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How Jose Mourinho has torn up Manchester United's transfer strategy and started again
By Duncan Castles
In Jose Mourinho’s first weeks at Manchester United he was informed that one of his key summer signings Henrikh Mkhitaryan could not undergo out-of-hours rehabilitation in the club’s own swimming pool because there was no lifeguard on duty to oversee the session. It was not the only bureaucratic brick wall United’s newly installed manager ran into.
With his family living in London Mourinho was working long days at the Carrington training ground and sometimes sought to use the training ground’s well-appointed gym after hours. Another no-go without proper supervision.
When Mourinho wanted to change the desk in the manager’s office or present a signed United shirt to a visitor he had to battle to have the expenditure cleared. At a club en route to announcing a record annual revenue of over £500million such inefficiency frustrated the Portuguese.
Penny wise, pound foolish? Just examine the squad Mourinho inherited following three summer windows of work from predecessors Louis van Gaal and David Moyes in tandem with executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward.
That group contained Wayne Rooney, the most richly remunerated English footballer in the history of the game (and an individual Sir Alex Ferguson was ready to offload long before his last contract renewal), plus Bastian Schweinsteiger, recipient of another hugely lucrative pay package whose various fitness issues had limited him to a grand total of 95 League starts over the preceding five campaigns.
There was Luke Shaw, still the most expensive full back ever in terms of transfer fee; Memphis Depay, the most expensive transfer out of Dutch football ever; and Morgan Schneiderlin, a midfielder who’d started less than two thirds of the League games under the manager who’d sanctioned his £25m purchase.
Two-thirds of a season later, United have played 2250 minutes of Premier League football under Mourinho. Rooney has been on the pitch for 926 of them, appearing in just eight fixtures from kick-off. Shaw has six starts and 527 minutes; the last of them in October. Depay, Schneiderlin (both sold in January) and Schweinsteiger have 31 minutes of League playing time for United between them.
This extraordinary misallocation of transfer fee and salary resource has been at the core of Manchester United’s decline since Ferguson retired from management retired from management in 2013. With the Scot’s trusted and experienced chief executive David Gill stepping down with him, the Glazer family handed control of recruitment negotiations to Woodward, who’d excelled in his previous role, greatly expanding the club’s commercial income.
More or less overnight, United changed from a club known for acting early on key purchases, maximising income from sales, and controlling salary, to one whose chief executive extolled the virtues of the super-expensive ‘Galactico’ buy. United began selling extremely poorly – losing players of the quality of Patrice Evra, Javier Hernandez and Nani for minimal fees or on subsidised loans – while simultaneously developing a reputation for taking an age to conclude the paperwork on deals.
As Mourinho matured as a manager, he became an increasingly astute operator in the transfer market. Throughout his career he has deployed his powers of persuasion to convince individuals such as Didier Drogba, Wesley Sneijder, Diego Costa and Zlatan Ibrahimovic to join his squads and take pivotal roles. And from his Internazionale treble-winning side, through Real Madrid, Chelsea and now United his hit rate on transfers both in an out has been remarkably high.
A factor is his success is a reluctance to waste money. Mourinho bridles at the popular accusation that he is a high spending manager; and does so with justification. The six key acquisitions of Inter’s unprecedented treble winning season – Samuel Eto’o, Lucio, Gabriel Milito, Goran Pandev, Sneijder and Thiago Motta – were almost entirely funded by Ibrahimovic’s €69.5m sale to Barcelona.
At Real Madrid friends urged him to use the club’s huge resources more aggressively, yet his most expensive buy in three season there was Luka Modric at roughly a third of the club’s record fee. In two stints at Chelsea the club never paid more than the €38m to sign a player at Mourinho’s request (Diego Costa), and won the Premier League title with a net negative spend on transfer fees.
Although Mourinho’s desire to bring Paul Pogba back to Old Trafford ultimately meshed with Woodward’s eagerness to exploit the commercial opportunities of a global record fee, the former’s discomfort with the scale of transaction can be seen in his public comments on the deal.
The scrutiny on him is hard, is difficult,” said Mourinho last week. “But that’s the price of being who he is and is also the price of his price. I am pretty sure that next summer some players with only half his quality will cost the same money or more, so I am waiting for that moment to release him from the scrutiny.
“I think in a couple of years you will realise he was cheap, but I have to admit that not many clubs have this vision of anticipation of what can happen in the near future. A few years ago £25m was a phenomenal player. Today, £25m is not even a player, it is a prospect of a player. Now, if you want to buy a good prospect, a good 20-year-old player who can be fantastic, you are paying as if the player is already a big player. I think next summer can bring a few surprises at this level and probably Paul will lose this status as the world’s most expensive player, which will be a good thing.”
Mourinho’s early annoyance with United’s internal organisation was not limited to training ground bureaucracy. A hesitance to commit to deals saw the club lose opportunities to sign Renato Sanches and John Stones. Mismanagement of a David de Gea contract renewal under Van Gaal left the goalkeeper with an option to join Madrid that expired on June 15, and which Mourinho had to prevent from being exercised.
The Portuguese expressed his opposition to a plan to hire the club’s first sporting director, preferring to utilise his own network of contacts to take on the biggest rebuild of his managerial career.
Most prominent amongst those is Rooney, whose status as an automatic starter has been lost to fitness and lifestyle issues. The idea is to relieve the club of their salary commitments to the England captain, while taking in some kind of transfer income, although this plan has been shelved until the summer after the striker snubbed a move to China this week.
As was the case last year when Mourinho attempted to move the German midfielder to Sporting, Schweinsteiger will be permitted to join any club whose personal terms he is prepared to accept. Though well thought of by his coach for his attitude to training and matches, Ashley Young will be replaced if the 31-year-old finds the right employers to exit too.
Lesser-used individuals with the potential to raise significant fees include Shaw and Matteo Darmian. The basic principles with Mourinho is simple. Team before individual. Results are paramount. If you’re not carrying your weight then shape up or prepare to be shipped out.
https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/how-jose-mourinho-has-torn-up-manchester-uniteds-transfer-strategy-and-started-again-114154967.html
