Gary Neville is a very good pundit, in so much that his understanding of the game is excellent, and he’s won at the highest level – so his is an authoritative voice. This is where the praise gets parked this time around, as I don’t believe I’ve witnessed such train wreck of an interview in a long time.
Neville acknowledges he doesn’r like Mourinho, and that’s good, because his comments only makes sense when one understands the level of unrepentant bias involved. I cannot claim to be intimate with the inner workings of Manchester United Football Club, but I can share this with you. In the history of Tottenham Hotspur Football club, I will remember that it was Juande Ramos in the hot seat when we won the League Cup. We did not win it DESPITE him, and to infer anything along those lines would be petulant in the extreme.
According to Neville, Pochettino – who has won nothing anywhere – is a tough act to follow, and Mourinho is essentially a bum who needs to prove himself, as his stock devalued over the years. Mourinho has never coached anywhere and failed to win a trophy!
This degree of prejudice here is extraordinary, I’m astonished that The Sun’s Joshua Jones was willing to regurgitate these quotes without passing fair comment.
José Mourinho remains the only Man United manager to have any silverware since Sir Alex Ferguson retired*. No United coach has come close to his achievements indeed, they’ve all been fired for being abject failures. The current United gaffer is looking to be on the same trajectory as the rest of them!
Neville says that Mourinho ‘looks’ happy, but he will be judged in 6 months. These are not the words one would associate with anyone who either understands football or might claim to be an authority.
Our Portuguese Pulis is so far, has being playing an absolute blinder at Tottenham. He’s piece by piece removing the loser mentality from the club, and Lord only knows how, managed to get Daniel Levy to do his bidding in the transfer market.
Mourinho has disrupted a fundamentally unsuccessful club, and his next task is tip upside down those external to this club.
Hilarious that the gaffer has Neville clucking. Let’s finish this job we’ve started.
*Wild lie. Van Gaal won the FA Cup.
Utd won the FA Cup under Van Gaal, so he was the first to get silverware after Ferguson not Jose…
He does actually.
Jenas has been very negative in the past too,but tried to downplay his comments so as not to upset people.
Wasn’t staying permanently in an hotel his own decision,strange though it appeared.
The issue was not in choosing Kane over Moura…was the fact it should have dropped Alli! but what would you know. 😀
Dismiss Burnley as what exactly? We gave them too much respect and they ended up having far more shots on goal than us. That can’t be right. But it’s true they can put big teams off their game.
Trouble with trying to win every game 1-0 is you’ll end up with a lot of 0-0’s. Sounds like a George Graham managed team.
Wouldn’t say Moura was “on fire”, okay somebody lit him up for a few minutes, but the flames soon went out and have barely rekindled.
I was only talking about this season,but well pointed out.
He had the Champions League there for the taking and Liverpool weren’t anywhere near as good as they became the following season but he bottled it when choosing Kane over an on fire Moura. That did it for me and showed he didn’t have what it takes to be a winner, unlike Mourinho.
5 – 2 away to Southampton, 6 – 1 away to Man Utd is negative football???
So if the football continues as is, but we win trophies you‘ll still be unhappy??
Mourinho has done exactly what Poch should’ve done a couple of years before he left and cleared out a lot of the deadwood and injected a tougher mentality into the players. It’s still early days, but you can easily see how the new players are positively impacting on performances.
Poch is the past, you need to move on..
I posted this below when I got asked on what basis we were doing well, but worth saying again, here’s some more reasons to be positive…
+ Scoring 5 against Southampton
+ Beating Utd 6-1 at OT
+ 3 away games played so far all won.
+ Navigating through a unprecedented crazy fixture schedule to make it into the Europa League and the Carabao cup 1/4 final
+ A brilliant transfer window
+ Kane and Son partnership has caught fire
There speaks the voice of reason!
1 defeat in 18.
The last game we lost before Everton was against Sheffield United, 19 games ago.
Yes can’t argue with that.
AVB had a higher win % than MP so let’s heap praise on him & get him back?
“Actual brand of football?” Means nothing really IF win % is the guide.
IF THFC had a season winning 1-0 every match & won the Premier League, would you complain because we weren’t “pretty” enough in doing it? They’d have a 100% win rate after all.
The league table you fkin crank.
Fck poch. struth!
Ian wright loves us. Shh. Don’t tell the dumb gooners.
Happens to us all!
Agreed!
Highlights for me this season are
+ Scoring 5 against Southampton
+ Beating Utd 6-1 at OT
+ 3 away games played so far all won.
+ Navigating through a unprecedented crazy fixture schedule to make it into the Europa League and the Carabao cup 1/4 final
+ A brilliant transfer window
+ Kane and Son partnership has caught fire
Highlights for me this season are
+ Scoring 5 against Southampton
+ Beating Utd 6-1 at OT
+ 3 away games played so far all won.
+ Navigating through a unprecedented crazy fixture schedule to make it into the Europa League and the Carabao cup 1/4 final
+ A brilliant transfer window
+ Kane and Son partnership has caught fire
Spot on!
One defeat in (11) ten unbeaten.
Jose’s situation with us is similar to Moyes’s at West Ham. They both endured a dismal time at Utd (even with Jose winning trophies there). They seem to have found clubs that suit them. Can’t be coincidence since they both left Utd they’re doing much better
Will he win stuff with your support?
Please tell me you’re not wanting TS back? 😳
Well said.
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies & STATISTICS” (Anon)
Stats in isolation are unreliable sources of judgement or comparison, etc.
A higher win % tells nothing, eg, 38 match Premier League,
30-7-1 = 97 points
32-0-8 = 96 points
AVB, (80 matches) higher win % than MP (293) & TS (28) also higher on list than JM (45).
Want either of them back??
Sam Allardyce England (1) 100%
True say. We had ample opportunities to win stuff with Poch at the helm but for various reasons we always flopped when it mattered sadly.
Yes. When Toby got the elbow Sissoko wasn’t long in leaving his,, ‘Calling Card’ on the culprit.
I’m a fraud!
I’m finding it quite baffling that some people aren’t anywhere near happy with how we are doing atm. One defeat in 10 games. 2 points off top spot. Scored more goals in all competitions than anyone else (even though we’ve probably played a couple of more games due to the Europa league). The style of football has been way better than anything dished up during the latter end of Pochs reign and the first parts of Jose’s. Last nights performance showed we can dig in and grind out a result when we need to! We aren’t gonna score a hatful every game are we. As the old saying goes you can’t please everyone all of the time blah blah
yes – true. I think had we not got Poch, dim Tim may have stayed. His league record was best, but that was over less games than poch, and if you add the cup games too…
“very well” based on what?
HH, what do you have against Van Gaal? You repeatedly rewrite history. Dutch FA Cup Wins Matter you know! Neville is bitter over how Jose left ‘his’ club and Mourinho has to take some responsibility for that. He was supported massively by Utd and it fell to pieces, mainly because Pogba was put ahead of Jose. Look how that worked out for them.
Utds loss is our gain then! He seems pretty popular here. I think he had a running battle with Ed Woodward there which pissed him off and soured his demeanour. He can’t have been happy living in a hotel up there either surely? I think Spurs job suits him down to the ground.
Bugger! I was unaware of LGV’s FA Cup win!
Ok I’m not going to convince you on that clearly, but what is the point of dwelling in the past? Jose is our manager now, and he’s doing very well. Why not enjoy it?
Tough one for Tim Sherwood who after 21 PL games had a not too shabby win ratio of 59.9% until he was harshly unceremoniously sacked!!
TS also got the best out of Adebayour!
Yes absolutely. For me, those three will be the first choice. Last night we needed more muscle and aerial power as we couldn’t risk getting overrun by Burnley. Like him or not, Sissoko bring qualities the others don’t have.
Whats not to like? how about the actual brand of football? As for “better than under Poch” we must be watching games in different ways. Poch had higher win % and played the best football in Europe. We won nothing, but many will agree, that boiled down to backing and lack there of.
Only a fool would dismiss Burnley. They haven’t been great so far but last night they played very well. This was nothing other than a hard fought valuable win. We’ll see how Chelsea get on there at the weekend.
I cant get my head around this “jose is doing something special” malarkie. Poch had the best win % of any manager since 1899 at Spurs. Jose is only just in top 10…ok, maybe in time he will win stuff, but right now he is below poch in win % and both have won no trophies. Difference is, Jose got the players in the positions he needed, lets see what he does with it.
In my opinion, what we have now is much better than under Poch. Furthermore, I don’t understand why fans keep on going on about Poch. Enjoy the present and immediate future, we’re looking good and we’re going to win 1 mor more things this season!
Poch was great, but by the end his race was run, so what’s the benefit in still thinking of him? We now have a brilliant manager in charge who has won it all. What’s not to like? We have exactly the man we need to start winning. It’s that simple. We’ll win pretty with lots of goals when we can, and when we can’t we’ll fight to the last for a result – like we did last night. This pleases me most of all.
I have it on good authority (though cant speak for individuals like Neville) but there are VERY few at united that like Jose, from the canteen ladies to the legends, almost all hated him at the end. (sources are friends that worked there at the same time at varying levels of the club).
It means Jose hasn’t been the only Utd manager to win silverware since Fergie retired as HH was suggesting.
Not on your nelly!! if he chooses 2 defensive midfieders against the worst attack in the league so far this season, then he wont play an attacking formation anywhere.
that would ruin the narrative that this negative football is better than what we had under poch.
Until Spurs actually win some silverware as opposed to being the nearly side Spurs will continue attracting it’s media doubters!
I like Neville. I think he’s a great pundit. I don’t get the impression he hates Mourinho either. I think he’d be impressed and happy enough if we were to win the league.
I do agree with this blog though. Mourinho is playing a blinder. He is changing the mentality. Winners play to win EVERY game. Losers make excuses.
Yes but…
Do we think José will play Hojbjerg, Tanguy and lo Celso together? I think the three have enough grit and work ethic to play together and what an improvement in skill over sissoko
Who cares what pundits think as long as we’re moving up the table.
Did Louis van Gall not win the FA cup for Utd?
Good result not a particularly good performance if I’m honest. Okay Burnley is a difficult place to go and win (though they have been poor so far), but it wasn’t so much that we struggled to create chances, it was that THEY had no problem doing so and had loads of pops at our goal. Strange night with some throwbacks to our struggles last season against teams like Bournemouth and Palace.
But it’s good to see that we can win dirty if necessary.
Sky pundits Harry, all Anti-Spurs, sick and tired of listening to them all. If it ain’t Alan Smith, then it’s ‘I’m still pissed off you sacked my dad’ Jamie Redknapp, who should know better, as we bought him to the club when nobody else wanted a past-it crock. The only pundit that says good things about us is Jenas. Harry Redknapp may be several things, but he knows football, and he can see what Jose is doing at Spurs, all of which you mentioned above..