Confirmed and Official - Welcome to Old Trafford José Mourinho

We are in a much better place than when Lvg left.

 

Redissue are a bunch of clowns who like to pretend they are ITK.

I would ignore them.

 

out! now.

 

He had no real choice after Woodward briefed that Guaridan story. He can’t lie down.

Jose is worth so much entertainment. This season is going to be spectacular.

 

There is a disconnect between Mourinho and the board - Gary Neville

www.skysports.com/football/news/29326/11469673/gary-neville-believes-there-is-disconnect-between-jose-mourinho-and-the-man-utd-board

 

Raiola no doubt, but how have United benefited from Mourinho's relationship with Mendes? I think it was reasonably assumed that we'd be doing tons of business with him, but so far as I can tell we haven't signed any of his players in the past 2 years. Wonder if he's even brokered any deals for us. Raiola, again there, seems to have been the main go to guy there.
Our lack of business with Mendes has been a surprise to me tbh.

 

Will believe it when it actually happens, tbh. After Monchi left Sevilla, it looked like it was all but done him coming to United. Next thing you know, he goes to Roma. It was a blow...
Would be incredible if it were to happen though. It's badly, badly required at this juncture.

 

If this happens, the club has seen the light.

The person they choose has to back Mou 100% whether I like him or not.

 

It's just amazing how negative news story after negative news story after news story appears about Man Utd.
I checked--
Man City new -- quote after quote of happy talk from Pep
Liverpool? -- more happy talk plus the guardian has a story of some guy spending money to follow the team
Chelsea? -- happy after their win, no obvious complaints about whether they won by enough or with enough style
Spurs? -- another happy team after their 1st win

 

Obviously! But that’s what I mean about Jose having no choice - Woodward basically told the press Jose is flagrantly incompetent. If Jose doesn’t respond, he concedes the media narrative and loses the power struggle since Jose’s firing will be seemed as justified.
This is sort of what happened with us and Conte - we clearly didn’t buy who Conte wanted* and he complained. But he was bad at setting the narrative, so his firing was seen as a reasonable fait accompli.

*This let us off the hook for actually spending money on players like Danny f’ing Drinkwater! Conte had real issues as far as player management (Costa, Willian) but he was absolutely right about our transfers.

 

I think there's chum in the water and the sharks are circling. Reminds me of AVB..........

 

I would assume the DOF is a strategic brief by Woody. It puts more pressure on Jose and is also a move a decent number of fans would support. DOF certainly has majority support here.

Personally I could care less about the back room back stabbing. Both Woody and Jose have failed at their jobs and deserve to be sacked. But as thats not going to happen, I would accept Woody hiring a DOF, firing Jose and getting a new coach. Not saying that will happen, but its the best outcome from here.

 

United under Mourinho are painful to watch - Gary Neville.

www.bleacherreport.com/articles/2790783-gary-neville-says-jose-mourinho-manchester-united-are-painful-to-watch

Guessing that it will be believed among some that GNev's comments may be agenda driven, in one way or another. I see him, in the same way I see someone like Rio, for instance, in the sense that, as a genuine fan of the club, he just speaks from the heart and ultimately wants what's best for it.
And as a fan, it's just hard to see some of our most bitter rivals, not only be successful (especially City), but doing so in an eye pleasing and dominating matter.
Personally, I'd really wish that if we're going the DoF route, that we'd get one in prior to Mourinho leaving, so not only he may have some input on who is to come in next, but more importantly, so he can work in concert with the new manager from day one. We may not be as far as we think from where we want to be, but there's still work to be done, in order to truly catch up to Pool and especially City.

 

Agreed. There's no question whatsoever that we're in a much better place now than where we were under Van Gaal.

I'm willing to acknowledge the headwinds against him, particularly the injuries, but for the most part he got the transfers wrong and his tactics were beyond heinous. It's true he gave young players a shot, but that was more born of necessity than choice. It's a good thing Louis is long gone, forgotten and not welcome back.

 

I think it's harsh to say Woody has failed. The first summer and this summer were disasters. No question.

But he's also pulled off some pretty slick moves such as the Sanchez/Miki swap, Pogba signing, and sold some players for above their market value (something we struggled with for a while. He's also killing it in the marketing and sponsorship department.

What we need to do is sack Jose, hire a DOF that shares this clubs values and playing style, let him help decide on the next manager, and move Woody back behind the scenes to handle sponsorships/marketing only. Woody doesn't need to be fired, just re-positioned to focus on what he does best.

 

People are upset, so we are calling this window a disaster when what it was, was subpar.

A disaster would have been landing two or three 29yo players who aren't going to make us excellent and then paying them massive wages.

A disaster would have been ignoring the stupid targets Jose set out and spending a boatload on a name who isn't good long term.

It was far from a good window, but it wasn't a disaster. Not by any stretch. We landed Fred and maybe a long-term RB who has the qualities we need at that position. We've given Tuanzebe and TFM another season to develop on loan and we rather than buying a second CM something we almost unanimously wanted, we gave playing time on tour to AP who has been brilliant and looks likely to be at the very least a very useful squad rotation player - making our midfield options not necessarily robust, but complete.

 

You can't just look internally when rating a window though. IMO a transfer window depends on the quality of players brought in, the quality of players sold, and the improvement of the squad relative to the opponents. If our total talent level was closer to that of City or now Pool, I would be fine with just bringing in Fred and some depth. But because we're miles behind City and Pool added tons of talent, this window can't be called anything but a disaster. We lost more ground to City and were easily leapfrogged by Pool.

 

We didn't lose more ground to Citeh. They aren't demonstrably stronger. Fred and AP will make a much bigger impact for us than Mahrez will for them.

Liverpool have done well, no doubt about it. Lets give it a few before we anoint their team.

I didn't say we had a good window, I said it wasn't a disaster. People are being dramatic. Understandably because we all want to do better.

 

Citeh have Mendy coming back, and Laporte has a preseason under his belt. Even if we pretended that we hadn't lost ground to them, we can't bank on them dropping their performance hugely over a season and us maintaining the same points total. Short of something outrageous happening, we're going to remain 15-19 points away from them at best.

AP and Fred sort out some of our midfield issues, but we had 4 or 5 other positions we really needed to sort out - particularly our width. Dalot will have to nail his first season in the Prem at 19 recovering from a big injury just for us to solve half of that one problem.

 

The window definitely was not a disaster, it simply was not enough. City, being so far ahead of us and everyone else had the luxury of standing pat, if the wanted to. Yet, they still added one of the best players in the league in Mahrez and Mendy coming back is akin a new signing also.
The onus was on us and the other teams to make moves to close the gap. With the additions of Fred, Dalot and AP's rise, it insured that we should be fine at least for Top 3-4, maybe Top 2, if we're lucky.
We'll see what Pool do, but at the very least their moves from this summer have brought them much, much closer to City than us and they're giving it a real go (which is what we hoped for us). They might stay with them the longest in the end, but City are too deep and that will show in the end.
The perfect window for us would have been the guys that we've got, plus a top LB, RW at minimum (while a CB woudn't have hurt either). At the end of the day, as it's been mentioned often, we really don't have that bad a team. The issue is, we want/expect more and we need to see us being able to perform at our potential, which is the main issue we have with Mourinho.

 

Repeat with me:
"Bad is not the same thing as disaster"

 

I get what you're saying, but I look at it like this...

We're operating under the expectation that AP will have a significant role this year. I doubt he will, even though I want him to. When Matic is fit he'll step right back into playing every single game because Jose has his guys that are infallible and always play. So does Fred make our midfield THAT much better than Herrera? So we've slightly improved in midfield. We haven't improved anywhere else.

City added another top level winger and a dead ball specialist. They've gotten slightly better but were already several tiers above us. We haven't jumped or lost a tier and neither have they.

Pool improved one thousand times in midfield and in goal. They were in the same tier as us prior to this summer and are now in the tier right below City, ahead of us.

We're lucky the other teams in our tier or just below didn't strengthen significantly. I could even argue that Chelsea have a better squad than us now and Spurs are still in our tier because they had a horrendous summer. But they have the luxury of having more youth with potential that have another year to develop.

It's not as if we needed 6 new players to move up a tier. Sandro and a decent RW would do it. So for those reasons, I deem this summer a disaster. There was a clear and relatively simple path forward for a club with our money and pull and we failed miserably.