‘New manager, new era’ read Manchester United’s first tweet of Louis van Gaal’s tenure at the club, a message which encapsulated all of the hope for the Dutchman’s arrival after the false start that Moyes’ year seemed to be. He brought in the big names, talked of his tactics and exuded confidence, unlike his comparatively weak-seeming predecessor who had claimed his side should aspire to be at City’s level.

For all the optimism and encouraging signs shown as recently as after the end of last year, it’s all been undone by a rough patch of form over the last few weeks, with fans (justifiably) craving for more of an attacking drive and consistency. Instead of leaving their relatively new manager to try and solve this problem, however, this situation has apparently left the board no other option but to sack the man who a mere 18 months before was heralding a ‘new era’. It’s true, looking at the hundreds of millions he’s spent over the summer and lofty claims about his ‘philosophy’, that van Gaal should be doing a much better job – but it seems he won’t be given a chance to turn things around, and Manchester United’s ‘new era’ will fall flat on its face again, victim to another false start. He may have only been given a 3 year contract, but realistically it was 3 years which were supposed to be laying the groundwork for Ryan Giggs to sweep in, or even for van Gaal to carry on beyond that.

Once Wenger’s done at Arsenal, the proper managerial dynasties – Sir Alex, Brian Clough, even David Moyes – will be hard to come by in a Premier League where an increasing amount of money and commercial value is at stake. Why? Because it’s simply not attainable anymore: long periods of sustained success for big clubs will always be cut short before they even really begin by impatient boards, the yearly surprises and the clamour for the latest trendy manager to spring up and take root in a big club, only to fail within a few years and never be given the chance to properly implement their tactics on the team

Of course it would be nonsensical to let several years of failure slide with untested managers: in Manchester United’s case, Sir Alex was of a different era: in the time between his appointment and departure the club became a global brand and the face of the fan base changed to encapsulate a worldwide audience, one with different demands to those of 20 years ago. This is why so many British managers are thrown out of the job early, they don’t handle the heavy expectation, and pay the price for this. Louis van Gaal has a more than impressive CV though, and transforming a club which a few years ago was seen as on the brink of disaster is not an overnight job.

Not everyone is Pep Guardiola. Not everyone has been brought up as a player in that same club, knowing its philosophy and having coached many of the players at youth level, and been able to instantly set off. Most managers need time and money to properly put their own print on a new club, the former of which seems in increasingly short supply for top level managers. In modern football, the craving for instant success has outweighed the need for a sustainable club which can consistently pay off with top finishes.

–

Jose Mourinho replacing Louis van Gaal at United is by all accounts a dream for anyone involved in selling football, be it the tabloids or the broadcasters. The disgraced manager who won it all bouncing back at one of his former club’s rivals makes for one of the stories of the year, and more importantly a few years’ supply of digs at opposition managers and headlines you wouldn’t be getting from any other boss.

As van Gaal is hounded out of Manchester by an evidently apologetic media, Mourinho arrival, for many, signals the real start of the club’s post-Ferguson renaissance. But if the club’s intention is for this ‘new era’ to come, Mourinho is exactly the wrong man to appoint.

What made David Moyes’ appointment at first seem appealing – other than his decade’s worth of Premier League experience – was the sense of a passing of the torch, having been chosen by Ferguson himself. While it would have gone on to prove a failure in the end, the intention was there: create a new dynasty, for a new manager to engrave his name onto the history of the club. The same thing was tried with van Gaal, and it seems to have failed now. The same will be tried with Mourinho, and it will fail again.

Mourinho, for all his claims that he’s wanted to try his hand at a long-term managerial job, is simply not the man for it. Sure, he’ll bring near-instant success and spend hundreds of millions in the transfer market trying to get there – just as his soon-to-be predecessor has, although Mourinho has been known to play the market well in his former clubs – but ultimately in the space of 3 years he will have started to burn bridges, and things will start to go sour. It’s been said to death, but Mourinho is the man you get to make a cash injection pay off, not to build a legacy. The club will dump a massive transfer budget on him and give him free rein on decision-making, just the sort of scenario he relishes.

–

Danny Welbeck’s departure a year and a half ago seemed at the time fairly insignificant in purely footballing terms – letting go an out of favour striker, often pushed on to the wing, in favour of a Radamel Falcao who at the time still had the world at his feet. However, for many fans this was hard to take: other than the fact that he had been sold to a rival, it was ‘one of their own’, one of the last players in the squad to be a local lad, one of the last reminders to Mancunians that this club represented them with the class of ’92 long gone and van Gaal’s first summer bringing in a host of foreign talent.

There’s credit to be given to van Gaal in that regard: he’s brought through the likes of Tyler Blackett last year and Lingard this year as fixtures of the first team. He led an Ajax team full of academy products to a Champions League win. He’s no stranger to giving youth a chance, even if the excessive spending over the last year and a half has ultimately been one of the strikes against him.

Mourinho, however, is a different case. Much has been made of his reluctance to bring through member of the youth squad – Ruben Loftus-Cheek being one who Chelsea fans have particularly wanted to see getting minutes on the field. What makes Manchester United think that this would change for them? He would continue the reckless spending and drown out the home-grown talent, leaving United, a club desperate to rekindle their identity – or find a new one – under a new manager, to be left where they began, when Ferguson and the class of ’92 all retired, with no smooth transition into the new.

There would nonetheless be positives from appointing Mourinho should United part with van Gaal.

A popular argument against Mourinho’s appointment, naturally, is the irony is United fans clamouring for a manager who is perceived to be even more defensive than van Gaal, whose increasingly stagnant attacking play has been a motive for many peoples’ demand for change. While Mourinho is definitely a pragmatic manager, sitting deep and hitting on the counter being one of his trademark match management plans, it should be said that it’s his own Real Madrid side that won La Liga scoring 121 goals on their way to 100 points . The team that steamrolled the league found themselves attacking in numbers – often on the break – and creating width as roles often interchanged. Nothing like what people have come to expect from him.

However, is that really possible at Manchester United? The potential is there: Memphis Depay – who has the ability but plays in a fairly restricting system: countering football more akin to the ones he scored from at PSV might suit him better – and Anthony Martial – whose blistering start has tailed off of late – have clearly shown great promise, although that has only been showcased in glimpses thus far. They are obviously nowhere near the level to play in a system that worked thanks to the quality of Ronaldo, Benzema and Ozil amongst others.

Even less effective, however, would be to implement a defensive mindset which involves everyone tracking back. Whilst there are some workhorses in the team – Wayne Rooney, although his decline as a player is becoming more and more evident – the likes of Mata, for example, will not be welcoming the arrival of his former boss who flogged him off for not being able to put in a defensive shift when asked. In short, for Mourinho to recede into ‘parking the bus’ United will need more quality, more of the defensive will that saw Chelsea win the league. In the meantime, however, it is probably safe to assume that he wont be playing 10 defenders every game if he is to join United.

At Chelsea, it would have been stupid to play all guns blazing – with the attacking talent at his disposal – against teams who will have countered it with a defensive wall. Mourinho doesn’t set up his teams like that because he’s afraid of losing, he does so because it’s the only way to consistently win.

–

To say Mourinho is the complete antithesis of what Manchester United stand for, and what they would looking for in van Gaal successor, is wrong. He is one of the best managers in the game and has more than proven himself with more that a decade of work, and on taking the United job would no doubt bring success to the club. The facets which fail Mourinho, however, are the ones which they’re most in need of. A steadying of the ship is needed, not a quick fix that will leave the club worse off (footballing-wise obviously) than before.

~

If you think this article is at least half decent, please share/like, it would be much appreciated!