Things have to change at United under Jose Mourinho. Negative performances, player unrest and disappointing results against smaller sides have all characterized the Portuguese’s reign at the club. He’s never looked like winning the title and even at such an early stage of the season with only 2 games played, unless some seismic shift happens fast, United’s chances of winning the title look extremely slim, especially with Manchester City and Liverpool both looking so impressive.
Perhaps they need to drop their guards and return to the attacking form of football.
This is the first and most obvious thing Mourinho needs to do to restore order in the United camp and bring success back to the club.
United have a long tradition of attacking football, dating back to the days of the Busby Babes and of course Sir Alex was a huge proponent of attacking football and wearing the opponent down relentlessly and through making use of the whole pitch, in a similar manner to how Manchester City do now with players like Sane and Sterling.
Mourinho has to go back to this style of football and revert from his ultra-defensive principles, because it’s clearly not working. Such a focus on defence and midfield has led to a decline in standards up front and indeed at the back as it proved against Brighton last weekend where all 3 goals were the result of defensive errors.
Currently, Lukaku looks like the only player who can regularly contribute goals, with perhaps Pogba and Lingard chipping in occasionally (if it’s Lingard it will probably be a spectacular long-range goal). Under Sir Alex, goals were shared all over the pitch with Giggs, Scholes, Nani and even the defence (particularly Vidic) all regularly contributing to the scoresheet.
Mourinho does have the players to do this – Sanchez, Mata, Martial, Rashford etc. could all figure and contribute to an attacking approach. If Mourinho will allow it, United could blow teams away as we saw at the start of last season- when teams were getting beaten 4-0 fairly regularly.