‘Impossible role? I’m thriving on these great expectations’
JOSE MOURINHO says managing Manchester United is not a burden.
David Moyes makes his first return to Old Trafford today since being sacked in April 2014, when he said that managing United was “an impossible job” due to the legacy of Sir Alex Ferguson.
But Mourinho claims he is enjoying the challenge and will not let the pressures get to him. “I don’t feel it as a burden,” he said. “I feel the great history of the club as only a positive thing and not negative things. The problem is if you have the conditions to follow the success of history – then that’s a different story.”
Asked if Moyes had a bigger challenge because he was the first to take over following Ferguson’s retirement, Mourinho said: “I wouldn’t mind to be at a club with great expectations but to have Ryan Giggs, Nemanja Vidic, Patrice Evra and Javier Hernandez in the team.”
But having been sacked by Chelsea last season, Mourinho has some sympathy for Moyes. “A manager who is not sacked is not a manager, or at least is not a good manager,” he said. “We have to be sacked. So I think it was just a bad moment in David’s career and he has to do what I did – what we all do – move on – and he did that.
“After Manchester United he went to Spain – which was also a different experience for him – then back to England, back in the Premier League.
“He moved on and this is what we have to do and what Alan Pardew now has to do [after he