The slow motion car crash of the past 6 years since Alex Ferguson retired as Manchester United manager has continued with another disappointing season in 18/19
After the club won the Europa League in 2017, and the club ending 2nd last season, there was some hope that we could kick on and fight for first place this season. But things never felt quite right under Mourinho, and conflict between him and the team was ongoing. The board's failure to back him last summer was the final nail in the coffin in retrospect.
Gary Neville has said, more than once, that, with the team we have, that second place result last year increasingly looks like a great achievement, given the group of player that he had at his disposal:
"It’s a really average team for what Manchester United needs to be. As a group of players I don’t like them. ‘Jose Mourinho at the time told us that it was his greatest ever achievement finishing second with that team. ‘We all laughed, we all thought: ‘It’s Jose just playing’. Maybe he was right, maybe it was a great achievement."
But quality aside, the underlying issue has been player power, and the virus of a bad attitude that has grown and grown in the changing room, and was the reason Jose was eventually forced out.
The board did not back Jose, and then the players smelled weakness and turned on the manager, as Neville said.
“It comes to a point where this would be the fourth manager in six years,” Neville said. “You have to look at who is bringing them in. The dressing room is leading what is happening. The tail is wagging the dog.
“Get some control back. Get some leadership. Undermining Jose on the eve of the season on why he couldn’t sign those centre-backs - who is qualified in that football club to tell Mourinho he cannot get them?"
And when it comes to a bad attitude that has caused all these problems, there's one name that keeps coming up : it's Paul Pogba. This is the player that said, after the Jose sacking, that "He fucked with the wrong baller".
Once Jose left, for 10 glorious weeks, with got a Pogba that actually put 100% effort in. Why? My believe is that he wanted to show people that he was not a lazy player. Once OGS was confirmed as permanent manager, Pogba returned back to the part timer, mercenary, inconsistent player he was at United before that.
It's the attitude of players like this, I believe, that has filtered from the most influential players, right through the squad. The fact it even began to affect hugely De Gea, a player who has been defined by consistency for 5 or 6 years, shows how it spread through the squad.
The last few games in particular showed a level of form that looked like a team that had given up, even if there were some bright sparks in the form of McTominay and Mason Greenwood.
I've no doubt that the attitude of OGS could be a panacea for some of the problems in the team. It worked, for a while. But how do you root out a problem of attitude in a team? The problem of players that don't care?
Getting rid of players like Herrera, who actually talks and behaves like someone does genuinely care, is not the way to do it. His wage demands may have seemed greater than his ability, but his contract renewal was poorly managed in the first place. It should never have come to this.
There is some hope in the attitude of players like Dalot, McTominay, and the academy players are hungry - they haven't been poisoned yet. Forging a young, hungry team is the way out of this mess.
What we need to do now is cut as much of the dead wood as possible, and let OGS fashion a team in his own image - one that is passionate, fights to the last minute, for each other and genuinely care about playing for the team, more than driving sports cars and sleeping with models.
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| Pogba has become a symbol of everything that is wrong at United in 18/19 |
Gary Neville has said, more than once, that, with the team we have, that second place result last year increasingly looks like a great achievement, given the group of player that he had at his disposal:
"It’s a really average team for what Manchester United needs to be. As a group of players I don’t like them. ‘Jose Mourinho at the time told us that it was his greatest ever achievement finishing second with that team. ‘We all laughed, we all thought: ‘It’s Jose just playing’. Maybe he was right, maybe it was a great achievement."
But quality aside, the underlying issue has been player power, and the virus of a bad attitude that has grown and grown in the changing room, and was the reason Jose was eventually forced out.
The board did not back Jose, and then the players smelled weakness and turned on the manager, as Neville said.
“It comes to a point where this would be the fourth manager in six years,” Neville said. “You have to look at who is bringing them in. The dressing room is leading what is happening. The tail is wagging the dog.
“Get some control back. Get some leadership. Undermining Jose on the eve of the season on why he couldn’t sign those centre-backs - who is qualified in that football club to tell Mourinho he cannot get them?"
And when it comes to a bad attitude that has caused all these problems, there's one name that keeps coming up : it's Paul Pogba. This is the player that said, after the Jose sacking, that "He fucked with the wrong baller".
Once Jose left, for 10 glorious weeks, with got a Pogba that actually put 100% effort in. Why? My believe is that he wanted to show people that he was not a lazy player. Once OGS was confirmed as permanent manager, Pogba returned back to the part timer, mercenary, inconsistent player he was at United before that.
It's the attitude of players like this, I believe, that has filtered from the most influential players, right through the squad. The fact it even began to affect hugely De Gea, a player who has been defined by consistency for 5 or 6 years, shows how it spread through the squad.
The last few games in particular showed a level of form that looked like a team that had given up, even if there were some bright sparks in the form of McTominay and Mason Greenwood.
I've no doubt that the attitude of OGS could be a panacea for some of the problems in the team. It worked, for a while. But how do you root out a problem of attitude in a team? The problem of players that don't care?
Getting rid of players like Herrera, who actually talks and behaves like someone does genuinely care, is not the way to do it. His wage demands may have seemed greater than his ability, but his contract renewal was poorly managed in the first place. It should never have come to this.
There is some hope in the attitude of players like Dalot, McTominay, and the academy players are hungry - they haven't been poisoned yet. Forging a young, hungry team is the way out of this mess.
What we need to do now is cut as much of the dead wood as possible, and let OGS fashion a team in his own image - one that is passionate, fights to the last minute, for each other and genuinely care about playing for the team, more than driving sports cars and sleeping with models.
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