SAF: Mourinho has done a great job

I have to admit that I was slightly worried when I saw SAF was trending on Twitter this morning :nervous:

He looks 10 years younger since he's retired. He's got a good while left yet, touch wood.
 
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@Olly has just been dethroned.
 
Without these draws they'd be challenging Chelsea?

If my Uncle was a woman, she'd be my Aunt.
 
This does indeed sound like a man who really did not want Mourinho for the job and tried to keep him away from it at any cost.

I'm not sure if this is sarcastic, but 3.5 years ago, Moyes was the "chosen one". No doubt about that one.
When Moyes was fired, LVG, Jose - I think Woodward made these decisions, together with the Glazers (based on CV), so SAF was not part of the decision-making process, when it came to Jose.
So, now that Jose is here, SAF has to talk positiviely about Jose and the situation. I mean, he can't say, "Well I am not happy about what Jose is doing. If he doesn't get results soon, he'll be fired!".
He has to be diplomatic - he has no choice.
 
Sralex rarely if ever rinsed his players out in public. Interviewer should have asked him about that. Where doe Shaw stand now? Dislike that weird uncertainty Mourinho creates around certain players.
 
No he hasn't done a great job. A great job is challenging for the title, nothing less. We are talking about Manchester United here, not Liverpool.

I'm really getting tired of mediocre results being forced down our throats as "progress" or "the best we should expect". I remember when LVG finished 4th and many celebrated like it was a massive achievement. Then the following year, we finished 5th.

We need to start calling things as they are. Sitting in 6th place with one of the most expensive teams ever assembled and with a manager who has years of Premiership experience isn't a great job, its hugely under achieving. Lets start calling things what they are and expecting more from our club.

Bigger picture, he struggled with his squad and first eleven for a couple of months, since then stretching back months we have as many points as anyone and haven't been beaten in a long time. We also now have the knack of scoring late again & fighting for a result till the last second.

The same job next season wouldn't be great, but I think you have to give a new manager a couple of months of slack and since then as I say, he's been brilliant.
 
Mourinho has done well this year, although the goal scoring is a concern. I expect him to fix it this year and not wait to be bailed out by the summer signings next year.

It reminds me a bit of his first season back at Chelsea. That team was clearly missing key ingredients and Jose went straight out and fixed it, with Cesc and Costa in the summer.

This season it's just far more competitive at the top with 6 sides all getting their acts together (at different speeds) under quality managers.
 
Bigger picture, he struggled with his squad and first eleven for a couple of months, since then stretching back months we have as many points as anyone and haven't been beaten in a long time. We also now have the knack of scoring late again & fighting for a result till the last second.

The same job next season wouldn't be great, but I think you have to give a new manager a couple of months of slack and since then as I say, he's been brilliant.

This exactly was something that United was missing since SAF retired and for me it's confirmation that United is going in the right track. It's fair to say Mourinho has done a great job, you can't just look at the table and judge solely based on United's position when he's made four brilliant signings, got rid of the boring, fruitless football and he's been slowly steading the ship. If the players weren't missing so many chances, everybody would easily agree that Mourinho has been doing a great job so far.
 
It reminds me a bit of his first season back at Chelsea. That team was clearly missing key ingredients and Jose went straight out and fixed it, with Cesc and Costa in the summer.

This season it's just far more competitive at the top with 6 sides all getting their acts together (at different speeds) under quality managers.

Yep, this reminds me a bit of his first year back as well as the year before he won the Treble at Inter (although they won the league that year). You can tell something big is brewing and it just needs one or two tweaks to put the final piece of the puzzle in place.
 
LVG might have not had the required impact on the pitch but in terms of clearing out some of the deadwood he did a good job and I think that is what fergie is alluding to, and that was an absolute crucial area the club needed to resolve. I remember in his first season there was about 15 players who I thought needed the chop as they couldn't function in a team without Fergie at the helm. It might also be the case that his own recruitment was below par, there have only been a few hits from his signings but the overall standard of the squad is much improved and put us in a position where Mourinho has a substantially easier job than he might have had, and his first summer of signings show how shrewd he is in the market. Mourinho has shifted our mentality, playing style, and status as a club significantly, we have a lot of winners and when you have world class players in the team and a world class manager it makes it much easier to attract other world class talents. I have no doubt we need another 3 or 4 signings of a high standard in the summer but that is in a sharp contrast to summers where I thought we needed bare minimum 7 or 8 players.
 
LVG might have not had the required impact on the pitch but in terms of clearing out some of the deadwood he did a good job and I think that is what fergie is alluding to, and that was an absolute crucial area the club needed to resolve. I remember in his first season there was about 15 players who I thought needed the chop as they couldn't function in a team without Fergie at the helm. It might also be the case that his own recruitment was below par, there have only been a few hits from his signings but the overall standard of the squad is much improved and put us in a position where Mourinho has a substantially easier job than he might have had, and his first summer of signings show how shrewd he is in the market. Mourinho has shifted our mentality, playing style, and status as a club significantly, we have a lot of winners and when you have world class players in the team and a world class manager it makes it much easier to attract other world class talents. I have no doubt we need another 3 or 4 signings of a high standard in the summer but that is in a sharp contrast to summers where I thought we needed bare minimum 7 or 8 players.

Yep people are too stubborn to see or say it. If it's no title then there is no positives in LVG's period. The football was boring but the guy was so strict with his tactics that the squad instantly moved on from the SAF period on to building an identity of its own.

LVG has been consistently great at building an identity & work ethic out of utter trash. He does this with youth also so the benefits cannot be argued for him being the best interim manager around.

You will hear it everywhere - players calling LVG's football a nuisance & all yet admitting that that period helped them evolve towards something greater. Does not mean for once that LVG'S name should be pn a trophy that Jose wins but Jose would bite your a*se off at having to chose LVG's squad & mentality he left behind over SAF's final year squad & Moyes's.
 
Fairly faint praise from Fergie, at least in print (I've not watched the video yet).
 
He added the best players from France, Germany and Italy to his squad. Guys with a proven track record in terms of assists and goals. He is responsible for finding a solution to this problem. It was a problem last season, and it remains a problem. Hitting the post 22 times isn't bad luck.
Pogba hasn't got a proven track record, Zlatan is the 2nd top scorer in the league and Mkhitaryan was a late starter.

How do you make players finish better exactly? What kind of magic can a manager perform to achive that? There's nothing a manager can do about players missing chances. What he can do is to employ tactics that minimize the chances created by the opposition and maximizes the chances created by his team. He can't do anything about how a keeper saves a shot, how a player strikes the ball in front of goal or if a defender misstimes a header.
 
Fellaini messed up vs Everton and that was Mourinho's fault
No. Fellaini is his own person. If he decides it's a good idea to stick his leg out against a much quicker player than himself inside the box then it's on him.

Take your endless Mourinho blame game somewhere else.
 
Don't mean to dismiss what Ferguson is saying but didn't he say literally the same things about LVG and Moyes? He rarely rocks the boat.
 
Pogba hasn't got a proven track record, Zlatan is the 2nd top scorer in the league and Mkhitaryan was a late starter.

How do you make players finish better exactly? What kind of magic can a manager perform to achive that? There's nothing a manager can do about players missing chances. What he can do is to employ tactics that minimize the chances created by the opposition and maximizes the chances created by his team. He can't do anything about how a keeper saves a shot, how a player strikes the ball in front of goal or if a defender misstimes a header.

Pogba regularly scores 10 goals and racks up a dozen assists per season.

Managers can change their system, they can try players in different positions and look for more variations in their play. It is their job to solve whatever issue is affecting their team. When Pogba wasn't playing as well in a midfield two, he switched to a midfield three.

Finishing can be improved in training. You have a very narrow mind about coaching. It's like chess at this level, not just a case of sending out 11 players.
 
Pogba regularly scores 10 goals and racks up a dozen assists per season.

Managers can change their system, they can try players in different positions and look for more variations in their play. It is their job to solve whatever issue is affecting their team. When Pogba wasn't playing as well in a midfield two, he switched to a midfield three.

Finishing can be improved in training. You have a very narrow mind about coaching. It's like chess at this level, not just a case of sending out 11 players.
There's no need to change the system. United are dominating games and creating loads of chances.

You can't simply improve finishing in training. That's a ludicrous claim. If it were so easy then players would be as good at finishing as they are passing the ball or controlling it and every team would many penalty takers to pick from. Good finishing is extremely rare in football. It's why players that score goals cost the most money.
 
There's no need to change the system. United are dominating games and creating loads of chances.

You can't simply improve finishing in training. That's a ludicrous claim. If it were so easy then players would be as good at finishing as they are passing the ball or controlling it and every team would many penalty takers to pick from. Good finishing is extremely rare in football. It's why players that score goals cost the most money.

This isn't Football Manager, pal. A player doesn't stop improving when he reaches a certain age. Good coaches improve their players. Look at Rose and Walker under Pochettino. Any aspect of a player's game can be improved on.
 
This isn't Football Manager, pal. A player doesn't stop improving when he reaches a certain age. Good coaches improve their players. Look at Rose and Walker under Pochettino. Any aspect of a player's game can be improved on.
Finishing isn't comparable to a player functioning better in a formation. That's a basic requirement a footballer has to meet. Finishing is way different. It's you who's talking about like it's Football Manager. Put the player on finishing training and watch him get better. No, if it were that easy then we'd see majority of strikers being good at it rather than the minority.
 
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Finishing isn't comparable to a player functioning better in a formation. That's a basic requirement a footballer has to meet. Finishing is way different. It's you who's talking about like it's Football Manager. Put the player on finishing training and watch him get better. No, if it were that easy then we'd see majority of strikers being good at it rather than the minority.


I'm sorry, we should just give up then. Our players can't improve, so why bother putting out a team because we're just going to draw every game. :(
 
No he hasn't done a great job. A great job is challenging for the title, nothing less. We are talking about Manchester United here, not Liverpool.

I'm really getting tired of mediocre results being forced down our throats as "progress" or "the best we should expect". I remember when LVG finished 4th and many celebrated like it was a massive achievement. Then the following year, we finished 5th.

We need to start calling things as they are. Sitting in 6th place with one of the most expensive teams ever assembled and with a manager who has years of Premiership experience isn't a great job, its hugely under achieving. Lets start calling things what they are and expecting more from our club.

You would have a point if SAF said that Mou is doing a great job because we're in 6th place, period.
However, he didn't say that.
 
I agree, he's looking very well. Retirement is doing him good.

Seriously???? He's wearing a ton of makeup and his nose still looks like a lighthouse. The man has serious blood pressure issues.
 
You would have a point if SAF said that Mou is doing a great job because we're in 6th place, period.
However, he didn't say that.

I think the football is better, but that has more to do with how bad we looked under LVG than how good Mourinho's team is. You can praise him if you want, but sitting in 6th place after what we spent in the summer is nothing to be proud of. Of course the job isn't easy. If it was anyone could do it. When you don't have the guts to play your best players out wide, the team will naturally struggle to score goals. It's got everything to do with Jose being indecisive between playing attacking football, and sticking to his pragmatic roots. Of course we need to give Mourinho time to turn things around, he's an excellent coach. Just seems to be struggling to find the balance.
 
Conte is doing so far what i Call a great job.

Mourinho comparitively all things. Considered including expenditure and young player chances etc.. Is doing a okay job of best as of now.

Their are good signs but nothing great.
 
FFS we can't even give credit where credit is due on here - this sort of negativity was once restricted to the MDT!

There is no need to relate progress on the pitch to money spent. We're the most profitable club in the world and we're spending that money in spite of our leech-like owners not because of them. That money has been, is and will be spent anyway!

After the last days of SAFs reign Moyes spent plenty of money and was awful.

LVG spent tons of the stuff and although he improved, on Moyes record, it was only a slight improvement and still a long way off the match-day spectacle that we, as fans, expect to see when we go to OT.

Mourinho has got us loving match day again – that'll do for me. It's not a done deal and there's admittedly a long way to go but we're visibly heading in the right direction again.