasionally. Take 10% away from our performance and you are suddenly losing or drawing a lot of your games.
Only because of the frequency of managerial swaps - all three of them should have gone long ago.
Fergie got them contributing but not growing as players because they were already playing beyond their peak with good players surrounding them. When the good players left / became too old and slow it just shows how average the players left were all the time.
Klopp and Pep have already replaced defenders and gk they signed after deeming them not good enough....why are Utd / JM held to a higher standard?
Maybe not City after winning the league several times recently, but Utd should at least be able to do similar to what Liverpool has been - and if anything Klopp had 3/4 of a season to really analyse his squad fully before his 1st summer ( as its notoriously difficult to do any big deals in Jan) which would have been a huge benefit.
When"world class" players like Pogba is so inconsistent in his attitude its not surprising why those of lesser ability aren't showing everything.
Often enough whie Mata has been here he has had multiple chances in his favoured No10 position and he has still been pretty invisible. Sorry there are times in the last three years or so that we have played fast football and he is still invisible , he just isn't anywhere near the level he needs to be at. He only looked decent in one dead ball situation other than that he did nothing for the other 80 minutes or so
That's because we have two or three decent players, three okish players on their day and some promising kids (and some unknowns like Fred and Dalot that are unfair to rate so close to arriving, with so few games).
The rest of the squad is **** awful and shouldn't be at Utd at all.
City's current team LOOKS like they have spent the £600m more than us in the last ten years - just imagine one world class player (who would have cost around £30m 10 years ago) every season for the last 10 years, ignoring any they already had.....even accounting for insane prices now they still wouldn't have spent all that money. Its also fair to say that Pep was agreeing to City's potential busy at least one if not two seasons before he arrived, so its quote easy to see why the squad is so much better than the mish mash at Utd.
For perspective, Klopp replaced Klavan and Karius who cost a combined £8m. Lindelof and Bailly cost a combined £70m. In fact Mourinho's spent just as much as Klopp on defenders and I think it's fair to say the general opinion was that Utd's defence was a lot better than Liverpool's 2 and a bit seasons ago.
As for Klopp's extra 8 months in charge to analyse his squad, are we pretending that it wasn't known for 6 months that Mourinho was getting the Utd job, he'd been managing in England for the previous 2 and a bit seasons and would have known Utd's squad inside out? Not to mention his masses of PL experience that we know you value so highly.
Caporegime
Rooney has stuck his oar into the debate and says the players aren't doing enough and its not Mourinhos fault. This is the fat little dumpling that had been out of shape, low on fitness and didn't care enough to sort either of these very basic things out for the last 3+ years of his United career. The same one that was holding the team back with his poor first touch, slow reactions and hollywood passing. Pipe down Rooney.
Caporegime
Mourinho isn't held to higher standards. He has had new defenders and systematically killed their confidence over time. Liverpool and City were also exciting going forwards if a bit weak at the back. We are **** at the back, middle and front. The managers job is to coach the team or bring in people to handle that side of things for him. Players have said that Mourinho is great tactically and his players know exactly what to do in every situation in a match but that doesn't help if the basics of movement, passing and positioning aren't already well drilled into the players. Mourinho thinks he is harshly judged but he is so far up his own arse that he is blind to the fact that he is failing on every front and thats why he is being criticised. I honestly think that if we were playing good football 70% of the time he would A) have more backing to fix the defence B) have everyone on side with him and happy to give him time.
Mourinho is a nightmare to be managed by when things aren't going well so I don't think we can blame the players for not digging deep and giving everything. One man is not a team. 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
Otamendi
Icardi
Dybala
Di Maria
Benega
Higuain
play so badly? A team is a group of players who are supposed to combine to become more than the sum of their parts. Liverpool are a prime example of a team with perhaps 5-6 top players but because they all know their jobs they suddenly all become better players. Their front three is talented, their midfield is workman like but uninspiring and their defence is decent enough (VVD is a top defender to be fair) but Klopp has them so well drilled that the whole team works well as a unit and frees up their attack to do their thing.
I don't agree with that at all. We could have a fantastic team with probably 3 additions. A top CB, RW and DM. The players we have are good, they are just not sure what they are doing and look scared to take risks because Mourinho will bin them off unless they are his chosen few like Lukaku and Matic.
City are kind of irrelevant. They are well run and have buckets of money. The question is why are we so far away from where our spending should have us and I think its mainly the manager. Woodward takes some blame but good managers add value to a team of players. He isn't doing that. This is one of the things I can't understand as well. People say "City have spent more than us and look what its got them". City are where they should be for their spending. We should be a relatively close second. If they have got 80% value for money on their spending, we have got 40%.
The unknown here is whether Mourinho is asking for these players or is having them thrust upon him as *cheaper" options. I'm sure some of them are his first choice but some of them surely aren't. I doubt he wanted Lindelof and Bailly as his first picks. If you are buying defenders as long term replacements to slot into an established and solid defence you can go for potential but as Liverpool have shown, there is a lot to be gained by getting in a top class CB to martial a poor defence. You can't expect to stick a couple of young and inexperienced defenders into a shakey back line and solve all your issues.
Soldato
So if Mourinho goes other than Zizi who do you bring in and how long before the players sulk and down tools again with the new manager?
Why do you doubt that? Bailly was the first signing of his reign and Mourinho sat in his first press-conference and said he got the 4 players he wanted - lets be fair, Mourinho's quick to complain and blame others and if he wasn't wanted by Mourinho he'd have told us. And even prior to signing him, Mourinho's pet dog was claiming that Lindelof was Mourinho's first choice defensive target and even goes as far as to say it was Woodward approving Mourinho's plans, not the other way around.
What I would say though is that, just like when he first returned to Chelsea, Mourinho sold himself to Utd as a changed manager and wasn't in a position to push for 29 year olds costing £50m. Once he gets his feet firmly under the table though he reverts back to his old ways. In the same way that he tries to convince fans that the only way to compete in the biggest games is to play like a Tony Pulis Stoke side, he tries to convince the board that the only way to compete is by signing the absolute finished article, no matter their age or price.
I guess that'll depend on how much and how often any new manager throws them under the bus to cover his own failings.
Caporegime
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.
I agree, he is all sunshine until things aren't working out and then he is looking for the quickest and lowest effort solution. Or perhaps he just knows that he can't develop teams and players.
He is the last manager I would want. Another Mourinho in the making from what I can tell. Took one of the best teams ever and won 3 CL titles with them which is impressive but as soon as he felt he would have to look to rebuild he ran for the hills. He wouldn't have the best squad at United, he wouldn't be the best team in the league and he wouldn't have world class players in every position to bail them out when they aren't playing well.
I would like a manager who plays attacking football and wants to develop a side over many seasons. Players don't always work out but I want a manager who gives players a chance and supports them. I want to know that when a player leaves us its because he wasn't the right fit and no one is really to blame. How many players have you heard criticise Klopp? 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.
I'm not expecting miracles but I do expect a manager who can get the team playing at least remotely near their potential. Mourinho can complain all he likes that he hasn't got the players he wants but hes not missing the final 10% to beat City, hes missing 70% and 65% of that is his doing.
We should be talking about whether Mourinho can take us from competing for the league to winning it, not if he can scrape into the top 4 after spending hundreds of millions.
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.
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