Jose Mourinho Keen To Change The Mentality At Manchester United, This Is What He Is Doing
Feb 19, 2017 at 1:46 PM
A Zlatan Ibrahimovic hat-trick secured an ideal first leg 3-0 win against St Etienne for Manchester United ahead of the trip to France. That is a lead they should comfortably defend.
Things are looking rosy for United with them moving closer to the top four after 16 unbeaten games in the Premier League, a League Cup final against Southampton and still in the hunt in the Europa League and FA Cup.
However things were also looking good for Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham at various points during the season until they had costly blips that have derailed their seasons.
Jose Mourinho will hope United’s blip has already come and gone but there were worrying signs on Thursday night despite the 3-0 scoreline.
United gave up far too many chances to the away side and were very lucky not to concede due to some poor finishing and good goalkeeping from Sergio Romero.
The first half performance was very sloppy. Eric Bailly made some great tackles but gave the ball away too much which led to anxious moments while Chris Smalling also looked suspect. United also missed Michael Carrick’s defensive cover and control of the ball in midfield.
Fellaini did not help while Herrera was sloppy. Paul Pogba had had his critics but was probably United’s best player in that first half.
It was complacency. Mourinho did his traditional early half time walk down the tunnel despite the 1-0 lead.
As they have throughout this season, things improved in the second half as the players seemed to wake up and they ran out comfortable winners in the end.
However, Mourinho still expressed his concern to the media after the game and fired a warning to his players. It was no surprise he had a go at his players at half time.
“I had a feeling in the dressing room immediately it was too noisy, too funny, too relaxed. Then my assistants had a feeling in the warm up that some of the guys were not really focused on getting the right adrenaline in their bodies.
“Then the game started and the first thing we did was a back pass to a striker to be face-to-face with Sergio (Romero). So a lack of concentration and when you don’t have it, it’s difficult to recover it. I could tell from the touchline that it was difficult and I needed the communication at half-time. We were lucky to be 1-0 up at half-time, but second half was a different story and a different result.” Quote via RTÉ.
In the modern game, several managers are afraid to criticise the modern day player publicly or even privately. It is like they live in a bubble which is probably precisely the problem with Arsenal and Arsene Wenger’s man-management.
Since Sir Alex Ferguson retired, the mentality at the club had gone rather soft but Mourinho is on the right track to changing that again.
He should have been ‘The Chosen One’, not David Moyes but as they say, better late than never.