United should cut Louis van Gaal loose while José Mourinho is still free ~ SOCCER EXPLORERS

The defeat at Midtjylland showed it is past time for Manchester United to act and overcome some misplaced scruples by appointing José Mourinho to succeed Louis van Gaal

Don’t look now: While Ryan Giggs and Frans Hoek can bear to watch at Midtjylland, Louis van Gaal cannot. Photograph: Michael Regan/Getty Images

It was the anniversary of the Munich air tragedy a couple of weeks ago and, among all the tributes, perhaps you missed the way Phil Jones marked the occasion, by posting the iconic photograph of the Busby Babes on his Twitter account and, for reasons probably known only to him, emblazoning the picture with his own promotional branding. “Never forget,” Jones solemnly noted above the lineup of Duncan Edwards, Tommy Taylor and all the rest, decorated with the logon details for @PhilJones4 as well as instructions for his Facebook, where to see his Instagram pictures, his Weibo micro-blogging account for fans in China, and topped off with his signature, PJ4, in the top corner. “Never forget” – and click here if you want to see a photo of Phil stroking his pug dogs on an expensive-looking sofa.

Not the biggest thing, you might think, when Manchester United have suffered another deeply ignominious week and, in the process, experienced the kind of mutiny from their own supporters that would once have felt inconceivable. Everyone remembers the message – “Tara Fergie, three years of excuses and we’re still crap” – that one guy with a spare bedsheet and a pot of paint held up during an unforgiving winter for the pre-knighted Alex Ferguson in 1989. Yet protests take a different form these days and there was something profoundly shocking about the scenes in Jutland on Thursday. No side wearing those famous colours has ever encountered the kind of invective that Louis van Gaal’s team had to endure after losing to the minnows of Midtjylland.

In the grand scheme of things, it may not register too highly on their list of priorities, therefore, that one of their players could be accused of using the Munich tragedy to promote a brand that, with apologies to whoever came up with this PJ4 lark, sounds suspiciously like a range of children’s pyjamas. But it did make me wonder whether anyone might have gently pointed out to Jones that it wasn’t perhaps the done thing.

Does that structure still exist these days? Or is it another of the things that have been lost in the post‑Ferguson age, along with everything else the supporters of this club once took for granted?

Van Gaal cannot be held accountable for everything on that list and it would be a mistake to believe that the swirl of negativity around Old Trafford will be entirely removed by sacrificing a manager who can get away with his less endearing traits – arrogant, pedantic, permanently leaving the impression that we should expect to see his face on a banknote – during times of success, but not so much when the team are losing to Midtjylland, and there is a credible argument it is not even the worst result of his era.

Nonetheless, that should probably be the starting point now for Ed Woodward, executive vice-chairman of an increasingly beleaguered club. Van Gaal is plainly the wrong fit. He has failed in a way that barely seemed plausible when he was high-fiving Robin van Persie during the World Cup and the evidence has been piling up for some time. We know now why Van Gaal’s critics at Barcelona, according to his biographer Maarten Meijer, remember him “as a kind of footballing zealot, a man wedded to his tactical dogma”. The fog surrounding him is not clearing and, however much we might dislike football’s sacking culture, there comes a point, unfortunately, when it is difficult to see there is any other way out. On that basis, it does feel like time to cut him free. And quickly, before José Mourinho gets fixed up somewhere else.

That clearly will not be easy for Woodward when it would mean a second manager on his watch has been sent to the guillotine but if there is a breaking of ties it could hardly be criticised as impulsive bearing in mind the achievement, 20 months in, of spending all that money only for the team to be significantly worse. There has been absolutely no sign of improvement and Claudio Ranieri, back in his Chelsea days, summed up rather neatly what Van Gaal is now encountering. “Football managers are like parachutists,” he said. “At times it doesn’t open and you splatter on the ground.” Nobody is immune, and when the magic fades it is often a terminal development.

Mourinho would like to think not, plainly, after the speed at which everything unravelled for him at Chelsea, but it has always been peculiar anyway that United did not trust him with the job after Ferguson left, and particularly if it was because of some sort of haughty belief behind the scenes at Old Trafford that his behaviour was not becoming for a club with their high standards.

Yes, Mourinho can go on terribly with his conspiracy theories, the vendettas against people who never wanted to fight in the first place and a list of grievances that exist only in his head. And, yes, there is absolutely no doubt that if he took over in Manchester, in direct opposition to Pep Guardiola, there would be times when he would inevitably find a way to cross the line, no matter how many times it was moved, or how far they put it back.

But couldn’t the same be said about Ferguson? Both men have wonderful traits: gregarious raconteurs armed with wit and wisdom and a rare appreciation of what makes a man tick. Both, equally, can be self-centred, frequently unpleasant and guilty of control freakery. “The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of its behind,” the US general Joseph Stilwell once said, and if United think that applies only to Mourinho they must be overlooking the number of people Ferguson, as hard and ruthless as they come, has excommunicated, trashed and cowed.

This is not to say United can ignore Mourinho’s final six months at Stamford Bridge and the way, as the Manchester City chief executive, Ferran Soriano, has written, he “generates media conflict almost permanently”. Yet it would help, perhaps, if those people denigrating Mourinho’s suitability for the job can add some weight to their statements because otherwise they are in danger of just repeating the same old watery lines.

The allegation, for example, that Mourinho preaches a boring, anaemic style of football. This one is trotted out all the time whereas, in reality, in a dozen seasons at Porto, Chelsea, Internazionale and Real Madrid his teams were the leading scorers on seven occasions and figured outside the top two in the goals-for column only once – in 2013‑14, when Liverpool and Manchester City both scored more than 100. In three years in Spain his team twice outscored a Barcelona side routinely described as the most beautifully constructed club team that ever existed. Madrid accumulated 121 goals one year, a record for La Liga, and scored five or more on 11 different occasions that season. Boring?

Chelsea have scored fewer goals than United, a club that wants to be synonymous with attacking, expansive football, in only one of Mourinho’s five full seasons in England. Yes, his teams have reminded us about the qualities of defensive structure, but it is not always the park-the-bus mentality, or anything close, and it was a cheap shot from Arsène Wenger when he walked into a press conference last season to be told that Chelsea had won 1-0 and replied with a roll-of-the-eyes “usual”. It got a laugh but the reality is that Chelsea scored 136 times in Mourinho’s two seasons back at Stamford Bridge. Arsenal managed 131. Chelsea had only two more 1-0 wins than Arsenal (10 against eight) and, as Mourinho once said, it never gets boring winning the league.

The more plausible argument against Mourinho is he might not embrace the youth academy at Old Trafford but, equally, let’s see some concerted evidence that United have not subjected this part of the club to their own neglect. It was one minute past midnight when the news was confirmed on Tuesday that Nicky Butt was taking over as their new academy director, a position that had been stranded since Brian McClair left the job 10 months ago, and that is usually the time clubs put out press releases that are deliberately designed to miss newspaper deadlines. Perhaps United did, too. The club had promised a “root-and-branch review” so it is strange, to say the least, that after all this time the job has gone to someone who was working there anyway.

This all goes back to the earlier point, that United’s shortcomings are not all Van Gaal’s doing. The bottom line, however, is that it is no longer enough to have a manager who wants to be trusted by everybody and questioned by nobody. Van Gaal is the manager who gave “football, bloody hell” a new meaning at Old Trafford. He might once have had a handle on how to run a successful club – but there is overwhelming evidence it has broken. Woodward has a difficult decision to make because, for a club with United’s ambitions, it must be a bland existence.

Relieved Neville not out of woods

A short walk from Valencia’s ground, there is a place on Calle Micer Masco called Bar Mestalla, where the owner decorates the walls with framed photographs of the club’s players and management staff – and turns the pictures of anyone who has upset him upside down.

Predrag Mijatovic is facing the wrong way because of the manner in which he left the club for Real Madrid. Roberto Soldado gets the same treatment, with black tape across his lips, for bad‑mouthing the former president, Amadeo Salvo. Santiago Cañizares, the club’s legendary goalkeeper, has been flipped for being too outspoken in the media, and it is fair to say Gary Neville was straying dangerously close to the same before registering a couple of soothing wins over the last week.

Neville has been spared by those results but it has been a traumatic start to his first managerial job and it will be intriguing to see whether he joins Roy Hodgson for England’s friendlies against Germany and Holland next month. Neville said at the time of his appointment that he intended to carry on as normal with England but the circumstances have changed and, at the very least, it needs some careful consideration about the reaction in Valencia to him being away for 10 days.

City slide sustained

Manchester City are still in four competitions going into Sunday’s FA Cup tie at Chelsea but asking Manuel Pellegrini about his team’s chances of an unprecedented quadruple seems remarkably out of touch with how they are playing.

The common misconception is that City have lost their way since the confirmation that Pellegrini had, in effect, been told in advance that he was being sacked in the summer. Yet City’s decline actually predates the announcement of Pep Guardiola’s appointment. After 26 games they have 47 points, which shows a clear regression given they had 55, 57, 53 and 63 at the corresponding stages of the previous four seasons. Over the same timeframe, City have previously averaged 60 goals, whereas this season they have managed 48.

They have won only one game, at home to Southampton, against the other top-eight teams and, defensively, they have not let in so many goals since 2009-10.

City’s pursuit of Guardiola has felt like an obsession at times but the availability of the Bayern Munich manager is not the only reason Pellegrini is being politely ushered to the door. In the meantime, the Chilean is showing a neat sense of humour saying the biggest threat to his team’s chances of winning everything, going for four trophies with an erratic defence and diminished attack, is fixture congestion.

CREDIT:http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/feb/20/louis-van-gaal-jose-mourinho-midtjylland-manchester-united

SOCCER EXPLORERS

Sunday, February 21, 2016