I said on another thread if hes only bringing through 3 players as he said a month or two back, then they need to be 3 attacking players, 2 strikers and a proper left winger and forget midfield and defence this time. I do think that he will have a major overhaul though and we will have big changes in and out.
Is Mou still 'The Special One' for you all?
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
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Dont count your chickens just yet. We have forgotten how to score more than one again. Dont say anything to jinx it.
Lost the faith now. Our home form is laughable. The strikers are woeful. Team selections baffling. Tactics outdated. Public hangings of some players embarrassing. The only thing Igive the guy credit for the way he is moving Rooney out of the club. Major dissappointment from Mourinho
Pogba signing was OTT but there again, he's young, he's the most promising attacking midfielder in the world and he's a homegrown talent. You can't really expect him to perform miracles either. Scholes had Keane, Zidane had Davids, Pirlo had Gattuso and we partnered him with a former player and some Bolton type of no 10 with funny hair
+1
Lost faith in Mourinho.
He made great signings in the summer. We started well then we faded and in terms of result it's really poor.
His attitude is not special anymore. He has few influence on the big games, regularly talking about referees to hid is mistakes.
Yesterday against Everton was the perfect example on how he can loose everything he has in mind, his experience and everything.
We were poor in a 4-3-3 playing a tired Carrick and three brainless and footless players in Fellaini, Lingard and Rashford to give an immobile 35 years old striker a good ball.
Then, after loosing 1-0 after three terrible mistakes, Jose's trying to change the shape of his team by playing his best player left back... and then right back after 1 minute....
But not only that, he played Fellaini even higher on the pitch and it was like playing with Herrera right back, a tired Carrick and Pogba back from injury in midfield....
Horrible tactics from Mou... Very very very Louis Van Gaal like football.
After 150M spend this summer this is all we can do....
You could look at it like this I suppose. If Mourinho doesnt turn us into title challengers next season, and I'm sure the summer transfer window spending will be our highest ever, with multiple comings and goings, including massive upgrading of scouting, and the youth setup, then the owners and the Glazers will have to have an hard look at where we are going. By then 5 years will have passed with 3 managers with 3 different styles. Do we then decide on a DOF and pick a head coach to supplement a style of play we stick to, or go with the Moyes model and stick with a Pochettino type/age manager and give him 5-6 years no matter what, bringing through youth and a smaller spend in the market?
I do think Mourinho will get it right next season, but at a cost with a lot of players coming and going. On the other hand I thought VG would of been a lot better 2nd season, and we were worse, so what do I know?
I do think Mourinho will get it right next season, but at a cost with a lot of players coming and going. On the other hand I thought VG would of been a lot better 2nd season, and we were worse, so what do I know?
Yep. Too much freaking politics and mind games within our own squad. We need to play our best players not bench them for half a year in favour of mediocore ones. You're the highest paid manager in the world, make it work ffs!
Don't care what you want to call him, he's a great manager and he will bring us back to the top. End of.
Sorry this is completely a bad analogy. With LVG, the criticism was that he just sat on his ass and made no tactical changes or was inflexible with his tactics. With Mou, things were not working and he was trying different things to accommodate the sub attacking players, and you say the was tinkering too much or made no sense. You may not agree with his tactics but he is definitely not LVG. What we can both agree on is that Mou is or has been losing his aura.
For me yes.
We are team who is hard to beat. Playing well, creating chances, we are playing really well .
Nearly everything is good for me. Except all those draws. But we are really unlucky in most of games.
I have no doubt that in next season we will win all those home games.
The fact is that we are short of 4 players. After the summer we will be old manchester united.
But again, i am huge mourinho fan so i am not maybe objective here.
We are team who is hard to beat. Playing well, creating chances, we are playing really well .
Nearly everything is good for me. Except all those draws. But we are really unlucky in most of games.
I have no doubt that in next season we will win all those home games.
The fact is that we are short of 4 players. After the summer we will be old manchester united.
But again, i am huge mourinho fan so i am not maybe objective here.
I still have faith in him. Season looks like its gonna end much worse than I thought it would.
I can't help but feel he hasn't done the best job, but his players really do let him down. Our conversion rate is laughable.
Hopefully by this time next year we'd have a turnaround in opinions.
I can't help but feel he hasn't done the best job, but his players really do let him down. Our conversion rate is laughable.
Hopefully by this time next year we'd have a turnaround in opinions.
I just want to say that there were more logical choice to do to accommodate our players. Playing Herrera right back, why not, but you begin with him on the left. Then why keeping Fellaini and trying to play long balls when he have Ibra, Herrera, Pogba, Mkhi and Carrick who can all pass ?
He should have played Young RB, play Carrick and Bailly CBs and Rojo LB. Then let Pogba Herrea CMs, with Rashford Mkhi and Martial supporting Ibra.
That would be a logical and more balanced team that what he did. I said LVG because he was the best at playing long balls with Felli when he was on troubles.
We've spent 500m pounds since Moyes' sacking just to overtake Everton ffs
You're right. His pitch was "I've been out of work, focusing on United, I know what to do, hire me and I'll turn things around." Its not much of an excuse.
And I don't buy it anyway, I don't buy that this is a poor group of players. A "frankenstein" group, collected by a group of managers with different ideas, maybe. And again, as before, Mourinho should have seen that. But even if he did there's probably not much he could have done about it. Changing more than 4 first team players at once creates a different set of problems, as we've seen before.
Maybe I've talked myself into this, to keep hold of my hope. But I still think, disappointed as I am with how things have gone this season, our best option is to be patient and hope.
And this season will still be a pretty good one of we finish 6th but with the EL. Not a great one by any means, but nothing to complain about. So as long as he has us motivated for that I'll try and stay positive.
There's not much wrong with your side that a confident, in-form striker wouldn't fix. If you were losing matches & being outplayed on a regular basis then you'd have every right to be concerned. But I think Jose will rectify a lot of this season's failings during the summer, & I expect a much more clinical Manchester United next time out.
Agree with it generally.
For the last part though I like to see staying positive coming from the top sometimes.
Said it before and will say it again,he will need the full 3 years to get this team functioning properly I feel.
At the rate he is going, he'll face a player mutiny by next December.
Wow. Can I have some of your meds because I've woken up this morning even more depressed than last night. The fear for me isn't even about this season or next. It's about the next five years. Because as much as we're currently a license for the Glazers to print money, if they keep throwing cash at Mourinho the way they have the last few years, at some point they'll either want a return or they'll start thinking 'lets do this the Kroenke way' for a bit. Imagine a scenario where we don't get CL this season and have Europa league football again next season. Can anyone really envisage another 200 million pound spending spree? And for what players? Guys like Pogba/Griezman who are utterly devoid of the kind of mentality that we actually need at our club right now. Preening wannabe celebrities making asinine hand gestures whilst collecting their multi million pound pay cheques from their various sponsors. Screw that.
There's a reality which I get the feeling a lot of cafe members aren't prepared to accept yet. Mourinho isn't what he once was. The manager's above him in the league are there on merit and they are showing much more adaptability, much more progressiveness, and much more footballing nous than our so called "serial winner" has at any point this season. We play shit football and we play it badly. When I've watched us the last month the most depressing thing is there's not a single player who I can has been coached to look better than previous. If anything the most talented players in our squad are going BACKWARDS at an alarming rate. Pogba looks a shadow of the player he was. Ditto Martial and Rashford. Mikki was treated like a chump until it became impossible to leave him out because everyone supposedly above him in the pecking order was flopping hard. Luke Shaw's been hung out to dry so often I'm surprised he's not suing the club for constructive dismissal. The kid broke his frigging leg in two places and yet our expert man manager's idea of rehab is consistently calling him fat and stupid in press conferences.
I want this man out of our club and the most depressing thing is that if we actually had owners and people running the club who were fit for purpose he wouldn't be here in the first place so I'm holding out ZERO hope of them making the right decision this summer. Watch as Wenger walks and another potential United manager goes to one of our rivals.
I don't disagree with you mate on that but that's Mou. Thinking he is smarter than everyone else. He was not taking off Fellani as he trusts the afro and he is plan B (which LVG also thought of as well, rightly or wrongly). I suspect he didn't want to put Carrick at CB because Lukaku was quite beastly yesterday on the break. Rojo was marshalling Lukaku well. Shaw was a better option at LB attacking wise (hey at least he didn't put in Darmian).
Blaming it all on the make-up of our squad is obviously being simplistic and yes, he did build the squad. That said, I'm sure there's a world of difference between assessing a squad from afar and working with them week in, week out.
He'll have learned a lot of hard truths about the work that still needs to be done that's for sure. For example, he obviously thought that - at just 30 years old - there was a lot more to come from the club's record goalscorer. Which was not unreasonable (it's what most pundits still seem to think) but now that Rooney is clearly a busted flush we're short of options up front and not scoring the goals that would convert dominance into wins.
Then there's Luke Shaw's evident mental fragility, Schneiderlin and Depay both continuing with their poor form of last season and Rashford/Martial having second season syndrome (which could happen under any manager). I'm sure he thought he could get more out of all of them. Not all of these players need to be replaced, obviously, but it's entirely reasonable to allow Mourinho another season to properly fix a squad that is not yet fit for purpose.
At this point the only thing we can hope for is that this season will have given Mourinho enough clues on how to fix things for next season. It's hard to argue against the idea that he has underperformed with what he has available this season, even if this isn't the greatest or most balanced squad of players. But that doesn't mean he won't do better next season. A new manager would have to start all over again, at least Mourinho has a head start. I know we thought the same about Van Gaal after his first season but even though it didn't work out then our best chance is still to have some managerial continuity.
What's the point in appointing Mourinho, spending 200 million, and then saying "oh he needs another season to buy his players". He's meant to be a results guy. He was the 'guarantee' that we supposedly needed to get us back into the top 4 (nevermind fighting for the title) and yet here we sit no better off than under LVG from a results point of view, making all the excuses under the sun to back a manager who's shown NOTHING to suggest he's got any frigging clue how to coach better out of the tools at his disposal. I mean, it's shocking the lack of quality we see on the pitch and the excuses some are making for that lack of quality. Buck stops with our overrated outdated head coach.
Yes. 100%
Do you need to be our manager to figure all that out? The Rooney thing especially? I agree with your overall sentiment as you know, but the Rooney thing is a red herring imo. I think he knew exactly how this season would play out as far as he's concerned, he was always going to play Ibra and phase Rooney out.
Maybe he thought (like many on here probably did) once he did that the rest would fall into place.
I think I agree with Jose knowing what to do with Rooney from the start.
His comment of Rooney playing as a striker and not a midfielder was an indication that he was not having any of Rooney can do in the midfield because he is getting older and shit up front.
I think his message was clear, get back into the form as a striker and you would not be in the team. Which is what he did. Mostly.
Mourinho's "special one status" (in the literal sense) ended at Real in my view and that title now belongs to Simeone. Given how good everyone has become at defending/pressing (especially if you consider how high up the field most top teams are positioned these days) it seems to me that the most important task for every coach is setting up their attack, so it can dominate, penetrate in an economic way. And arguably that field has always been Mourinho's weakest point.
I think that's really beginning to show this season.
I think that's really beginning to show this season.
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He's always rated Rooney (once tried to sign him) and I'm sure he thought Rooney was victim of the mismanagement of the last few years. He clearly fancied him to get 10 or 20 goals this season. He said as much with that "score goals" comment. I don't think he anticipated Rooney being as marginal as he has been.
You need to calm down and learn how to be patient. Football aside, it's a useful life skill.
I also think the way he handles some players, particularly younger ones has historically been poor. He hasn't really evolved in that sense at all, the rest well he just looks a bit desperate as the years roll on
The Special One point 
With respect, I've plenty of patience. However I'm not stupid and I can see the wood for the trees which some of the "wait and hope" merchants clearly can't. We're going backwards at an alarming rate and the guy who was meant to arrest that slide has done literally NOTHING to arrest it.
You also have not addressed a single point I made in my post and instead have decided that I just need to be more patient. You should try preaching that same patience to the thousands around my brother last night at OT that were absolutely livid at the garbage on show on the pitch.
Actually what we have on the CAF are threads of all the clubs ahead of us in the league, filled with posts tearing into the opposition manager every time they draw out lose.
So if people are comfortable to criticize other managers primarily why is it a taboo to do the same? Unless we choose to live in denial and be blinded by bias.
They need to be patient too. Ditto the City fans moaning about Pep. As I said in another thread, the modern football fan is an insanely fickle and impatient creature.
I think sweet ironies like that are what makes the caf such a great place.
Where do you think he was going to play him? Bearing in mind Mhiki and Pogba were presumably part of his first team plans, and Ibra was always, always going to play every game for which he was available?
I think it was all words. Tho of course you're right that he liked him once.
I second that
yes, kind of special ..in terms of so many decisions are beyond the logic
I just think he had him in mind as another option up front. God knows we need one. Someone who could give Ibra a break from time to time or turn games coming off the bench. I'd be very surprised if he started the season planning to start Ibra in as many games as he has done so far, or to play Rooney is so few.
It really is, Chelsea are as safe as houses but watch the thread if they lose a match.
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