StephenH
David Ginola
sent my CV in last night. Mr Woodward apparently was very impressed!
-
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Circus ManUnitus - Erik's At The Wheel
- Thread starter Jordinho
- Start date
sent my CV in last night. Mr Woodward apparently was very impressed!
jts1882
Dean Richards
While sacking two managers in three years is not excessive in modern football, United have excelled themselves in the classless and inept way they have done it. They have probably found the man best suited to the philosophy of the current club hierarchy.
I also find it amusing how United are going through managers. For years we have heard United fans smugly declaring that they don't sack managers like anyone else, when it was patently obvious that they do except when they are managed by legends (Busby, Ferguson). Now they sack managers and waste money in the process like everyone else. Next up the Arsenal fans who now seem to despise Wenger.
I also find it amusing how United are going through managers. For years we have heard United fans smugly declaring that they don't sack managers like anyone else, when it was patently obvious that they do except when they are managed by legends (Busby, Ferguson). Now they sack managers and waste money in the process like everyone else. Next up the Arsenal fans who now seem to despise Wenger.
Grays_1890
Colin Calderwood
Man United - Classless
Mourinho - Classless
Match made in heaven
Mourinho - Classless
Match made in heaven
Disagree, he looked like what he is, a dinosaur. While I agree the club has deep issues and the squad is horribly unbalanced, he has spent money like Charlie Sheen in a brothel and the balance is no better.
Di Maria & Hernandez seasons after leaving United are also pretty damning.
Of course if anyone thinks Jose is bringing entertaining football with him is in for a surprise ...
Rorschach
Sonny Walters
I'd be surprised if even the most clueless Utd fan does not realise what they are in for with Mourinho. It won't be pretty, that's for sure.
How nice it would be to see them have an extended period away from the top of the league (like Liverpool) and the red masses turning on Mourinho. I don't expect that really but we can all dream.
Modric THFC
Jimmy McCormick
Mourinho has never taken over a club in such a mess before.
Porto season before Mourinho finished 3rd in the league. 1st in Mourinho's first season
Chelsea season before Mourinho finished 2nd in the league. 1st in Mourinho's first season, 5th when he was sacked
Inter season before Mourinho finished 1st in the league. 1st in Mourinho's first season
Real season before Mourinho finished 2nd in the league. 2nd in Mourinho's first season, 2nd in his last
Chelsea season before Mourinho finished 3rd in the league. 3rd in Mourinho's first season, 16th when he was sacked
United season before Mourinho finished 5th in the league
I cant wait to see United be used as buyer for all Jorge Mendes's clients now.
Terrible transfers being forced through be of Mendes links to Woodward and Mourinho. More Falcao's and Bebe's.
We will be deciding on transfer based on what Paul Mitchell has identified and who will fit in Poch's team.
And United will be buying players based on who their agent is.
Porto season before Mourinho finished 3rd in the league. 1st in Mourinho's first season
Chelsea season before Mourinho finished 2nd in the league. 1st in Mourinho's first season, 5th when he was sacked
Inter season before Mourinho finished 1st in the league. 1st in Mourinho's first season
Real season before Mourinho finished 2nd in the league. 2nd in Mourinho's first season, 2nd in his last
Chelsea season before Mourinho finished 3rd in the league. 3rd in Mourinho's first season, 16th when he was sacked
United season before Mourinho finished 5th in the league
I cant wait to see United be used as buyer for all Jorge Mendes's clients now.
Terrible transfers being forced through be of Mendes links to Woodward and Mourinho. More Falcao's and Bebe's.
We will be deciding on transfer based on what Paul Mitchell has identified and who will fit in Poch's team.
And United will be buying players based on who their agent is.
Grays_1890
Colin Calderwood
Chelsea were one of the, if not the first trend setters in spending big to buy success...Leeds tried and failed as they were never near rich enough to sustain it and Man Uniteds spend was always within realism of their income.
Now the games changed, Mourinho will not success at United, I have already had money on it.
LVG was sacked for lack of CL and League success so beyond that Mourinho has no hope unless he wins or comes close to winning either, he won't not in todays game
Now the games changed, Mourinho will not success at United, I have already had money on it.
LVG was sacked for lack of CL and League success so beyond that Mourinho has no hope unless he wins or comes close to winning either, he won't not in todays game
braineclipse
Willie Hall
They have no real transfer structure in place. Has been said that LvG was surprised by how much responsibility he had in the transfer market. Mourinho has some dodgy deals behind him, but he really is excellent at identifying what is missing in a team to get them improved (playing his style) and identifying players that will fill those roles. Chelsea built on his core group of players for a decade after he left. Inter he brought CL success by selling Ibra and buying his players, Real he got ahead of Pep's Barca juggernaut in part my making those good short term signings.
You might of course end up being right. But short term Mourinho has always delivered results. United have money and some really good players there already.
There are not many managers around that are more likely to make United a real threat again next season. Not anyone I can think of that they could realistically get.
Mourinho is going to be interesting for them.
- I think he would have got them CL this season (he's worth a few more points than LVG)
- However, I wouldn't be completely surprised if he goes and buys a bunch of established players and negates the progress of the few young players in the team (and they rot on bench or go off into eternal loan land)
- With Pep & Wenger for him to be in competition with (neither of who he really likes), I expect more than few entertaining media moments.
As a few others have said, the level of team restructuring and the need for a much better hit ratio than either United or Jose have had with player acquisition in recent past may be too much of a challenge.
Will they win the league next year = no, a cup = quite possible.
United has gone for another short term solution, but perhaps one that makes sense, they are in real danger of being out of top 4 for an extended time.
- I think he would have got them CL this season (he's worth a few more points than LVG)
- However, I wouldn't be completely surprised if he goes and buys a bunch of established players and negates the progress of the few young players in the team (and they rot on bench or go off into eternal loan land)
- With Pep & Wenger for him to be in competition with (neither of who he really likes), I expect more than few entertaining media moments.
As a few others have said, the level of team restructuring and the need for a much better hit ratio than either United or Jose have had with player acquisition in recent past may be too much of a challenge.
Will they win the league next year = no, a cup = quite possible.
United has gone for another short term solution, but perhaps one that makes sense, they are in real danger of being out of top 4 for an extended time.
lurker of old
Wilson Palacios
I just hope we refuse to sell them any of our key players - meaning the first 11 and next 4 in line. Hopefully our days of being a feeder club to Man U are over (please please)
I
indianspur
Guest
I think they will tempt Real with a world record bid for Bale
braineclipse
Willie Hall
Thing is United can afford to let a couple of talented youngsters rot. They can also afford a few transfer misses, that honestly Mourinho seems to have fewer of that most managers anyway. What they will struggle to afford is another 4-5 seasons of the results they've had so far post-Ferguson.
I actually think the size of the restructuring job gets overstated. De Gea, Darmian, Smalling, Blind/Rojo, Shaw, Schneiderlin, Herrera/Fellaini, Depay, Rooney, Lindgaard, Martial is not a bad 11. That's ignoring Carrick and Schweinsteiger because of age and Mata because of the Mourinho history. Not saying all of those will be seen as good enough. But 3-4 good solid Mourinho signings that fit his system and that could be a very good team.
-When he first got to Chelsea he added what? Cech, Carvalho, Essien and Drogba in his first season. As well as the less successful Ferreira, Kezman and Tiago.
-At Inter he "only" signed Mancini, Muntari and Quaresma in his first season. But to build his CL winning side he then signed Milito, Motta, Sneijder and Eto'o. With Ibrahimovic leaving of course.
-Real Madrid Ozil, Khedira, Carvalho and Di Maria all in his first season. 3 of those went on to become regulars in his fairly successful Real side.
-Back at Chelsea Willian, Matic, Schurrle, Salah, Zouma, van Ginkel. Again some hits and misses, but Willian and Matic became instrumental in their title winning side, and before winning the title he of course added Costa and Fabregas who were key players for them as well as the less successful Cuadrado, Filipe Luis and Remy.
I think the typical Mourinho first season 3-4 players that more or less slot straight into the first team approach is exactly what United need. And if he gets those signings right, as he usually does, that makes for a very decent looking United team along with some of the players listed above.
Modric THFC
Jimmy McCormick
The good thing for us is United are no longer a title winning football team but a highly profitable sideshow.
Great article.
http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soc...s-game-1.2656918?__vfz=c_pages=11000002670848
Mourinho and United a perfect match in ratings game
On Saturday Manchester United won the FA Cup, but that was the second-biggest story about the club in the world’s media, behind the news that Jose Mourinho is about to replace Louis van Gaal as manager.
Some saw this as an example of everything that’s wrong with modern football and the media that cover it. But it’s also a graphic illustration of why the logic of appointing Mourinho proved so beguiling to the decision-makers at Old Trafford.
To the people who control United – the Glazer family and their executives Ed Woodward and Richard Arnold – the purpose of the club is to make money. And the way it makes money has changed.
Until the Premier League era, United’s income chiefly derived from the crowds who turned up every other week at Old Trafford. Gate receipts were closely tied to football performance. United first became England’s best-supported club in the late 1950s, thanks to the fame of the Busby Babes. After sliding down the attendance charts in the early 1960s, they regained top spot when the second great Busby side won the league and European Cup. The better United played, the more money they made.
In the 1990s a new stream of money started to flow in from television, first via the Premier League’s deal with Sky, and then through the Champions League television pool. Television income was also broadly performance-related. The higher United finished in the league, the more they earned from Sky, and they had to finish at or near the top of the league to access the European television money.
The year 2016 is projected to be the first in which more than 50 per cent of United’s income derives from commercial sources – sponsorship deals, merchandising and the new growth area of “mobile and content”.
This is a significant tipping point. For the first time, United’s income is not primarily derived from their own business activity, but from their usefulness as an advertising platform for other businesses.
Manchester United started as a football club that made most of its money by selling football matches to a paying audience. That is now a secondary part of the business. United’s most important customers are no longer the audiences that pay to watch the football, they are the corporate partners who pay to be associated with the brand. And the most valuable thing that United sells – the company’s primary product – is no longer the football. It is the audience itself.
Richard Arnold has described the club as “the biggest TV show in the world.” The analogy of a television show is useful in grasping United’s metamorphosis. You can think of “the football side” as the content of the show, the soap opera plot points and storylines. Will Deirdre choose Ken or Mike? Will they find Trevor Jordache under the patio? Who shot JR?
These questions are what interest the viewers, but the producers think about the show from a different angle. The question they’re interested in is: will it get the ratings? Because the producers aren’t selling content – that’s what actors and writers and directors do. The producers are selling ratings.
Now that United are in the business of delivering ratings rather than trophies, questions such as “Shouldn’t we be slightly worried about the way Jose Mourinho’s last two jobs have ended?” or “Does Mourinho’s reactive football really fit with the Manchester United Way?” or “Does Mourinho’s reluctance to trust young players make him a bad choice for a club that has always taken pride in developing its own players?” no longer really matter.
The only question that counts is: will people around the world tune in to watch a Jose Mourinho-managed Manchester United? And the answer is clearly yes. A majority of United fans are pleased with the appointment, and even the ones who dislike Mourinho will find themselves irresistibly drawn to hate-watch.
Once everyone is tuning in, questions of philosophy and principle pale into insignificance. It doesn’t matter that Mourinho’s teams play on the counter. They also usually score a lot of goals. A lot of people these days don’t even watch full games, they watch the clips – in Arnold’s phrase, “consumable chunks of content that fans can engage with on the go.” Mourinho’s teams have always generated enough of those consumable chunks for his supporters to argue that they play the game the right way. If people noisily disagree over it, all the better for ratings.
Likewise, youth development must be seen in its proper commercial perspective. United could, for instance, decide not to buy a new centre forward, betting that Marcus Rashford will develop into a top striker. But what would be the point of that? They’ve hired Mourinho, who comes with his agent Jorge Mendes, globally renowned master of the transfer market. They can hardly be expected to refrain from flexing their new club’s financial muscle. That would be the kind of thing Arsene Wenger would do, and we know what Mourinho thinks of him.
As Mendes could explain, spending millions on players is part of the counterintuitive commercial dynamic of modern football. What is more exciting than a superstar signing? Spending in and of itself has become integral to the spectacle, part of what generates the buzz, the clicks, the shares, the likes, and the follows that sponsors trust the Manchester United brand to deliver. Such spending is also good for agents, but who could begrudge them a consideration for their role in keeping the dream factory running?
United is no longer the club that was built by Busby and Ferguson according to the sort of principles that would have been made sense to any 19th-century Scottish industrialist: thrift, efficiency, hard-work, long-term planning. The game has changed, and in Mourinho they will be appointing the perfect coach for their new purposes.
Great article.
http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soc...s-game-1.2656918?__vfz=c_pages=11000002670848
Mourinho and United a perfect match in ratings game
On Saturday Manchester United won the FA Cup, but that was the second-biggest story about the club in the world’s media, behind the news that Jose Mourinho is about to replace Louis van Gaal as manager.
Some saw this as an example of everything that’s wrong with modern football and the media that cover it. But it’s also a graphic illustration of why the logic of appointing Mourinho proved so beguiling to the decision-makers at Old Trafford.
To the people who control United – the Glazer family and their executives Ed Woodward and Richard Arnold – the purpose of the club is to make money. And the way it makes money has changed.
Until the Premier League era, United’s income chiefly derived from the crowds who turned up every other week at Old Trafford. Gate receipts were closely tied to football performance. United first became England’s best-supported club in the late 1950s, thanks to the fame of the Busby Babes. After sliding down the attendance charts in the early 1960s, they regained top spot when the second great Busby side won the league and European Cup. The better United played, the more money they made.
In the 1990s a new stream of money started to flow in from television, first via the Premier League’s deal with Sky, and then through the Champions League television pool. Television income was also broadly performance-related. The higher United finished in the league, the more they earned from Sky, and they had to finish at or near the top of the league to access the European television money.
The year 2016 is projected to be the first in which more than 50 per cent of United’s income derives from commercial sources – sponsorship deals, merchandising and the new growth area of “mobile and content”.
This is a significant tipping point. For the first time, United’s income is not primarily derived from their own business activity, but from their usefulness as an advertising platform for other businesses.
Manchester United started as a football club that made most of its money by selling football matches to a paying audience. That is now a secondary part of the business. United’s most important customers are no longer the audiences that pay to watch the football, they are the corporate partners who pay to be associated with the brand. And the most valuable thing that United sells – the company’s primary product – is no longer the football. It is the audience itself.
Richard Arnold has described the club as “the biggest TV show in the world.” The analogy of a television show is useful in grasping United’s metamorphosis. You can think of “the football side” as the content of the show, the soap opera plot points and storylines. Will Deirdre choose Ken or Mike? Will they find Trevor Jordache under the patio? Who shot JR?
These questions are what interest the viewers, but the producers think about the show from a different angle. The question they’re interested in is: will it get the ratings? Because the producers aren’t selling content – that’s what actors and writers and directors do. The producers are selling ratings.
Now that United are in the business of delivering ratings rather than trophies, questions such as “Shouldn’t we be slightly worried about the way Jose Mourinho’s last two jobs have ended?” or “Does Mourinho’s reactive football really fit with the Manchester United Way?” or “Does Mourinho’s reluctance to trust young players make him a bad choice for a club that has always taken pride in developing its own players?” no longer really matter.
The only question that counts is: will people around the world tune in to watch a Jose Mourinho-managed Manchester United? And the answer is clearly yes. A majority of United fans are pleased with the appointment, and even the ones who dislike Mourinho will find themselves irresistibly drawn to hate-watch.
Once everyone is tuning in, questions of philosophy and principle pale into insignificance. It doesn’t matter that Mourinho’s teams play on the counter. They also usually score a lot of goals. A lot of people these days don’t even watch full games, they watch the clips – in Arnold’s phrase, “consumable chunks of content that fans can engage with on the go.” Mourinho’s teams have always generated enough of those consumable chunks for his supporters to argue that they play the game the right way. If people noisily disagree over it, all the better for ratings.
Likewise, youth development must be seen in its proper commercial perspective. United could, for instance, decide not to buy a new centre forward, betting that Marcus Rashford will develop into a top striker. But what would be the point of that? They’ve hired Mourinho, who comes with his agent Jorge Mendes, globally renowned master of the transfer market. They can hardly be expected to refrain from flexing their new club’s financial muscle. That would be the kind of thing Arsene Wenger would do, and we know what Mourinho thinks of him.
As Mendes could explain, spending millions on players is part of the counterintuitive commercial dynamic of modern football. What is more exciting than a superstar signing? Spending in and of itself has become integral to the spectacle, part of what generates the buzz, the clicks, the shares, the likes, and the follows that sponsors trust the Manchester United brand to deliver. Such spending is also good for agents, but who could begrudge them a consideration for their role in keeping the dream factory running?
United is no longer the club that was built by Busby and Ferguson according to the sort of principles that would have been made sense to any 19th-century Scottish industrialist: thrift, efficiency, hard-work, long-term planning. The game has changed, and in Mourinho they will be appointing the perfect coach for their new purposes.
I
indianspur
Guest
Very interesting article above. Wow.
Robbo
Les Ferdinand
This is incredibly sad and extremely interesting at the same time.
Rorschach
Sonny Walters
Exactly how I felt reading it. Excellent article.
Craig_J
Eidur Gudjohnsen
Modric THFC
Jimmy McCormick
Oh to be a circus...
That's what happens when you sell your own TV rights.
Still what is it? 1 League win in 8 seasons.
