Despite having lost two consecutive fixtures against Wolfsburg and AFC Bournemouth prior to Saturday afternoon’s home meeting with Norwich City, even the most depressive Manchester United supporter would have thought the Red Devils could bounce back against the Canaries.
With Norwich having never beaten United in the Premier League before, that record is now history with Saturday’s 1-2 victory heaping the misery onto Louis van Gaal who is quite rightly under huge pressure.
Naturally, United have been linked with the currently vacant Jose Mourinho at the minute after the now former Chelsea boss’ much publicised sacking last Thursday.
The Football Transfer Tavern is packed to the rafters tonight with punters creeping inside from the cold to watch the huge Monday Night Football clash between Arsenal and Manchester City and prior to kick-off, a lot of the talk has been focused upon whether Mourinho would make a decent replacement, possibly as soon as the remainder of this season.
Seen as the enemy for years by Red Devils supporters, a large majority of United fans by the bar would take Mourinho given they are absolutely sick and tired of the van Gaal excuses that have worn incredibly thin this term.
With our landlord listening in on what our regulars are saying, here’s five reasons that punters have come up with to justify why Mourinho should replace van Gaal sooner rather than later.
[ffc-gallery]
Click on the image below to reveal the five reasons Manchester United should replace Louis van Gaal with Jose Mourinho.
[/ffc-gallery]
He’ll boast a burning passion to prove Abramovich wrong
Make no mistake; Jose Mourinho is Mr Chelsea but don’t think that this will rule him out of the running for the top job at Old Trafford.
While previously you may have thought that Mourinho wouldn’t want to manage any other English side other than Chelsea, the manner of his departure from Stamford Bridge has a lot of our Blues regulars thinking that the Portuguese will come back and haunt their club.
While the Chelsea supporters and Mourinho were one of course, the players and ultimately Roman Abramovich weren’t with him and being the character that he is, surely Jose will boast a burning passion to prove them wrong and in this country on a first hand basis to boot?
He’s more interested in results than a ‘philosophy’
One of our punters made the jibe earlier by the bar for his mate to guess just how many times Louis van Gaal has mentioned the word ‘philosophy’ in his Old Trafford tenure so far.
With his answer being 1254, van Gaal has sounded like a broken record and we can’t for one second think that a home defeat to the likes of Norwich City was part of his masterplan.
The biggest criticism of van Gaal this season by fans and ex-players alike is that United’s possession-based game is boring and not the United way.
Now while Jose Mourinho has of course made a career out of making his sides hard to beat while parking the bus when necessary, what must be said is that he’s far more interested in results on a week-to-week basis than a philosophy.
The master of short-term success of course, if United fail to win silverware under Louis van Gaal this term, it’ll be three full seasons win which the Red Devils have won absolutely nothing.
With an entire generation of United fans having grown up in the Sir Alex Ferguson era, going this length of time without silverware is just alien to them and somebody who’ll get results on a consistent basis such as Mourinho has shown in years gone by will surely be sought-after to bring the glory days back.
He previously wanted the top job at Old Trafford
With The Guardian among other sources having claimed that Jose Mourinho cried upon being overlooked for the Old Trafford hotseat back in 2013, it’s common knowledge among football fans that the Portuguese wanted to succeed Sir Alex Ferguson following his retirement.
As we all know, David Moyes made a pigs ear of his Red Devils appointment but with Mourinho having been denied once in the past, we don’t think Manchester United will make the same mistake again.
As alluded to on our last slide, the current man in charge Louis van Gaal has had an illustrious career managing some of the very best teams in the game but he has never managed in the Premier League before and it’s starting to show!
He’s rated ever so highly by Sir Alex Ferguson
Whenever Sir Alex Ferguson is quizzed about Jose Mourinho’s credentials, the legendary Scot has always been highly complimentary about the Portuguese.
Now while some United supporters may still be against the idea of welcoming an enemy into the Old Trafford hotseat, who could ignore the words of Fergie who is surely best placed out of anybody to judge on these kind of things – minus the appointment of David Moyes of course!
Having clashed multiple times down the years, infamously when Mourinho’s Porto side shocked United at Old Trafford all those years ago, Fergie spotted something he liked in the Portuguese and that is probably the fact he’s a winner – at all costs – much like himself.
Quite simply, he’s won the Premier League title before
From his expressions all throughout this campaign so far, you can clearly see that Jose Mourinho was a man totally alien to what was happening before his very eyes.
Experiencing poor performances week in, week out for the very first time in his career, you could see he was appalled with what he was seeing and didn’t necessarily know what to do about it.
That said, it’s also obvious that several of the Chelsea dressing room had lost confidence in their manager and thus, the damage was done early doors.
But make no mistake; Mourinho is still a top class manager who all along remained defiant that he wanted to turnaround the situation at Stamford Bridge.
What he’d receive at Old Trafford is a totally new dressing room and alternative environment to what he’s known before in England and after all, wherever he’s been from the off, he’s proved immediately successful and that’s what a lot of United supporters crave right now.
