MIDDLESBRO v MAN UTD I’VE MADE Sinking Boro need Jaws’ SIR ALEX FEEL LOVED AGAIN Jose’s bromance with Fergie back
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STEVE AGNEW wants ‘Jaws’ to help give Middlesbrough the attacking bite they need to save their season.
Former Leeds, Manchester United and Scotland striker Joe Jordan – dubbed ‘Jaws’ in his playing days because of his fearsome, toothless appearance – has joined Boro as assistant to caretaker boss Agnew.
And Agnew hopes Jordan, 65, who coached under Harry Redknapp at Tottenham, Portsmouth and QPR, can bring more out of striker Alvaro Negredo – and see an end to Boro’s four-game Premier League goal famine.
Agnew said: “Joe is already analysing and looking at movements and chances, and that’s what he does.
“He brings a wealth of experience of how to create a chance and how to score a goal.
“He’s well-respected and was a top player. He’s had experience of dealing with top managers and the Premier League, and he’s a great guy.” JOSE MOURINHO has revealed how he has taken Sir Alex Ferguson back into the heart of Manchester United and “made him feel loved again”.
Ferguson became the most successful manager ever in England, before retiring after winning the last of his 13 Premier League titles in 2013.
The Scot then kept a low profile as his successors David Moyes and Louis van Gaal struggled to recapture the glory days.
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But ever since his own arrival at Old Trafford l ast summer, Mourinho has admitted he has been gently coaxing Ferguson back into the centre of things at United.
“When he left here, he wanted to leave and not come back,” said Mourinho, 54. “I think, perhaps, for his own comfort. Maybe going back is to suffer a little.
“But after I arrived he came in again. He came back to visit the people he worked with for so many years. And he travelled with us once again. And that’s what I said to him, ‘It doesn’t make sense that we’re playing in London and go on a private train and you Sir Alex will go by car. You’re not going by car, no. Go by train with the team’.
“But he is so respectful that he becomes even a little shy in this approach. We have to make him feel loved.
“In our head there are no ghosts, no complexes, no such thing.”
Ferguson, 75, has started travelling with the team in Europe again this season, flying in the official party on the team plane and staying in their hotel.
But Mourinho, s peaking in a documentary with Portuguese TV channel SIC, has confessed he still cannot get Ferguson into the dressing room after games.
He said: “There have been situations at the end of the game where Sir Bobby Charlton comes down, the executive director Ed Woodward comes down, and Sir Alex, who is with them, does not come to the dressing room. That kind of situation, I already said that makes absolutely no sense.”
Mourinho and Ferguson (above) always had a good rapport from when the younger man was in charge at Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid. “It’s the same relationship we had in the old days,” he added. “A phone call, an SMS, sympathetic details like we always had with each other. A Christmas, a birthday, a more important game.” Ferguson oversaw the building of United’s state of the art Aon training complex at Carrington in 2000 – but Mourinho admits since arriving he has updated t he facility and even altered some of Van Gaal’s tweaks. Like Van Gaal, Mourinho has made changes to the training pitches, pitch sizes, changing the grass and installing more floodlights so the team could work until late in the afternoon during the winter months. He said: “We tried to improve. We tried to make a personal impression. We tried to modernise a little, even internally, some working conditions. “You know, a club can be a giant, but when you stop for a couple of years, it’s complicated.”