Jose Mourinho, the manager undermined by Manchester United in the post-SAF, instant gratification era.

The first thing that people think about Jose Mourinho these days is that he is like that “toxic A-player” in a corporation when it should not necessarily be the case. He is one of the most decorated managers in the planet in world football and when people’s accolades speak enough about a person, the credibility of a person must not be undermined, because there is a reason why it happened in the first place.

Jose Mourinho was the manager who was helping Manchester United see the truth about their situation, regardless of the toxicity surrounding the end of his tenure. The harsh truth was that if it was not Jose Mourinho, then some other world class manager would have pointed it out anyway, lets say Carlo Ancelotti was appointed instead of Mourinho, and he has a reputation of being more relaxed and very much a mediator, even he would have done it eventually and would have done it in a nicer way or left the club within a season. The point is that, Manchester United is broken as a club and there is something fundamentally wrong in the way the club is run.

Jesse Lingard, the 27 year old “young prospect” sums up everything wrong with the modern day Manchester United. United lad, a tolerance of mediocrity and commercial appeal through unwarranted fame through excessive brand building as a footballer, because “JLingz” sounds cool to the young fans since he does funny things on Instagram. This is the fanfare towards a footballer, who no other Premier League club would pay the wages he is currently getting at Manchester United because he is simply not worth the money because of a lack of end product on the pitch.

Manchester United are in the process of losing a young generation of supporters who are currently more inclined to support Liverpool or Arsenal at the moment despite how well Manchester United are doing commercially, and if the poor on pitch performance continues as it is now, even that is going to dwindle.

Hiring Jose Mourinho was like taking a strong medicine with a lot of uncomfortable things happening, but it was necessary for the club to see what was happening and that things could get worse if it was not corrected. Unfortunately the board decided to pretend that everything was okay and going great, because they don’t necessarily have the sense to realize that if on pitch performances improve, the commercial revenue also improves. However the dilemma of the board is also something to consider. Manchester United’s board are in a catch-22 situation. If they can get away with minimal investment relative to the revenue Manchester United generates and make it to the top four or six every year, with the occasional trophy here and there, then what is the problem? It is probably what they are thinking.

When Jose Mourinho said that finishing second with Manchester United was one of his greatest achievements ever, people were laughing. Okay, now lets take that into context, Manchester United in the 2017–18 season finished second to the greatest Manchester City team ever, which got 100 points. Second with a team that consisted of defenders which were not of the calibre of Manchester City’s defense. At this point the situation is such that even if Manchester United had Vincent Kompany at his current age, he would be the best Manchester United defender at this point. That’s how bad the Manchester United defense was when Manchester United finished second and they had to be bailed by David de Gea week in, week out.

Jose Mourinho is the one manager that has won not one, but two trophies in his first year as manager of Manchester United, people may say it is the Europa League and a mickey mouse cup (Capital One Cup), and a sixth place finish in the league, two trophies are still two trophies. People talk about judging people based on results, but sometimes when the results happen and people complain that Jose Mourinho did not play attacking football, then it is a situation where people want to have their cake and eat it too, that is simply not necessarily possible. When Manchester United hired Jose Mourinho, the board knew what they were getting, so after a little while complaining about the whole situation is not entirely justified.

Another myth is that Jose Mourinho is not a “long term” manager. A long term manager is a manager that has a long term impact on the club and it is not necessarily based on tenure. If it was based on tenure then Alan Pardew would be considered a long term manager because he stayed at Newcastle for five years. In that famous/infamous press conference after that Sevilla game in the Champions League, he talked about “football heritage” which football fans mocked and thought that Jose Mourinho was talking absolute nonsense, there were two key facts that stood out at the time, “the highest position Manchester City finished in the past four years is first and the highest position Manchester United finished is fourth in those past four years.” Cold hard facts.

He also said that, most of the key players that Pep Guardiola had that were performing well were “investments from the past”. Kevin De Bruyne, Sergio Aguero, Nicolas Otamendi, Vincent Kompany, Fernandinho, David Silva are the notable players which are investments from the past. Another truth.

Also he said that when he left, he would leave Manchester United with players that have a different mentality. He mentioned Lukaku, Matic and de Gea at the time. Now let us also add Pogba to the list because he won a World Cup and was instrumental in it. Alexis Sanchez also was one of those types of players at the time and nobody could have quite foreseen the decline of Alexis Sanchez based on how he was performing at Arsenal.

The end of Jose Mourinho’s tenure was riddled with broken promises from the board where he clearly knew that he needed a centre back, it does not make sense for the board to overrule one of the greatest managers in the world especially when the club was moving in a positive direction, no sane board would do it. Another instance of the situation was in the 2016–17 season when Jose Mourinho wanted Anthony Martial sold because of an inconsistent end product and wanted Ivan Perisic instead because of a much better end product and the fact that he could supply crosses to Romelu Lukaku, and guess what the board did? They overruled him. They overruled a proven league title winner to make decisions based on commercial value, because if generating revenue was the answer, then what the hell was the question.

Jose Mourinho was like a strict parent who did his best to make sure that the baby, Manchester United is not mollycoddled and the ego is not massaged unwarrantedly. The malaise spread around the club and to protect its own bloated ego, Manchester United threw its toys out of the pram and sacked the manager who was steering them in the correct direction in the post-SAF era and it has become the ultimate instant gratification club, seeking short term pleasure at all costs over long term gain.