Jose still waiting for talks on deal
From Back Page the executive vicechairman’s handling of the club and the pair are at loggerheads.
The Portuguese coach has complained of what he perceives as unnecessarily bureaucratic and inefficient organisation at Old Trafford and United’s Carrington training base.
A hesitancy over implementing recruitment decisions as well as an unwillingness to match the funding deployed by key domestic and Champions League rivals rank among other points of conflict.
Despite Mourinho’s success in winning the Europa League and League Cup double – while returning United to the Champions League – no move has been made by Woodward to offer the 54-year-old a contract extension and the former Chelsea boss is not minded to sign one.
In an interview with French television channel TF1 this weekend Mourinho publicly signposted a personal uncertainty over his future at Old Trafford.
He said: “What I can say is that I am still a manager with questions, with ambitions, with a desire to do new things and I do not think – I am sure – that I will not finish my career here.”
Mourinho’s frustrations with United are multiple and focus on a series of matters he considers crucial to maximising his team’s chances of recovering the Premier League title for the first time since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement in 2013.
Rigorous in his attention to detail, the Portuguese expects his employers to implement everything realistically possible to improve performance on the pitch and feels let down by Woodward in that regard. IT feels a bit like Brexit.
Plenty of us thought that was a bad idea too but in the end we have no choice but to cross our toes and fingers and get on with it. While hoping against hope that the bunch of error-prone incompetents in charge of actually delivering it might somehow get it right.
That’s pretty much where we now find ourselves in terms of the hunt for a new Scotland manager following the decision to separate ourselves from Gordon Strachan.
There’s little to be gained now from continuing to question the thinking behind this parting of the ways.
This is what happens when weak men and warped logic collide on Hampden’s sixth floor. We ought to be well used to it by now as this is hardly the first time they’ve dropped us all in it.
In any case there are plenty outside of the building who seem relatively pleased to wave Strachan back across the border and if that’s how the majority feel then the rest of us – those who can’t see past the folly and blind panic of this latest blunder – will just have to get our heads around it and accept life will carry on regardless.
It matters not that we know we’re right. No one likes a remoaner.
The only point of relevance now is the SFA use their powers of negotiation (yes, you read that correctly) to turn this potential calamity into something truly positive. That president Alan McRae and co actually grab this opportunity to make the post-Strachan Scotland a happier place. That they do something inspirational to prove we really might be better apart.
And so it is with this is mind that we ought to pull together and help the blazers dig themselves out of a hole.
So here’s a message for “Theresa” McRae and his coalition of chaos – or Rod and Regan to give them their proper names, who just might make the worst case of R&R since the Trotters’ trip to Spain
Pick up the phone to Sir Alex Ferguson this morning and don’t let him off the line until you’ve plucked up enough courage to ask him to be Strachan’s replacement.
It’s the one thing McRae can get right during his otherwise shambolic term in office and not least because he takes such pride in describing himself as one of Ferguson’s personal friends to whoever will listen.
That being the case then surely such a close, dear pal won’t hesitate to help you out of the almighty mess you’ve just got yourself into? Let’s just call it for old time’s sake?
And surely money will not be a stumbling block. The last time anyone checked Sir Furious was rolling around in the stuff so it’s not like he should be hard to deal with where the pounds and pence are concerned.
If anything, during all of his empire building years down south, Ferguson went out of his way to present himself as a ferocious patriot. Often he came across as the kind of guy who might pay the SFA for the chance to be put in charge of our national side rather than demand fortunes for providing a service to the country.
Would two years of part-time hair drying really be too much to ask of him? On the contrary, tell him he owes it to us and to our game.
Give him a Paul Lambert or a Barry Ferguson for his backroom team just as Martin
Would two years of part-time hair drying really be too much to ask of him?