As the latest wave in Manchester United’s odd season looms, crests and then recedes without breaking, there is a curious sensation lingering in the aftermath.
It is a rich, enigmatic cocktail of schadenfreude, pity, apathy and allure, one that warrants a closer look.
Manchester United have won 13 of the 23 Premier League titles contested, completing a cup double on four of those occasions and a treble once.
They earned all of these baubles under the snug, smug blanket of a single manager, lauding not only their success over the rest of the league, but also their stability, their continuity and their club-building.
They became the world’s most marketed club, pulling in, like a juggernaut fishing vessel would with fish, ungodly amounts of money, as red replica shirts blotted the globe like a planet-wide case of measles. A view from below is never flattering, and few teams in Britain held anything but a jealous contempt for Alex Ferguson and his red devils.
When Ferguson retired, a smiling league champion, having wrung the very last squirt of quality out of a tired squad, there was always going to be a spell where the club would drift, rudderless, in the doldrums. But, as David Moyes came, smiled like a person who’d just won a competition he didn’t enter, and left, the hallowed shore of a new era seemed to recede over the horizon.
Louis van Gaal was supposed to be this resplendently uniformed captain, ready to hoist the red sails again, but his tenure has been equally ho-hum, with yawn-inducing football garnished in equal measure by bitter defeats and confident victories.
So, having finished in the top three in every single Premier League season prior, United have been outside that zone for the last three campaigns. And no one, outside the Red Devils’ fan-base, is all that sympathetic.
Earlier this season, in the middle of one of their team’s many funks, the United supporters were referred to by some stuttering journalist as “long suffering”. Needless to say, the indignant outcry that came from actual fans who have actually suffered for an actual long time, well, it pierced the air like a banshee’s howl.
Van Gaal has shown very little to suggest he is the person under which United might rise again, not least because he’s explicitly said how impermanent his stewardship is.
After signing Anthony Martial – a player who, at the moment, looks so flat, it makes one wonder exactly how to spell the word bored in a United article – van Gaal remarked that this was a signing for hypothetical future manager Ryan Giggs. He’s 64, and as limber as he looks performing outrageous pratfalls in front of Mike Dean, it is difficult to argue that van Gaal is anything other than a highly decorated, slightly dusty, glory figure of the past.
So, if not van Gaal, then who? Who?! Do you really need to ask?
As Pep Guardiola swans majestically over to their city rivals, there is one man who would balance out, with pure spite alone, this particular local derby. I know what you’re thinking: “No way, Jose”, but yes way, very much yes way.
Diego Simeone seems unlikely to part with Atleti, and Antonio Conte is Chelsea bound. So, if Carlo Ancelotti can’t be seduced, then Jose is probably the only elite manager available this summer. City will, it seems safe to assume, be reshaped under Guardiola, and may well take great immediate strides away from their current fatigued, musty state and into a thrilling new existence.
United must try to keep pace. As soon as David Moyes was shown the door after ten months, so too went Manchester United’s ‘We don’t fire managers willy-nilly’ reputation. There is no need to honour van Gaal’s contract, which runs until the end of next season, especially if, as is likely, the team misses out on Champions League football.
But why Mourinho? Well, in spite of his toxic final turn at Chelsea, he is very much still a winning manager. His Blues won the title easily last season, and were, at times, a vivacious attacking unit – Eden Hazard, Oscar and Willian swarming with menace, Matic patrolling midfield with a snarl, all in front of the league’s best defence.
Yes, Mourinho packed it all up for the final quarter of the campaign, with steel-faced pragmatism taking over, but it drew the title in, arm over arm.
Tactically speaking – and considering the United-City rivalry in particular – Guardiola’s teams have been undone multiple times in the last few years by rampant, pinpoint counter-attacking. Mourinho’s Madrid was one of the most devastating teams in history in this regard, and there is no reason he would not consider molding United into something similar.
The other compelling reason is the short-term success Mourinho tends to bring. He won the league in his first season with Porto. He won the league in his first season with Chelsea. He won the league in his first season with Internazionale. He won the Copa del Rey in his first Real Madrid season, and the league in his second. There are few managers with such convincing track records, even fewer than are out of work.
There is another reason; Manchester United could do with some venom. Van Gaal started out confident, arrogant even, but just as his team have yo-yod from valiant victories over Arsenal to sickly losses to Sunderland, the Dutchman’s rhetoric has swung quickly from puffed chest to slumped shoulders throughout the season.
As much as it grates on people, Mourinho’s hubris has often been a fine weapon for his team. When he targets a referee unfairly, it is to deflect blame from his troops. When he callously ridicules a respected opponent, it’s done so for the good of his team. When he pokes a now deceased man in the eye, he… well, look, it’s not all defensible.
Manchester United’s recent troubles have been, to put it frankly, rather pathetic to see. This is the most successful club of the modern era, a titan of English football, and they look so… pitiful. Mourinho’s haughtiness, as well as his success, would certainly inflate the club, at least a little, give them something to rally around, even if it feels a little dirty.
Mourinho made no secret of his desire to succeed Ferguson. He batted his eyes at the Old Trafford crowd when he went there as Madrid manager, and heaped praise on Ferguson when the Scotsman retired. Ferguson has since returned the favour, warning Chelsea against firing Mourinho and singing his praises earlier this season, advice the club didn’t deem particularly convincing.
Mourinho’s tenure at Chelsea, the second coming that is, always seemed a little half-hearted, as if the disappointment of being overlooked by United in favour of Moyes produced a sort of stench that everyone at the club could detect. United can do now what they should have done in 2013.
Because something must be done. As much as Martial, Jesse Lingard and Marcus Rashford warm the cockles, this squad is unlikely to perform any better next season than they have this. If van Gaal is to leave, his replacement must have the constitution to deal with what is certain to be an improved pack of title contenders in 2016-17.
More than this, the next United manager has to instil something more essential, more visceral, back into this lacklustre lot. A belly fire, an unlikeability, a swagger that hasn’t been seen at Old Trafford since Ferguson prowled the touchline. Who else but Jose?
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