He gets his fair share of criticism but here is a more positive view.
The perception of Jose Mourinho has changed drastically over the years. From the charismatic, arrogant upstart whose Porto side sent Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United packing in the Champions League before shifting the balance of Premier League power in Chelsea’s favour, Mourinho is now more closely associated with being the gloomy malcontent.
Because he has been something of an agitator of late. Faced with the unstoppable force that is Manchester City, Mourinho has been guilty of expressing his growing dissatisfaction with the current Premier League landscape in public. There have been moments when even Mourinho’s staunchest allies have been forced into a period of difficult introspection.
Is Mourinho hopelessly out of touch with modern football? Is he just an embittered mischief-maker? Are his outbursts a product of a growing sense of inferiority to Pep Guardiola? These questions have been asked frequently this season and, at times, Mourinho has gone some way in answering them with his actions or words.
In October, signs of a fractured relationship between the manager and United’s fans appeared during the visit of Tottenham to Old Trafford. With the game locked at 0-0, a chorus of boos cascaded around the stadium as Mourinho substituted Marcus Rashford for Anthony Martial. The previous week, in the 2-0 defeat to Huddersfield, Martial had endured a tortured afternoon and was replaced by Rashford.
The roles reversal was met with anger by the United fans against Spurs yet, ten minutes later, it was the Frenchman who ran onto Romelu Lukaku’s flicked header to score the winner and seal a momentous win. At full-time, Mourinho remonstrated towards the television camera with a shushing gesture, aimed at the United fans.
In December, following Manchester City’s 2-1 win at Old Trafford, Mourinho reportedly sparked the now infamous tunnel bust-up when he entered the away dressing room and told them to turn down their music. Since then, he’s cut a discontented figure. Between an extraordinary back-and-forth through the newspapers with Chelsea boss Antonio Conte and claiming that £300m was not enough for United to compete, the estimation of Mourinho in some quarters has plummeted.
Yet, for all his character faults, he remains the best man to lead Manchester United forward. The 55-year-old signed a contract extension with United to 2020 on Thursday. In a statement, Mourinho made one key point:
“We have set very high standards – winning three trophies in one season – but those are the standards I expect my teams to aim for. We are creating the conditions for a brilliant and successful future for Manchester United.”
Three trophies. Okay, two trophies. The Community Shield will always be a trophy in Mourinho’s mind as long as he’s winning it. Irrespective of that, though, Mourinho still delivered the Europa League and the League Cup in his first season in charge. You can spin it whatever way you like (money spent, the low prestige associated with those two competitions) but the fact remains: he delivered two pieces of silverware in his first season in charge.
Inheriting a mish-mash of a squad from Louis van Gaal, Mourinho has made significant strides towards assembling a team worthy of challenging for the title. There have been bumps along the way, of course. United finished sixth last season, but they still accrued three points more than Louis van Gaal’s team in the Dutchman’s final year. Whereas van Gaal’s side lost ten games, Mourinho’s tasted defeat just five times.
Yes, the draws prevented United from being a factor in the title race, but there have been clear signs of progression this season. At the time of writing, Mourinho’s United have 53 points from 24 games. Compare that to the 40, 44, 40 in the three seasons between Ferguson’s retirement and Mourinho’s appointment under David Moyes and van Gaal, and the 45 picked up last season in the Portuguese’s first campaign and it becomes difficult to deny that the club are moving in a promising direction.
United’s current haul of 53 would have been good enough to see them joint-top with City at the same stage in the 2013/14 season, three points behind Chelsea during 2014/15, three points clear of eventual champions Leicester in the 2015/16 standings and six points behind Chelsea in the 2016/17 campaign. That United are currently 12 points off the pace is more an emphatic indication of City’s nonpareil brilliance than United’s shortcomings.
Jose Mourinho will take charge of his 100th game for Man Utd at Yeovil tomorrow, on his 55th birthday.
W61 D23 L15 F176 A70 https://t.co/qF8Djl6OVy
— Sky Sports Statto (@SkySportsStatto) January 25, 2018
And that brings us to City and Guardiola, to whom Mourinho’s time at United will inevitably be compared. As bitter rivals who took over at two of the league’s biggest clubs at the same time, it was utterly unavoidable. Yet, it’s important to remember that, while Guardiola inherited an under-achieving squad and spent £170 million in his first transfer window, Mourinho’s situation at Old Trafford required much more significant surgery.
United had scored a miserly 49 league goals in van Gaal’s final campaign, something Mourinho addressed by bringing in Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Paul Pogba and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, a combination of one of the most accomplished strikers in world football, a tremendously talented Frenchman who United had foolishly let go under Ferguson and an Armenian whose playmaking abilities routinely sliced open defences in the Bundesliga the previous season. Mourinho spent £149 million but also generated £47m from the sales of players like Memphis Depay, Morgan Schneiderlin and Paddy McNair. His net spend in the summer of 2016 was £102m compared to Guardiola’s £165m.
Last summer, Mourinho’s net spend was higher than Guardiola’s but the Catalan coach sold 20 players, whereas the sale of Adnan Januzaj was the only money generated by United. Mourinho has spent as lavishly as his counterpart at the Etihad Stadium, yes, but it has been to the benefit of the squad. Pogba is United’s most influential player, Ibrahimovic scored 28 goals last season, Eric Bailly has been outstanding in defence when fit and Nemanja Matic has proven to be an immensely shrewd acquisition from Chelsea, bolstering United’s midfield in the way van Gaal hoped Schneiderlin or Bastian Schweinsteiger would.
That’s not to say Guardiola hasn’t improved City. He obviously has. Leroy Sane, Ederson, Gabriel Jesus and John Stones have all had the desired effect, while Guardiola has undoubtedly brought out the best in Raheem Sterling, Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva. Guardiola’s City play an attractive, aggressive brand of attacking football, one that has proven frighteningly effective in dismantling defences this season.
However, while Mourinho is often lambasted for ‘parking the bus’ against the top sides, it would be foolish to suggest that United’s style of play hasn’t improved markedly since Moyes and van Gaal. Under the Scot’s stewardship, United were rudderless and bereft of attacking craft. Under van Gaal, the disconnect between the manager’s so-called philosophy and what United were actually doing on the pitch became so obvious that the hierarchy had no choice but to dismiss him (they could have handled it more professionally, in fairness).
Mourinho’s pragmatic style of football has attracted widespread criticism this season. It’s true that he played for a point away to Liverpool, Chelsea and at home to City, but United have certainly been more expressive, imaginative and aggressive in other games. United have scored three or more goals in all competitions 11 times this season. They also have the strongest defence in the league alongside Chelsea, having conceded just 16 times.
We are delighted to announce Jose Mourinho has signed an extension to his contract with #MUFC.
Club statement: https://t.co/vbGhXWbjcA pic.twitter.com/PcprzUIYfI
— Manchester United (@ManUtd) January 25, 2018
While there is a romantic, rose-tinted view of the United of yesteryear as this all-out attacking juggernaut, with flying wingers and virtuoso strikers, it wasn’t quite as singular. Ferguson spent the 90s trying to outscore the opposition to great success, a humbling defeat to Real Madrid in the Champions League quarter-final prompted the Scot into exercising caution in future clashes with European giants.
Mourinho favours a utilitarian brand of football in the bigger games and always has, albeit his is more pronounced than Ferguson’s. To him, drawing 0-0 after defending remarkable is to be celebrated, not ridiculed. While United may not be as devastating as City or singularly enterprising as Liverpool, they are still there. They are through to the knockout phase of the Champions League, they are ahead of Chelsea, Liverpool, Spurs and Arsenal in the table and, having just bought a world-class attacker in Alexis Sanchez, the forecast for the immediate future has just gotten a little brighter.
It’s also important to remember that, if not Mourinho – then who? To the Mourinho detractors, who would be doing a better job right now? Some sections of disgruntled United supporters probably imagine the parallel footballing universe where Jurgen Klopp or Guardiola succeeded Ferguson in 2013 and United are still the immovable object. But there’s no benefit in immersing yourself in fantasy. Mourinho is the manager now and the reality, whether you want to begrudgingly accept it or not, is that he’s doing a good job.
His approach to playing football may not be the swashbuckling, multi-functional machine Guardiola has built, but he has still set United on an upward trajectory. With every piece of business, Mourinho gets closer to assembling a squad that can challenge City’s dominance at the summit. It won’t happen this season but, with another summer of smart investment, there is enough evidence to suggest that he can return United to the top of English football once again.
If United haven’t progressed at all by this time next year, then we’ll have a problem. Then you can come after me. Of course, knowing my luck, United will go ahead and lose to Yeovil Town in the FA Cup on Friday night (which also happens to be Mourinho’s 55th birthday), a team teetering on the brink of dropping into non-league football. If United lose, it’ll become harder to defend this piece. For now, though, I’m still of the belief that Mourinho is the right man to lead Manchester United forward.
