So Jose was finally forced to bite the dust. He was miserable anyway. His team wasn't happy. United found a reason for being what it was anyway .......
Manchester United is dysfunctional. It is directionless. No-one from Woodward down seems ever to have grasped the basic requirements of running a football club. For Woodward, could we just read Ashley Carson? For several years now they've been patching up the leaky old ship and hoping that some miracle of the prevailing wind would help them gain ground on their fresher, richer and more innovative rival in Manchester. Mourinho wasn't the cause of this, he was just another victim.
Manchester United is massively in debt to itself and its decision-making processes have ranged from inordinately slow to randomly over-hasty, with no sign of a long-term plan or perspective into which to fit changes. So the club first splashes money on transfers then decides not to back its manager in the market, whilst its rivals continue to improve. No one knows what they are doing behind the scenes and it reflects on the field of play. The manager becomes even more defensive than he might be naturally, the spectators who imagine their ground the world-centre of free-flowing football first become dissatisfied and, once even the prospect of compensatory trophies recedes, they decide the manager is a dinosaur and call for his head.
Eventually the random decision-making process behind the scenes kicks in after a particularly galling defeat, the crowd gets the head of the dinosaur and the club immediately announces an interim manager on its website and is forced to delete the news almost immediately. Next day the same interim manager is miraculously re-announced. He's a popular smiling guy, but he has no record of success at this level, nor has he ever provided the kind of stunning football for which the fans are longing, given that they have some of the best players in the world that is. It looks like another random decision, half-made, unmade and re-made from the the plugging the holes in the leaky ship school. It might work, and there'll be other fish in the sea by summer.
At our own very low level we are a manchester united, like them we are totally dysfunctional behind the scenes, any wealth we have is actually debt and when we reach the football field our players have all too often played the game in exactly the opposite way to how the fans like it, and the manager has quickly metamorphosed from the exciting newcomer to a middle-aged dinosaur out of touch with the way the "modern" game is going.
And the moral of the story? Fix the club, not the manager, when things start to go against you?
Manchester United is dysfunctional. It is directionless. No-one from Woodward down seems ever to have grasped the basic requirements of running a football club. For Woodward, could we just read Ashley Carson? For several years now they've been patching up the leaky old ship and hoping that some miracle of the prevailing wind would help them gain ground on their fresher, richer and more innovative rival in Manchester. Mourinho wasn't the cause of this, he was just another victim.
Manchester United is massively in debt to itself and its decision-making processes have ranged from inordinately slow to randomly over-hasty, with no sign of a long-term plan or perspective into which to fit changes. So the club first splashes money on transfers then decides not to back its manager in the market, whilst its rivals continue to improve. No one knows what they are doing behind the scenes and it reflects on the field of play. The manager becomes even more defensive than he might be naturally, the spectators who imagine their ground the world-centre of free-flowing football first become dissatisfied and, once even the prospect of compensatory trophies recedes, they decide the manager is a dinosaur and call for his head.
Eventually the random decision-making process behind the scenes kicks in after a particularly galling defeat, the crowd gets the head of the dinosaur and the club immediately announces an interim manager on its website and is forced to delete the news almost immediately. Next day the same interim manager is miraculously re-announced. He's a popular smiling guy, but he has no record of success at this level, nor has he ever provided the kind of stunning football for which the fans are longing, given that they have some of the best players in the world that is. It looks like another random decision, half-made, unmade and re-made from the the plugging the holes in the leaky ship school. It might work, and there'll be other fish in the sea by summer.
At our own very low level we are a manchester united, like them we are totally dysfunctional behind the scenes, any wealth we have is actually debt and when we reach the football field our players have all too often played the game in exactly the opposite way to how the fans like it, and the manager has quickly metamorphosed from the exciting newcomer to a middle-aged dinosaur out of touch with the way the "modern" game is going.
And the moral of the story? Fix the club, not the manager, when things start to go against you?
