MOURINHO SACKED No progress, no style, no development
UNITED sacked Jose Mourinho because they were unhappy with a lack of progress in form, style of play and development of their young players.
The Reds released a statement yesterday morning confirming they had parted company with their manager after two-and-a-half years and that an external caretaker manager would be placed in charge until the end of the campaign.
“Manchester United announces that manager Jose Mourinho has left the club with immediate effect,” it read.
“The club would like to thank Jose for his work during his time at Manchester United and to wish him success in the future.
“A new caretaker manager will be appointed until the end of the current season, while the club conducts a thorough recruitment process for a new, full-time manager.”
The M.E.N. understands United were concerned Mourinho’s ego was jeopardising the harmony at the club, where he stripped Paul Pogba of the second captain’s role in September. A recent team meeting was also cited by a player as the tipping point in the squad’s relationship with Mourinho.
Ironically, Mourinho said in September: “Manchester United is bigger than anyone and I have to defend that.”
The Reds believe they sufficiently backed Mourinho with £358.7m in the transfer market on 11 players during his time in charge and that they expected a greater measure of progress within that time frame.
United bought Eric Bailly, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Paul Pogba in a £145.3m spending spree in Mourinho’s first summer transfer window in 2016 and £140.9m on Victor Lindelof, Romelu Lukaku and Nemanja Matic in his second.
That figure plummeted to £73.2m in the 2018 window and ended without two of Mourinho’s priority targets, which caused considerable unrest between the manager and the board.
Alexis Sanchez also arrived in the January transfer window, a move that caused the wage bill to inflate by 12.3 per cent.
Sanchez, currently injured, has had a dismal year with United and speculation has swirled over his future. Against Liverpool, the home side had 36 attempts at goal to United’s 11 and the Reds have a goal difference of zero nearly halfway through the Premier League campaign. The United players are believed to have wanted a change of manager as far back as September partly due to the rigid set-up in games. Michael Carrick and Kieran McKenna will take charge of training for the next two days - but aren’t in contention to be the interim manager, who will be hired before the weekend’s game against Cardiff, it is understood. And a few of the players were all smiles yesterday as they drove in to training after the news had broken that Mourinho had been sacked. It is understood Mourinho lost the vast majority of the United squad’s support after a pre-match meeting at Southampton at the start of the month.