OUT OF TOUCH
ROBERT J WILSON LOOKS AT THE FALL FROM GRACE OF THE ‘SPECIAL ONE’ AND THE RED DEVILS…
Mourinho at Man United
ANY manager or coach will usually tell you that you are only as good as your players. The best footballers usually make sure that you have the best team and those flawless units usually win the most games. Of course, football is never that simple but that is the gist of it.
Pep Guardiola is a super innovator and coach, but he can also run Manchester City like a real life version of Championship Manager. The club’s incredible wealth and pulling power can now attract some of the best footballers in the world. If Lionel Messi was to one day leave his beloved Barcelona, his likely destination would be to reunite with Pep in Manchester. Perhaps only they and PSG could afford him in Europe.
Pep needs a goalkeeper who is comfortable with his feet; simple, out goes the then England number one Joe Hart and, eventually, he’s replaced by the Brazilian, Ederson, for a handsome sum of £35m.
Pep needs some quick full-backs to suit his high pressing system, no problem. In comes Kyle Walker from rivals Spurs for £50m, Danilo for £26m and Frenchman Benjamin Mendy for £52m. It is a completely different ball game now. City can blitz other teams in the transfer market.
You are only as good as your players and if they are not quite good enough or are out of form, then they can quickly get the manager the sack.
That is what quite clearly happened to Jose Mourinho at Manchester United. He wanted to build for the long-term at Old Trafford and leave a legacy to rival Sir Alex Ferguson - but one of the most successful managers/coaches in the modern era only lasted two-and-a-half years.
That period of time is becoming all too frequent for the Portuguese and it is quite evident that the modern day manger is not expected to last too long if there is ever a downturn in results. The days of another Fergie or Wenger are well and truly over.
Mourinho won the Europa League and the League Cup in his first season as Manchester United manager. Last season, they finished run- ners-up to their outstanding City rivals, albeit by 19 points, and they narrowly lost the FA Cup final to his former club Chelsea. Eden Hazard scored from an early penalty in a rather dull final.
It is not often that Mourinho ends a campaign without at least one piece of silverware but a dire start to this season resulted in him being sacked before Christmas and, possibly more importantly, before the January transfer window. He didn’t have a chance again to change things around.
Mourinho, like any other manager, usually lives or dies by his recruitment and over the last few seasons Manchester United have not recruited well at all.
They lack pace and creativity in midfield. Paul Pogba is a World Cup winner for France and cost £89m but he has been a shadow of the player he was in Italy with Juventus.
Pogba has shown glimpses of his obvious ability in recent games under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer but didn’t show it enough under Mourinho.
Is that down to Mourinho shackling him in a defensive system and wanting him to be more reliable for the benefit of the team or was it a touch of ill-discipline from Pogba? He certainly likes to do his own thing at times. One thing is clear - it wasn’t a healthy relationship between the two of them.
Mourinho’s defence hasn’t been good enough and despite spending big money on Eric Bailly and Victor Lindelof, he was still unsure of his best centre-back partnership. I’m not sure he was the man behind giving the likes of Chris Smalling and Luke Shaw new contracts. Mourinho had publicly lambasted some of their performances and injury record.
The signing of the Chilean striker Alexis Sanchez from rivals Arsenal has not gone the way they both would have wanted and we are still waiting for Romelu Lukaku and Marcus Rashford to hit consistent form. Rashford is an exciting talent but he has only 38 goals from 150 appearances. Is that good enough for a top level goalscorer at Manchester United?
Mourinho paid the ultimate price for performances but he certainly inherited a tough job. He has tried to rectify it by splashing the cash and that has evidently not worked either, so the quest to find a long-term solution to Sir Alex Ferguson continues.
The club are relying on the popular Solskjaer to steady the ship.
Fergie wasn’t daft. He knew it would become more difficult to keep Manchester United at the pinnacle every year because of the spending power of Manchester City and Chelsea and then the likes of Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal, even Wolves and Fulham who have also spent millions. The television money and foreign ownership has transformed the playing field forever.
The elite clubs no longer have to sell to each other because of the extraordinary revenue they now receive from television and commercial deals.
In the past, Spurs couldn’t prevent the likes of Michael Carrick and Dimitar Berbatov from leaving for Old Trafford. Would they now have to sell Harry Kane, Dele Alli or Christian Eriksen to United? The answer is most probably no.
If they were prepared to sell, then we are looking at over £100m each. That is how daft it has become and why Manchester City are the best placed of our clubs to dominate the game for the next decade at least. They have become the new powerhouses in this country and, amazingly, their city neighbours are now playing catch-up. Football comes and goes in circles – just ask the one-time ‘Special One’.