Regardless of fitness levels or attitude, Utd simply don't have the type of players in their squad to play like a Liverpool or a Spurs. Carrick, Mata, Fellaini, Rooney or Ibrahimovic are never going to be able to play a high tempo game. Even the likes of Martial and Pogba, they may well be athletic and in Pogba's case could run all day but neither strike me as being able to play at a high intensity for prolonged periods - you'll find very few physically big players that can. Lingard, Rashford, Herrera and Schneiderlin are probably the only players in the Utd side that I could see tear around the pitch, as you put it.
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Regardless of fitness levels or attitude, Utd simply don't have the type of players in their squad to play like a Liverpool or a Spurs. Carrick, Mata, Fellaini, Rooney or Ibrahimovic are never going to be able to play a high tempo game. Even the likes of Martial and Pogba, they may well be athletic and in Pogba's case could run all day but neither strike me as being able to play at a high intensity for prolonged periods - you'll find very few physically big players that can. Lingard, Rashford, Herrera and Schneiderlin are probably the only players in the Utd side that I could see tear around the pitch, as you put it.
I'm not expecting us to play like Liverpool but when you watch most teams out work you and on a very basic level simply out run you there is something wrong. Its the amount of movement our players make when we are attacking. Chelsea haven't got the fastest attacking players around, neither have Arsenal or Spurs but they move in the right places and in the right ways.
We just able about the pitch a lot of the game.
For me it's all mentality and intelligence. Looking at Jones, he just doesn't have the mentality nor intelligence. This is mourinhos biggest challenge, reinstating that killer instinct and bringing in the players to do that. Moyes sapped it from the club and van gaal didn't bring it back.
Man U and fans need to give Mourinho time at the club to change this. We need to give him at least 2-3 seasons.
He has a big challenge and he needs to ship out some of the dead wood from the club and bring in new players that will play like wants them to.
He has a big challenge and he needs to ship out some of the dead wood from the club and bring in new players that will play like wants them to.
i think the club sapped it from Moyes, it was always going to be a huge challenge to take over from Fergie, i think people undermine what a huge transition it was. It always needed a while to find it's feet again. i also don't think the club is that well run in footballing terms anyway compared to some of it's rivals, commercially though, it's the best. Making money, but the football doesn't back it up..
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So Mourinho slams Smalling for refusing to play under pain and then it turns out he's actually broken his toe, priceless 
So Mourinho slams Smalling for refusing to play under pain and then it turns out he's actually broken his toe, priceless
Thats bad enough, but I thought the Shaw criticism was worse after the double leg break last season , even at the time a lot were saying its very hard indeed coming back from an injury like that.
to criticize Shaw so relatively early always appeared harsh to me
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But why not? How much money has he spent and then others spent? If it needed so much quality then why did he spend £90m on a midfielder and £27 million on a player he didn't want to play?
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Same goes for schneiderlin, flaini snd depaym all cost about that amount. Yet none have added any quality to our team.
lol so he's spent 10's of millions and the the first xI are sub par? he deserves no more time than moyes or lvg
how much others have spent isnt upto Mourinho though so why is this relevant to Mourinho's plan? It shouldnt be
As stated earlier City spent more than us in the summer (by as much as a reasonable player, so not petty cash) from a starting position that was already better than Utd
Utd needed to show their financial muscle in the market place, and imo they got the right player. He has already shown his worth in individual games, he just needs to get consistancy (and this is as much down to Mou/ the team due to the ever changing ten around him which cant make it easier to settle).
Impossible to know which players will settle quickly and which wont, Look at SAF spending £30m on Veron when that was significantly more money than it is today, but he never really worked out either (or for Chelsea either). Admittedly he got given a chance, but Utd were also in a healthier condition back then in a somewhat "easier" league.
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Because this isn't Football Manager, every new manager doesn't get £250m to spend. he's inheriting a squad that has had a considerable amount of money invested in it and he knew that.
What the hell has City got to do with anything? Unless they're capable of occupying all four champions league slots I couldn't give a flying **** what they've spent.
Never said he was a bad player, I like him a lot and it's great to have him at the club. But if the club had such significant shortcomings that Mourinho can't put 11 good players out on the pitch and get Champions League football then he shouldn't have bought him and should have invested elsewhere.
I've ignored the last bit as it seems completely irrelevant.
You're making the assumption that buying Pogba for 90mil meant he wasn't allowed to buy any more players than he did. For all you know the board might have been willing to let him spend another 100mil but the players he wants aren't available until winter/next summer, maybe they told him to wait until the dead wood like Bastian get offloaded from the wages. There could be any number of reasons why he only bought the players he did and it might even have had absolutely nothing to do with money.
Also don't forget that Woodward has been trying to sign a marquee player like Pogba for years, even if Mourinho hadn't been manager we'd probably still have bought Pogba, or someone else as equally ridiculously expensive.
Also don't forget that Woodward has been trying to sign a marquee player like Pogba for years, even if Mourinho hadn't been manager we'd probably still have bought Pogba, or someone else as equally ridiculously expensive.
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And despite all that when asked about the target for the season Mourinho said it was the title, not simply making top 4. Clearly Mourinho didn't think the squad was too bad.
The excuses being made for Mourinho are nothing short of ridiculous. He's got the costliest assembled squad ever, having spent bucket loads himself this summer and paying the highest wages in football too. There's absolutely no excuse for the squad not being good enough.
The excuses being made for Mourinho are nothing short of ridiculous. He's got the costliest assembled squad ever, having spent bucket loads himself this summer and paying the highest wages in football too. There's absolutely no excuse for the squad not being good enough.
He brought a lot of difficutly on himself though by replacing a successful backroom team with his own motley crew. No top player is going to have any respect for and respond well to Phil Neville 'coaching' them.
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Unless the board literally said we'll only sanction more purchases if it's Pogba then the fault has to lay at Mourinho's door. He had a whole summer to shift players he didn't want (why are we keeping the likes of Depay, Schneiderlin around if he has no intention of playing them?) The 'players not available' excuse just doesn't fly. Other teams seem to manage just fine. How many years are you allowed to use that excuse?
He's just making dumb excuses lately, the most stupid being that comment about being forced to play 2 left backs (Blind and Rojo) in central defence...so he knowingly went into a season with 3 left backs (Those two plus Shaw) and only 2 and a half central defenders (Smalling, Bailly and Jones). It's just utter bullcrap.
Given how much wasted space Utd still have *Rojo, Young, Schweini, Depay* - to name just a few - and remember Utd sold a fair number last summer to start with so didnt have a bad summer in that regard , it was always going to be impossible to get 4 high profile signings in, + get the deadweight out we managed to plus more we needed to before getting more players in. Just a matter of running out of time with the Euros etc taking up so much time always going to curtail deals until much later than normal.
They were 4th last season so thats the marker we have to set for beating (at the least) this season.
As their squad was already better, we would probably need to spend more than that to leap ahead of them. (While there are mitigating circumstances to go against this point, they will generally balance out over a season)
You have to go for world class talent when it comes along, cant just put the deal on pause for a year. Especially with RM and Barca potentially also chasing him to sign last summer.
It was the right thing to do at the time and imo was still the right thing to do.
Its completely relevant as Mkhi obviously hasnt settled as much as Mou expected, just as Man Utd / Chelsea found with Veron , doesnt make either player bad, just potentially unsuited to the EPL either then or now.
This is complete bs in the sense that it is absolutely stupid to compare the likes of Carrick + Rooney for a purchase price of £50m ten years or more ago to the likes of one *£30m + 1*£20m bought last summer for another team (both likely to play more games for a.n.other team , give more to the team when they play and actually likely to have a really significant "value" to the business going forward)
Rough Prices but give or take accurate. (Valencia, Young are two others that have significantly dropped in value and are in no way comparable to what was initially paid for them)
Im not saying its unique to Utd, of course it isnt - but that squad value figure is completely meaningless the longer (expensive) players stay with that club
Its a completely stupid stat that is absolutely laughable.
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