If a manager called me a virus I’d probably have chinned him. Jose’s done in Manchester... finished
WHEN Jose Mourinho was being berated week in, week out during his end days at Real Madrid it was bad enough.
What’s happening now at Manchester United is worse, though, and potentially damaging his managerial legacy for good.
Don’t get me wrong, he will always get a good job and if he were to have a year off I’m sure he’d come back a better manager for his Old Trafford experience.
But with every day he stays there, and with every outburst against one of his players, he is dampening his chances of moving on to a Paris Saint-Germain or a Bayern Munich next.
You only have to look at the statistics which emerged after Saturday’s draw with Southampton – those which said United are virtually bottom of every table in terms of sprints and distances covered – to realise he is done in Manchester, finished.
And while I still wouldn’t put it past him to get off the canvas like Tyson Fury did against Deontay Wilder in Los Angeles at the weekend and get a result against Arsenal at home tomorrow, what’s clear is that ultimately the dressing room is gone and that the latest spat with Paul Pogba will have only added to disharmony at the club.
Put it this way, if you were in charge at PSG or Bayern, and you were paying your stars £500,000 a week, would you really want to risk your players’ happiness by hiring a man who would happily label one of them a virus?
I’m not sure you would and I’m not sure those who are in charge will think he is worth the hassle, especially now there are no guarantees he’s going to win you league or Champions League titles.
The only thing you can guarantee with Mourinho these days is a whole heap of trouble and I can’t think of another environment apart from football that he would get away with the type of behaviour he has been displaying.
He’d have had HR saying, ‘Hold on a second, there’s a case to answer in what you’re saying about your coworkers’, and I’m sure he would have been sacked by now. I also know that if one of my managers had said about me what he has said about Pogba, that I’d probably have chinned him.
So that’s now another problem he is going to face – players will be going to training and showing open disdain because that’s what he has been showing them.
I put a poll on Twitter at the weekend asking if United should back him or sack him and 75 per cent said he should go.
The other 25 per cent were probably Liverpool and Manchester City fans.
Whenever I played against United, the one thing you could guarantee was that Roy Keane, Paul Scholes and the Nevilles would work their socks off, so even if they weren’t at their very best it would still take something special to beat them.
But that clearly isn’t the case at United any more, there’s no heart or spirit for the battle.
That will be to Mourinho’s cost because, as Fury reminded us, without guts there will never be any glory.