NAILED IT.www.football365.com/news/f365s-early-loser-jose-mourinho-reaping-what-he-has-sownBefore we start laying into Jose Mourinho, let us start this piece by talking about how awful Manchester United were in their 3-1 defeat to West Ham: they were dreadful, utterly and altogether poor, a complete mess. When West Ham United – proud owners of four points from six games before this game kicked off – are doing flicks and backheels around your defence as they take a 2-0 lead into the break, Manchester United are doing it wrong.
It’s important not to lose sight of this because it would be too easy to get wrapped up in criticising Mourinho and talking about his failings as a person rather than his failings as a football manager. We are here to talk about the football, after all, and on that basis alone, we can say: Manchester United are a woeful embarrassment on the pitch at the moment. Everything else – the infighting, the fractious atmosphere, the tetchy press conferences – is incidental. Entertaining, yes. But if the results and performances were good, it would be forgiven.
That’s what used to happen, after all. In his pomp, Mourinho was an exceptional manager who used good coaching, siege mentality, and effective tactics to get results and win over his players. A small part of that were his famed ‘mind-games’ and carefully-devised presentation as a cult of personality to be listened to and respected.
And he was good at it: his players overwhelmingly bought into his ideas, and the trophies invariably followed. He was so good at it, in fact, that examples of the kind curmudgeonliness that have come to define his tenure at Manchester United were surprisingly difficult to come by in his early years in England. Yes, he was a self-aggrandising arse, but he was not so ready to pick fights with the press and with his own players, realising he had enough charm to win people over with results and a twinkle in the eye, rather than with his now-customary sneer.
Mourinho’s tactical ideas and coaching style have unquestionably waned over the years. His United side look like irritated teenagers whose out-of-touch parents have sent them to the school disco wearing clothes that haven’t been fashionable since 2005, while their friends at Liverpool and Manchester City have a whale of a time wearing all the latest gear.
Having been successful in the past, Mourinho refuses to countenance that it might – just might – be his methods that need updating. Instead, he has convinced himself that this bunch of players must simply be doing it wrong, and the way to cajole them into doing it properly is through his mind games. That is not the way to inspire an us-against-them mentality; it’s just going to lead to ineffectual squabbling. And, indeed, it has.
Worst of all, though, is that Mourinho has thrown so many players under the bus, dropped them, reintroduced them, praised them, then dropped them again, that he seems to have lost track of what he is trying to achieve.
Any sitcom devotee will know that the main practical problem with being a pathological liar is keeping track of the various different lies you have told. Moreover, after a while, people tend to start to actually believing their own bullshit. There is a long list of cult leaders, controversial columnists, and cold-readers who started out using lies as a tool to make money, but ended up blurring the lines between character and person to the extent that they lost themselves entirely to their curated public image.
It feels very much like Mourinho has reached that place. Why pick a fight with Paul Pogba and then expect him to be motivated when you pick him on Saturday? Why call up Scott McTominay for his first start of the season, only to play him at centre-back and leave Eric Bailly on the bench – especially when a similar gambit (playing Ander Herrera at centre-back with Victor Lindelof on the bench) had failed so spectacularly against Tottenham less than five weeks ago?
None of these feel like sensible decisions made for purely footballing reasons. Instead, they are the machinations and decisions of a man who is trying to be altogether too clever; a manager who has gradually become more interested in proving he is in charge than he is in actually winning football matches, not realising how counter-productive it is to his side and how unbelievably damaging it is to his reputation.
Because, ultimately, the façade wears thin, and people will spend more and more time looking at the results, looking at the performances, and concluding that none of Mourinho’s shit is in the slightest bit worthwhile. Because it is not. United fans hated the football on offer under David Moyes and Louis Van Gaal, but at least their failings were borne out of incompetence and an ill-fitting defensive philosophy, respectively. Mourinho has somehow managed to combine both of those traits, adding pathetic, embarrassing posturing to the mix too.
Manchester United are terrible on the pitch, and it is because they have a manager who is getting the very worst out of them – not because he’s not capable (his record shows he is), not because he’s not used to working with big-name players (his whole career has been exactly that), and not because they are in flux or need to clear out the squad (they have spent plenty of money over the last couple of years to buy Mourinho’s preferred targets).
No: Manchester United are awful at football, and there is no good reason for it; it’s simply because their manager has apparently forgotten his job is to get the best out of them. And that is a point of no return.
Steven Chicken
