La Liga Announce VAR. Catalonia Announce Secession - The Other Teams Thread[R]

I think Mourinho has a point. The squad is full of players that are worse than their Sevilla counterparts. If the domestic press wouldn't have completely disrepected Sevilla, they would have noticed. Banega is an international on a team far better than England. Just as an example. Ben Yedder has 8 CL goals, Lukaku (the top scorer) has 5.

Obviously tactics matter, but the way people in the british press talked about Sevilla it was as if they are rubbish. In terms of quality, this Manchester United squad has ridiculous holes. When was the last time they belonged to the best teams in Europe?

Benzema is treated like a total loser on this forum by many, but if he'd sign for Manchester United tomorrow, he would be an instant improvement over anybody else they have other than maybe Lukaku who at this point works well for them. This is the kind of squad they have right now.

 

Both are incredibly overrated. At their age Jesus Navas was destroying people with pace and acceleration. Not Cristiano Ronaldo, not Messi. That's where i am going with this. As soon as you put two feet in front of another at Manchester United you're considered a promise. Januzaj, Macheda, and all of them.

If you look at the 5 players with the most minutes this season for Manchester United you find players like Valencia and Ashley Young, playing fullback positions. Neither is a quality fullback. Mercado and Escudero are not top level players, but neither is Valencia or Young.

Then you look into their depth and you see players like Lindelof and Phil Jones who are practically Depor/Celta Vigo level players.

Bailley was playing for Villareal and is probably a good squad solution, but him and Smalling are not a top level CB pairing.

Pogba is playing terrible, Mata and Herrera are good options, but at this moment, even Atleti have better players in midfield. Facts.

Muriel and Ben Yedder are today better than anybody than Lukaku. Rashford, Martial and Lingard are Deulofeu level players right now.

Manchester United are as good with Mourinho as they were without him. That's his point, and that's a fact. They've been down for so long, but still believe they are top level.

 

Because United are in a market that brutally inflates player prices. Same as basically every Premier League team. Aston Villa outspends Sevilla, but they'd still get completely destroyed by them.

 

Also, Mourinho is blamed for selling De Bruyne, but De Bruyne now, is not De Bruyne then, which is why he was worth about 17 mil. or whatever Wolfsburg paid for him before selling him to Manchester City for 6 times that. Even so, if the club would know they have quality, they would have loaned him or sold him with a buyback. Instead they felt he was a whining little brat, complaining about not playing enough and just sold him.

Mourinho only wears one shoe in this. The other shoe is on Chelsea's foot.

Fact is at this moment, Manchester United have a worse squad than Manchester City, Chelsea, and Tottenham. Liverpool is up for discussion because i feel their midfield and defense is very suspect.

What's even worse for me, is that the press are singing the same tune, but nobody really asks the hard questions. Is this squad really that good? Is Alexis Sanchez contributing to the team, or did he just not fit them and they bought him just so that Manchester City could not get him? Who is in charge over all of these decisions?

 

If we're honest they were brutally overachieving towards the end of his tenure as well.

 

It's true he makes some valid points, but this tirade makes him look petty as usual. While those points are valid for not winning the PL or CL, it's no excuse for putting up a completely toothless performance against a Sevilla team that it is not as strong as they've been in other seasons. Leave the media downplay of Sevilla aside. Those 2 performances were atrocious and yes much of it is on Mourinho's account. If some players like Pogba (even if he is vastly overrated0 are underperforming it's partially due to Mourinho not knowing how to use them.

And BTW, that was a lovely rant about Man City when nobody asked him about them or Pep. What does Man City have to do with him losing to Sevilla ?

 

In that press conference he says him and the upper management are in 100% agreement with everything. So those signings are on Mourinho. If he doesn't know how to get the best out of them, it's his fault.

 

Mourinho shoulders a lot of the blame, but the response of a lot of the pundits and former players is "how did Mourinho turn this great club into this?", when the truth is the other way around. How did Manchester United drop that low to hire Mourinho and basically surrender the entire club to him?

Madrid were starving for titles and a shake up, which is why the club hired Mourinho. He came in absolutely victorious and didn't hold back from doing anything. He is ruthless when it comes to getting the old players out (he pushed Rooney out of the squad and a brutally overpaid Schweinsteiger as well so you can see the pattern there), and he wants to win at any cost.

The main problem here is that Mancheser United don't realize the situation the club is in, while Madrid did and sort of went along for the ride as short as it was.

 

Why would he? It's not an attractive position for him at this point of his career.

That's Sevilla's reality for the past 4 to 5 years though. This is a team that is getting an overhault almost every season.

I'd rather have Escudero than Ashley Young. No discussion about it. Goalkeepers are a luxury. Bayern have been doing great without Manuel Neuer. If you do your job well enough, competent is good enough in this position.

That coach about which Casemiro said made him feel like he is Cristiano Ronaldo and could beat anybody. Modric' debut season wasn't even bad, it's more the fact that the season was bad in general so people looked at Modric as not good enough.

Pogba came on, misplaced three balls and barely did anything worth looking at. His agent stepped up when they signed Sanchez demanding a better contract. He's better than this, but then again, Ruben Perez is better than this.

Martial and Sanchez did f*** all though. These guys were actually playing. It's not like Mourinho told them to not play well. Sanchez actually has more bad games than good games for Manchester since he signed for them, but then again, his time on the ball and shots on goal have absolutely shrinked since he joined them, mostly because at Arsenal all they did was look for him.

That he's not doing well. Neither are the players. He's responsible for the defeat, but his points still stand. Manchester United is a team full of average players that overspent on 3-4 players and barely adressed anything.

 

I'd imagine those are pundits that probably never wanted him at the club because they knew what playing style he brought. So yeah they are not going to care to be fair in their analysis. But I guess I see where his response is coming from with that context in mind.

But if he is complaining about past transfers and what was left to him, he should look at the failed ones he is making (Pogba, Mkhitaryan, and now maybe Sanchez).

 

Mourinho has always relied on his close relationship to an agent to lead him in the transfer market. When he arrived in Madrid, he flooded the team with (although good) clients of his own agent. Since he's been in Manchester, he's been overpaying for at least one Raiola client every summer, Pogba, Lukaku, Mkhitaryan. I see a lot of responsibility with the club there. Sanchez wasn't needed, but the club went face first into this deal.

Again, he's responsible for the result, but what he said, is mostly correct. This is simply not a good team. Problem is that it's him saying it and he's partly responsible for it.