The stats that prove Jose Mourinho was wrong about his Manchester United players

SINCE Jose Mourinho left Manchester United in December we are witnessing the first top-flight season that doesn’t contain a multi-English league title winning manager since 1976-77. That was the season Liverpool’s Bob Paisley added his second title, with Brian Clough joining him a year later. Then came the likes of Dalglish, Kendall, Graham, Ferguson, Wenger and Mourinho in a conveyer belt of repetitive know-how. All of those names are icons in the English game, but none has come closer to soiling his reputation as Mourinho in late 2018. Each week witnessed a statement of doom and/or gloom from the then-United boss, nearly all of them disproved by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in the Norwegian’s unblemished start to life as the club’s interim boss.

"With all due respect, we don't have many mad dogs that bite the ball and press all the time. We don't have many people with that spirit."

Mourinho said this after United had drawn 2-2 at Southampton with a three-man defence made up of two midfielders and Phil Jones. Pressing in football is obviously dependent on both how successfully the manager can convince his players to run like (mad) dogs and the setup of the opposition, but for whatever reason, Solskjaer’s United are winning the ball from the opposition in the attacking zone (aka high turnovers) significantly more than they did under Mourinho.

Is this United squad likely to turn into Guardiola’s City or Klopp’s Liverpool (first and third this season on this metric, with Everton in second)? No, but to paraphrase Harry Redknapp on Roman Pavlyuchenko, they are at least running around a bit.

“Try to win as many points as possible and try [to achieve] almost the miracle of finishing fourth.” This was Mourinho speaking to a Brazilian broadcaster after that same game at Southampton, six points adrift of the top four having played a game more. After his final match as the club’s manager, the 3-1 defeat at Anfield, United had slipped 11 points adrift of the Champions League places, their goal difference of zero testament to the relentlessly malfunctioning regime. But in league football you don’t need miracles, you just need to string wins together. Six on the spin from Solskajer, the club’s best run for two years, has put the club level with Arsenal in fifth and just three points behind Chelsea after they meekly succumbed at the Emirates Stadium last weekend. United head to the same venue on Friday knowing that a statement win in the FA Cup will close the psychological gap even further, if not the numerical one.

Marcus Rashford in 2018-19 has improved so much generally and specifically under Solskjær that he is very close to matching the best rate for goal involvements per 90 this season.

In 2015-16, he excelled under van Gaal as an 18-year old. Fantastic talent. pic.twitter.com/8uiQtV0nYx

— UtdArena (@UtdArena) January 23, 2019

"Marcus Rashford was sad on the pitch, Scott McTominay was scared on the pitch. Even older players commit mistakes that are not normal."

Mourinho’s habit of criticising players after matches reached a sad nadir after the 3-2 comeback win against Newcastle in October when he announced that Scott McTominay, someone for whom he’d created the manager’s player of the year award for earlier in 2018, had been scared. He also said that Marcus Rashford had been sad, which may or may not have been true but almost certainly isn’t the case now, with the England striker having successfully auditioned for the role of United’s first choice centre-forward in the new administration.

Rashford’s goals, shots, dribbles and activity in the penalty area are all significantly up under Solskjaer, while assists and chances created are understandably down (slightly). Even so, Rashford’s most memorable recent assist for the club, the one with the elastico against Bournemouth, came in a Solskjaer match. Flip flappy = Marcus happy. 

"He [Pogba] has to play with the same mentality as the team is playing."

Mourinho’s last win as Manchester United manager was a 4-1 thrashing of Fulham but the decision to keep Paul Pogba on the substitutes bench generated as much comment as the scoreline. Nothing was more emblematic of the Mourinho era at the club than his relationship with the club’s record signing, and Pogba’s improvement under Solskjaer has been as dramatic as some of the clashes the Frenchman had with his former manager. Since Mourinho left Old Trafford Pogba has scored five goals and assisted four more, a goal involvement total of nine that only Mohamed Salah can match in that period. Rather than asking Pogba to play with the same mentality as the team, Solskjaer has worked out that letting Pogba drive the mentality himself is much more productive.

"For some of my lovers I just want to say: for the ones that like stats, 14 times in the Champions League, 14 times qualified through the group phases. Never one of my teams stayed behind in the group phase. The seasons I didn't play Champions League, I won the Europa League."

We all like stats but progressing through the group stage is, for big clubs, part of the job description. Managers earn their money by negotiating their way through the knockout stages, and although it’s true that Mourinho won the Europa League in 2017 (utilising a squad containing what was then the world’s most expensive ever footballer and a fit Zlatan Ibrahimovic), his recent record in Champions League knockout games is sub-par, with United losing to Sevilla in the last 16 a year ago and Chelsea exiting to Paris Saint-Germain under Mourinho at the same stage in 2015. Now Solskjaer will take on Paris, hoping to become the first United manager since David Moyes in 2014 to guide the club successfully through a Champions League knockout tie.

“Another is to compare ourselves with what Manchester United was in the past because it is impossible”

Actually, it’s not.