There are some signs that Jose Mourinho might be taking Manchester United in the right direction.
Yes, they’re still sixth, but the team have looked a much more solid, harder-to-beat outfit this season and can consider themselves unfortunate not to be higher up the Premier League table after dominating many of the games they’ve managed to draw – especially those at home.
Still, there’s a long way to go before Mourinho’s United are looked at in the same way as Sir Alex Ferguson’s United. The club endured a disastrous spell after Ferguson left the club in 2013, finishing seventh in a season which David Moyes – the man tasked with following him – failed to see out.
Louis van Gaal appeared to be steadying the ship after his fourth place finish in his first season in charge, but United took a step back a year later, finishing fifth and missing out on Champions League football (although they did win an FA Cup, too).
In an interview given to Portuguese TV Channel SIC over the weekend (translated by Sport Witness), Mourinho has discussed his relationship with Ferguson since joining United.
Intriguingly, he reveals that Ferguson had distanced himself from the players and other club staff since his retirement, something which Mourinho appears to have tried to reverse.
“When he left here, he wanted to leave and not come back. 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.
“He traveled with us once again. And that’s what I said: It doesn’t make sense that we’re playing in London and go on a private train and you will go by car. You’re not going by car, no. Go by train with the team.”
Interestingly, Mourinho expands on this, describing Ferguson as “shy”, not a word many would’ve used to describe him during his time as United boss.
“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.
“There have been situations at the end of the game where Sir Bobby Charlton comes down, the executive director comes down, and he, who is with them, does not come to the dressing room. That kind of situation, I already said that makes absolutely no sense.”
Ferguson’s timid approach might come as a surprise to many of the club’s supporters, as will the fact that he appears to have travelled separately from the team when watching them play away from Old Trafford in the time since he retired.
Mourinho now appears to have put this right, or at least that’s what he appears to be telling people.
