Fuck Off Mourinho

[EIM]

Ferguson was perfectly happy with the Glazers.

Course he was. He had complete control at last. Absolute power. It's what Mourinho thought he was getting but hadn't considered Woodward.

[nmrfox]

Also, mourinho inherited a large, pretty well balanced squad, who had the best defence in the league the season before he arrived, despite massive injury problems.

Heartwarming to see that, despite these troubled times for Manchester United and their supporters, TAB can still manage to reference the injuries.

[ursus arctos]

Some classics never depreciate.

[Third rate Leszno]

One thing that Solksjaer will have going in his favour is that there's going to be quite a few players who are keen to prove that they're not the enemy.

There's that, but there's also a question of whether any of the bigger names will be thinking "hang on, a bloke from the Norwegian league? how am I supposed to learn anything from him? what's he ever done that qualifies him to manage Man Utd?"

Will be interesting to see how the dynamics pan out.

[blameless]

OGS is going to be in the same situation Zidane was at Real Madrid - he's such an utter hero from his playing days with the club that if the players get sniffy about playing for him it'll be their arses that get tanned rather than his.

[ursus arctos]

That works for much of the fan base, but not necessarily for the players. The respect accorded Zidane at Madrid was, I believe, at least as much a reflection of his status in the world game as it was a reflection of what he accomplished at the Bernabeu.

[Janik]

And Zidane headbutts people who seriously rile him. That was also important in exerting his authority.

[ursus arctos]

Especially given the presence of Sergio Ramos and Pepe.

[Tactical Genius]

They wouldn't have spent £100m. Net after selling Pogba to great embarassment it would be maybe £40m. I really think this is partly a Paul or Jose moment and they knew Jose was never going to be the better one to back.

Pogba is not the only high profile Man U player that has massively depreciated under Mourinho this season alone:

Lukaku
De Gea
Fred
Sanchez
Martial
Lingard
Rashford

all of these players are not worth half the money they were in Late July. That a hit on the ballance sheet of the best part of £300 million.

[EIM]

I'd completely forgotten that Solskjaer had managed Pogba in the stiffs. I wonder if, ahem, senior players were consulted regarding the choice of caretaker manager?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

That works for much of the fan base, but not necessarily for the players. The respect accorded Zidane at Madrid was, I believe, at least as much a reflection of his status in the world game as it was a reflection of what he accomplished at the Bernabeu.

Yeah, that and you know that Perez loves him more than you, even if you're Sergio Ramos. That and he's fucking terrifyingly hard. I wonder how many people had a row with him in his time as coach? Do they have anywhere like Marseilles in Spain?

[Bored Of Education]

Someone said that Cantona wanted the job this morning. I hope not. It's bad enough that his excellence was somewhat tarnished by having to play for Man Utd without him going back. They would never appreciate him as he deserves neither.

[EIM]

Fuck right off.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Pogba is not the only high profile Man U player that has massively depreciated under Mourinho this season alone:

Lukaku
De Gea
Fred
Sanchez
Martial
Lingard
Rashford

all of these players are not worth half the money they were in Late July. That a hit on the ballance sheet of the best part of £300 million.

You do Know that martial recently scored in five league games in a row, and has scored against City, arsenal, and two against chelsea. He's got 8 goals in a little over 13 games worth of playing time this season. That's fucking insane for someone playing on the wing for a jose mourinho team. He gets on average one shot every 45 minutes in the league, and he scores with 40% of them. Martial averaged a goal every 180 minutes last season from the left wing. One in two wasn't that bad. Martial's a really good player, by anyone's standards. mourinho just kept shitting on him because he was a major long term project from the pre-jose era, and he's wanted to replace him with Ivan fucking Perisic.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

OGS is going to be in the same situation Zidane was at Real Madrid - he's such an utter hero from his playing days with the club that if the players get sniffy about playing for him it'll be their arses that get tanned rather than his.

Yeah. They'll say "So He's the one sliding on his knees in that photo that is plastered all over the fucking place." and "So he's who that song is about." or "Did you notice how All the angry shouting old people were crying big salty tears of sweet sweet nostalgia when he was appointed?" 90% of it though is that he's not mourinho. He could go in and shit in the middle of the dressing room before the first game, and it would be an improvement. He's also not an idiot. These players have to deal with enormous numbers of different coaches in their careers. I don't know how much it matters beyond what impression they themselves make. Oh, and if they pick them. That's the most important thing.

[Patrick Thistle]

TAB, just how happy have you been in the last 36 hours?

[DCI Harry Batt]

He does love working for utter scum, doesn't he? I'm thinking owners rather than clubs as such.

[scratchmonkey]

Liverpool fail to beat Manchester United in the league last year, and finish six points below them, but were probably better.

Glad to see my half-assed dig got some purchase (as a Charlton fan, I have to get my jollies *somewhere*). The main point is that there wasn't a lot between Manchester United and Liverpool last season (and yes, if you're looking at statistical variance, United were the luckiest team in the league and Liverpool were the unluckiest) and pointing to "they finished second" as a measure of quality isn't giving you a great context because 1. the top team dusted everybody and 2. the difference between positions 2-4 was pretty small.

[Tactical Genius]

You do Know that martial recently scored in five league games in a row, and has scored against City, arsenal, and two against chelsea. He's got 8 goals in a little over 13 games worth of playing time this season. That's fucking insane for someone playing on the wing for a jose mourinho team. He gets on average one shot every 45 minutes in the league, and he scores with 40% of them. Martial averaged a goal every 180 minutes last season from the left wing. One in two wasn't that bad. Martial's a really good player, by anyone's standards. mourinho just kept shitting on him because he was a major long term project from the pre-jose era, and he's wanted to replace him with Ivan fucking Perisic.

You are actually making my point for me. Jose was the only person in England who doesn't rate Martial as a footballer and has gone out of his way to making him look bad in every way. At the beginning of the Season, Spurs and Liverpool supporters would have had him instead of Lucas Moura and Shaquiri. Im not so sure that would be the case now.

All the players I listed above have massively depreciated in value under Jose and quite alarmingly since the beginning of the season. It would be almost impossible to move them on for a fair price due to the dip in their desirability to big clubs and massive wages they are on.

[Sean of the Shed]

Anthony Martial should be being called World Cup Winner Anthony Martial by now, but because Jose Mourinho only appreciates players who look like they should be on a WWE undercard it is Olivier Giroud who is now being called World Cup Winner Olivier Giroud instead of him.

[EIM]

Martial's talent isn't in question. His attitude and application is. For large parts of last season he was a waste of space, sulking behind his fullback, trudging slowly off the pitch Neil Webb style when subbed against Chelsea, and refusing to attack the defence, giving the ball back to the fullback instead. It went so far as for one fanzine writer to suggest they'd rather have Nani playing, an opinion that shouldn't have been as popular as it was.

Hopefully now Mourinho has gone we can have Martial playing to his full potential, because he can, when in the right mood, be absolutely unplayable. But when he's in another mood, you may as well play with 10.

[EIM]

Anyway, today I'm mostly laughing at Paul Pogba celebrating Mourinho's sacking by shouting "He fucked with the wrong baller!"

What a fucking child.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

All the players I listed above have massively depreciated in value under Jose and quite alarmingly since the beginning of the season. It would be almost impossible to move them on for a fair price due to the dip in their desirability to big clubs and massive wages they are on.

On a side issue, I'm not sure that this is a useful way to think about things any more. Three 70% rises in the TV contract over the last decade, and a trebling in the turnover of football clubs, along with the super concentration of wealth on the continent into four clubs has kind of broken any meaningful sense of value. There's 10/11 huge clubs at the apex of world football. and about half of those count as super rich, and There's a price for these clubs (which man utd have usually paid) there's a price for the arsenals, tottenhams and juventuses of this world. and then there's a price for other clubs. So essentially, unless those players are coveted by another one of the clubs at a similar rarified level then their value has gone down.

Think about it from the point of view of Spurs. Spurs only buy players from further down the pyramid, so if spurs sign a player, they are paying a tier 2 price (The price for a club in the 300-400 million price range). If they're going to sell this player it's either going to be to RM/Barca/PSG or the two manchester clubs. at which case they basically multiply the price by 4 or more, or they sell him back down the pyramid at which point it's a question of has inflation risen enough over the course of his contract to allow say everton to pay Spurs what spurs paid for him.

[That Night In Barcelona]

That's all well and good but right now there's no one going to be sold by Man Utd to any of the other 'tier 1' clubs, like the way Coutinho went for 100m Euros to Barcelona. The assets have depreciated significantly over the past 12 months - if Lukaku was sold now, for example, he'd be going for half the amount he was signed for, despite every club increasing in wealth.

[ursus arctos]

Lukaku is a bad example, though, as there was never another “Tier 1” club that was interested in him at the price they paid.

It is worth noting that TAB’s system doesn’t work for players with rescission clauses (including everyone on la Liga).