Confirmed and Official - Welcome to Old Trafford José Mourinho

Talk of sacking Jose at the end of his first season is mindlessly juvenile. It reeks of a spoiled child, like a Dudley Dursley or a Francis Buxton. It would be desperate and foolish for us to stoop so low, an act unworthy of a club of United's stature.

We all -- or least most of us -- knew that Moyes would be a disaster. Most of us knew that Van Gaal was past his sell by date. Those were three lost years, but there's nothing we can do about that now.

But here we are now, with a manager who was stuck with a broken squad which included players on insane wages who weren't worthy anywhere near their wages and it can't all be fixed in one season.

 

I imagine that Pogs is not worried at all about being the most expensive player in the game. But I doubt that he'd want to be known as a coach killer to boot. Not yet at least...

 

Context is everything. 172 shots in our 9 home draws. 3% conversion rate. Mourinho can't put the ball in the net. If we had even average finishing we would have 15 more points at minimum. Even today Zlatan, Ander and Pogba could have put the ball in the net before the pk.

 

That is all fine, but he really needs to win the Europa now.

Our home form is unacceptable.

 

How insightful [emoji36]

Jose Mourinho: "We normally defend well, control matches & create chances but don’t score enough goals. That’s the story of our home games" pic.twitter.com/J7eqbvHXUc

— Premier League (@premierleague) April 4, 2017

 

Having spent all those millions and can't get the team going or get a proper structure is unacceptable and fans have the right to want him gone. There are teams who struggle how we are in games and that's because they don't have the quality players or the money to buy them.

Here we are with the tools teams have been begging for over the past decade and we are performing like one without the necessities. Maybe Mourihno is past his sell by date like LVG was, you never know until you check the item.

 

Our two best goal scorers after Zlatan aren't even regular starters for us. That's Mata and Martial. The guys who does chose to start have been guilty of missing chances. That's Mhiki, Rashford.

But even then, Jose admitted in the post game that we create chances but not enough. Which has been the case over the last month or 2 or 3.

 

We spent hundreds of millions before Jose arrived, but I think we can all agree that Jose can't be held responsible for woeful decisions like the decision to extend Rooney's contract and to buy players like Fellaini and Di Maria...and then to mismanage Di Maria once he arrived.

You have to look at how Jose has done his job, which begins with his new arrivals:

Ibra, sensational.
Pogba, very good although undoubtedly not up to the standard of a 90m footballer.
Bailly, sensational.
Miki, brilliant at times but anonymous at other times.

Then you have to look at his sales:

Schneiderlin, a disappointment which had to be sold.
Schweinstieger, a good sale.
Depay, a disaster which had to be sold.

In terms of transfer activity, you have to give Jose at least an A-. Teso argues that Jose should have acquired more players in January, but I believe most of us would agree that there's not much you can actually do in January.

Going into this season, I seriously doubt any one of us thought we were a favorite to win the EPL trophy. A contender for fourth place, sure, but not a contender for the trophy itself.

There's no doubt that every one of us has good cause to be disappointed in our current league predicament but it doesn't take a very hard look at what's happening on the pitch to understand that it's our failure to convert on glorious chances that's keeping out of the top four. We're defending well, we control possession and we're creating chances...but we're not scoring on those chances.

With the benefit of hindsight knowing that Martial and Rashford have underperformed this season, should Jose have abandoned them by bringing in two top forwards last summer? No. It was, and is, critical to their development that both Martial and Rashford endure the growing pains of this season to prepare them for next season. To have sent them out on loan to make room for whoever would have been a terrible management move. We all expected their sophomore slump, especially Rashford, but Martial should have broken out of it by now.

That said, I'm starting to have serious doubts about Martial's viability as a long-term United forward and I'll be very interested in seeing whether he lifts his game for the run-in. As for Rashford, I have no doubt that he'll be an important player for the club for many years.

Jose has made mistakes but so did Ferguson and so does Pep, a manager many of us were dreaming of coming to OT. We're obviously going through a bad spell right now with all these stupid draws but, somehow, we're still in the hunt for fourth and we're in the pole position in the EL. The only thing that matters now is returning to the CL and we're still a pretty good bet to do just that.

 

Mourinho needs to get to being the Special One

www.espnfc.com/blog/the-match/60/post/3095331/jose-mourinho-needs-to-rediscover-special-one-as-manchester-united-draw-again

Jose is not solely responsible for the current situation, but he does need to do more on his end. When it's all said and done, he is the manager and the buck stops with him.

 

C-

Mourinho deliberately weakened the squad in terms of depth in the summer by getting rid of promising youth players both permanently and on loan.

He signed Bailly, Mkhitaryan, Ibrahimovic and Pogba. Bailly gets a pass. Mkhitaryan was instantly sidelined. He bet the house on Ibrahimovic to the detriment of the rest of our attack. Pogba has predominantly been misused.

Mourinho deliberately weakened the squad even further in 'January' by getting rid of Schneiderlin, Memphis and Schweinsteiger and bringing no-one else in despite clear weaknesses, injuries and a lack of depth.

We have made no progress and Mourinho has constantly mucked around with systems and personnel to no effect. Had there been any progress or at the very least signs of us building towards something then the level of complaint might be lessened but there is not.

Mourinho basically gambled that Ibrahimovic would be enough short-term to get a CL place. At this stage it is a gamble he has lost and it is doing the team no favours for next season as it is wasting development time.

 

Jose may have a point in regards to Chicharito, but you have to question and wonder what's the point in constantly bringing him up, unsolicited in that fashion.
It's unbecoming (looks like a whiner) and undermining to other players on the squad. And really, if he feels so strongly about this, he should have tried to buy him back in January. If I remember correctly, Chicharito was out of favor and benched at the time.
Leverkusen might have been receptive to a bid or perhaps even a loan move. I believe he only started seeing regular action again once Calhanoglu was suspended sometime in February.

 

Cheech is trash and was easily found out.

 

That ship has sailed as far as I'm concerned, but Jose sure has brought him up a lot lately. Not really interested in listening him whine about what he doesn't have, when he could have done something about it...

 

If Chicharito had been sold by SAF, or even David Moyes he wouldn't get a mention

 

Ashur is right. Although we were fools to selling "Cheech", what's done is done and the ship has long sailed away. Unless Jose really is working on bringing Cheech back there's no point in talking about him.

 

I said this exact thing over a month ago. Get up to my speed Jose.

 

In reality we should have sold Hernandez after his first season purple patch when his value was at its peak and I said as much at the time. Hernandez is a limited player who does not contribute enough and was easily found out once teams knew his game. He is a good finisher so will always go through periods of scoring form but that is not enough for clubs at the CL level.

 

As everyone knows, Chicharito is no Memphis.

Cheech enjoyed a purple patch when he was allowed to play. 37 goals in 103 appearances would hardly raise Ibra's eyebrow, but quite a few of those appearances came off the bench. And when you consider who the first choice striker was -- Rooneh always of course, but also Berbatov, then RvP -- his goal scoring contribution was actually pretty decent.

Where things began to go sour for Cheech was the day Moyes took the helm. If you'll allow the possibility of being fair-minded in your assessment, Moyes just fukked everything up, including Cheech. The players who thrived (financially only, mind you) under Moyes were Rooney and Felllaini, who were given contracts well beyond what they deserved.

Cheech was never going to displace Ronaldo as the first scoring option for Real. But he's done very well with Leverkusen.

But even you concede that Cheech is a "good finisher", a quality that falls off the cliff on our squad after Ibra. He would have been a very useful asset for us this season, but going into next season we need to shoot much higher than what Cheech can give us, so in the end I agree with your conclusion (take a pass) but disagree with your dismissal of him as a mere good finisher.

 

Hernandez had his usual first season at Leverkusen and his usual disappointing second season once defenders have adjusted to his game.

What does he add to a team outside of sometimes goals?

 

Jose must help instil some confidence in the players.

www.espnfc.com/english-premier-league/23/blog/post/3096640/jose-mourinho-must-instil-confidence-in-his-manchester-united-players

Part of his job tbh...

 

José Mourinho finds Manchester United plans derailed by goal-shy forwards

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...imovic?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

 

Mourinho needs to start using our youth and become flexible with players if he is to stay as manager for longer than 3 years. We cannot sustain buying 90 million euro players every summer.Today was a good day to play Mensah at the end especially with Fellaini playing poorly.

Ibra should have come off to kill Sunderland with the pace of Martial Rash Lingard.

 

You can't take the skipper off, it's bad for morale.