Ander Herrera believes Jose Mourinho is happy with his Manchester United squad, despite the manager’s apparent transfer frustrations.
Mourinho has repeatedly spoken of his wish to bring in reinforcements, with a number of centre-backs and right-sided wingers linked with the Red Devils, but no further progress has been forthcoming.
However, midfielder Herrera says that the mood inside the camp is better than has been portrayed, with United ready to challenge rivals Manchester City on all fronts.
“I can speak about what I feel in the dressing room,” Herrera told Sky Sports after United’s 2-1 win over Real Madrid.
“This is all I can say. The conversations he has with the club are not my business.
“We were second last season and we got an amount of points where, normally, we should be fighting for the title. I think we have very good players and can fight for every title.
“But as I said before, if the manager wants to strengthen the team, that’s something between him and the club.”
United finished last season with 81 points in the Premier League last season, 19 behind record-breaking champions City. Mourinho has so far brought in Lee Grant, Diogo Dalot and Fred in the off-season.
Mourinho is widely regarded by several players and coaches to be one of the best managers of his generation and one of the greatest ever managers.Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has described Mourinho as “probably the best coach in the world”. Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard has stated that Mourinho is the best manager he has ever worked for.Throughout his career, he has sometimes been accused of playing defensive, dull football to grind out results.
However, a plethora of Mourinho’s tactical decisions have been met with criticism. In 2011, Morten Olsen concluded that he doesn’t “like his persona or the way he plays football negatively”.Additionally, Johan Cruyff stated that same year, “Mourinho is a negative coach. He only cares about the result and doesn’t care much for good football.”
In the modern world, at least at elite level, José Mourinho stands alone. He was at the greatest coaching seminar the world has seen [at Barcelona in the mid-90s], when the game as we know it was shaped, but he did not draw the same lessons everybody else did. The other eight [future coaches who were also at the club] espoused the proactive, possession-based football seeded at the club by Vic Buckingham, developed by Rinus Michels and taken to new levels by Johan Cruyff. Mourinho, however, was different. Mourinho believed in reactive football.
He was the outsider, the outcast who now revels in his role as the dark lord. Saturday’s game against Manchester United was typical. Others, playing at home in a match that could effectively ensure the title, might have felt compelled to attack. Mourinho [as manager of Chelsea] fielded Kurt Zouma, a central defender, in midfield, sitting deep, and won the game with 28% possession.
— Jonathan Wilson writing for The Guardian: “José Mourinho, the anti-Barcelona, stands alone in modern football”, 23 April 2015.
