Confirmed and Official - Welcome to Old Trafford José Mourinho

José Mourinho delivers Manchester United glory but pragmatism has limits

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...r-united-pragamatism-jonathan-wilson#comments

 

Mou gets two plus points for ridding us of Wayne effectively and pissing off Teso.

 

Poor transfer activity left us weakened. How soon we forget the massive contribution of Ibra, Pogba and Bailly. Miki was meh overall, but no doubt a regular starter when fit. Or are you one of those posters who believed we could have brought in Ronaldo or Messi...or both?

Insisted on a small squad but refused to use youth. You're the guy who argues, insanely, that United have a better squad than Chelsea.

Spread us thin across all competitions. We won two of the four competitions we were in. Of the two we lost we did badly in the league, no question, but we lost to a substantially superior side in Chelsea. Of the two competitions we won, one got us back to the Champions League, which was our primary goal for the season.

Erratic team selection and tactics made us disjointed. Hate the tactics all you want but you can't argue that his tactics were "disjointed". We were predictable in our tactics and it was the tactics that got us back to the CL...much to your obvious dismay.

Played defensively with the breaks on. Yes and no. Mourinho is a famously defensive manager, but it would be mistaken to argue that we played with the brakes on. Before Ibra was felled with injury we created gobs and gobs of chances. Our deficiency was in being unable to finish on our gobs of chances.

Routinely made us drop deep, invited pressure and let opposing teams steal draws. Moron Alert! In the vast majority of our 15 draws we dominated play and created gobs and gobs of chances. Poor finishing killed us, not giving up too many goals. We conceded only 29 goals in 38 games, second only to Spurs. Chelsea conceded 33, but where they excelled was in scoring: Chelsea scored 85; United scored 54. Had we had a second proper finisher to help Ibra, that number would have been closer to the mid 60s, generating enough points to claw out 4th place.

Team always choked at every chance to make top four. Incoherence perfected.

Shit attitude. Speak for yourself. Wait, you already have! Seriously, this is the weakest argument of all. Say what you will about the defensive tactics, but one thing that can't be argued is that Mourinho and the players carried a shit attitude onto the pitch. They fought hard all the way through the season until the last few games when it was clear he was resting players for Stockholm. Even Rooney's attitude after being dropped was remarkably commendable. Ibra was a fantastic leader. Herrera exemplified the best traditions of a United player. Maybe there were some questions about Shaw's commitment to regaining fitness but that's about it.

Truth is, Mourinho was left with a broken squad that needed a rebuild and we began that rebuilding in the first summer transfer window, which by every reckoning was a fantastic one. We shall see about the second summer transfer but if reports are proven to be true that were bringing one a Balon d'Or short list player, we're off to a great start.

 

Interesting comments from Jose in an interview with Rio yesterday.

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/manchester-united-transfer-mourinho-interview-13091181

 

Winning the league or at least competing to win the league would have been expectation. However, Chelsea went on a run and kind of put that out of reach early on.
So the goal for me is top 4 to make it back to CL. Jose failed at that but fortunately we sneaked in from the backdoor.
The overall result (feebly finished 6th in League) is not good enough and if we did not win yesterday the whole season is an absolute failure.

The win last night just made it a passable season for Jose, and Jose will use that to sell us that this season is a success (2 trophies plus the friggin shield). I will admit my fandom does buy into that a little bit ( as I caught myself looking at some commemorative item on manutd.com last night).

I am just glad that we ended the season positively and out off the 4 post-Fergie season; this is arguably the best season we have had. The outlook for the next season is definitely the best compare to the other three:
-CL football (group stage guaranteed, would be epic if the Scousers got pick off in qualifying round)
-(apparently) Rooney will be replaced by a high priced attacking talent.
-we don't have to worry about the manager for at least a season or two (or Giggsy getting handed the keys.)

There are plenty to complain about Jose but the club definitely took a step to the right direction after this season.

 

I don't think any reasonable person's goal was to win the league this year.

 

There were lots of people, including yourself I'm pretty sure, who picked United to be first or 2nd. Looking back, we were clearly all wrong but at the time between Jose coming in, plus signing Pogba, Zlatan, Miki and Bailly, I don't think it was necessarily out of bounds at the time to think that a top 2 finish was completely out of our grasp.

 

I know. I was kidding. Should have added an emoji.

 

We were all a year early. I feel it in my bones.

 

Interesting Fact, The last time mourinho won the europa league, he followed it up with CL win. Touch Wood

 

The last time, as in the only time as well. We'd have to be extremely lucky to even be in a position to win the CL next season. But then again, it does take a measure a good fortune to win any Cup competition.
Right now a 1/4 final berth is the objective for me.

 

I agree with most of this but the older part is bullshit even for you Teso. This summer window was the strongest this club has had since the Nani, Anderson, Hargreaves summer. We bought key players in attack, midfield, and defense. Three of the four players were instant starters and arguably the best in each facet of the team. Ibra was our best attacker, Pogba our best midfielder, and Bailly our best CB. Miki was the only disappointment.

 

A massive difference in expectations between this season and last season is that next season the squad will be completely what Mourinho wants it to be. Van Gaal was a perfectly valid excuse this season, but it won't be next season.

It's way too early for predictions, but it's not too early to set higher expectations for next season than what we expected for this season.

 

I think he really means in January, which to his credit he has been consistent with and even has a point to a certain extent. He always lamented the sales of Memphis, Schneiderlin (at that time at least) and the eventual release of Schweinsteiger with no replacements coming in to make up the numbers.
it's not hard to imagine that all 3 players could have proved useful in the run in, especially when we see how things turned out and with Jose constantly complaining about fixture congestion.
From that standpoint, I really hope he's learned something from this season and that something like that will never happen again.

 

Even then the only real knock was that he didn't bolster the defense in January when it was clear that we had no useful LB and we had a lot of injuries in the back line.

 

Do you now accept that his transfer activity across both windows left us weakened? Bear in mind I have moaned for at least five consecutive years about our annual defensive injury crisis including over both of his windows. In the summer I complained about us not strengthening while also loaning or selling depth options. In January he refused to recall BJ and refused to make any moves despite injuries and Bailly being at CAN.

Moving into midfield as @Ashur has noted he willfully sold/released Schneiderlin and Schweinsteiger despite our small squad and being stretched across all competitions.

You can all argue about Memphis all you want but there was no need to dump him in January particularly when we struggled for goals. It was the wrong call.

This is before you consider his sidelining of Mkhitaryan and his insistence on griding Bailly, Pogba and Ibrahimovic into the ground due to a perceived lack of options.

 

With better management we would not have required the final game gamble to save the season.

 

If you're going to whine this much, at least spread it across yourself and a few of your socks. You're unbearable.

 

And the club could have finished much better than scraping 4th.

I know the result has glossed over a lot to a lot of you but there is a lot of work to get done. I don't just want results. I want to be entertained. This Martial at LB is good fir no one's health.

 

www.umaxit.com/index.php/columns/grading-jose-mourinhos-first-manchester-united-season

The article above pretty much echos how I feel about Jose's first season in charge. They end up giving him a B-, I'll give him a good B, given the end result of the season. More, much more will be expected next season however.

 

One year of the boss: https://t.co/APvD6rQGm4 pic.twitter.com/v2ZW50WK6m

— Manchester United (@ManUtd) May 27, 2017

 

We've got some real glory hunters here, led by Teso Dos Bichos.

You can't completely rebuild a squad in one season. The summer transfer window was not only a success, but a triumph. There was no 9 in the world we could have gotten that was better than Ibrahimovic. We know about Pogba and Bailly. We accept that Miki has been inconsistent but he came up huge in the Europa League, our success in that competition being crucial to making the season as successful as it was.

January transfer activity is rarely consequential. And before anyone says "What about Vidic and Evra?", Vidic and Evra weren't exactly instant sensations.

There are places we can go to pick apart Mourinho's decisions but on the whole we have to acknowledge that he returned us to the Champions League and that he's laid a solid foundation for more success next season. No, we're never going to see champagne football flowing at Old Trafford with Mourinho as manager and if that's all that matters then one might as well look for a new club to support as we haven't played that kind of football for a long, long time and it's not coming any time soon regardless of who is manager of United.

The massive failure in terms of performance was the mental weakness of Martial in coping with his marital difficulties and the loss of his precious 9 shirt and the physical collapse of Rooney. Combined they served their club poorly, hoovering up about $400k weekly (speculation only, could be higher) while the club had to rely almost entirely on a 35 year old and a 19 year to provide most of the scoring. There was only so much Ibra and Rashford could do -- 28 goals/10 assists and 12 goals/3 assists -- while Martial and Rooney fleeced the club of what I estimate to be 20m pounds in wages. Their contribution? Virtually nonexistent. That can't be pinned on Mourinho.

 

Bro, Mourinho got lucky we're in the CL. He made a lot of poor decisions this season.