It’s an interesting one and maybe not as straightforward on first thought, are you judging on silverware? League position, how the players performed under them?
Because essentially they’ve all been sacked and left the club ok not the best terms and we have Ten Hag who we’ll see about. But as far as success, player performance despite what you may think of him, it’s gotta be Mourinho hasn’t it? Ten Hag hasn’t got a clue what his style of play is and is just as bad a man manager as modern mourinho so it’s up in the air to me.
Who would you say has been the best?
Jose Mourinho. 2nd place finish getting 81 points. Nobody else has come close to 80 points. He also won League cup and Europa league and got to the final of the Fa cup.
LVG. He took over the worst United team there was as it was too old with the least real talent. First year he got United back to the CL and the second year he won an Fa cup. This is the last big major trophy United have won. Gus second season in the league was poor getting 66 points but he only missed out on CL by goal difference.
ETH. He took over a poor United team and got them CL football again. He also has the highest points per game in all competitions. I suspect he will overtake LVG but that Fa cup is a big factor for me. It’s also very early for ETH.
Ole. He’s not a bad coach but to succeed at a club like United you need to be a great coach. He won zero trophies which is awful and even though his league finishes were great, 3rd and 2nd, he got 66 points coming third which LVG got to come 5th and Jose got 69 to come 6th and his 74 points to come second is very low considering some years you miss out on top 4 with that.
Moyes. Not backed enough and overhated. He came 7th which is dismal but 64 points is not too far off what Ole came third with. He was also 30 minutes away from a CL semi final which is irrelevant as they didn’t get over the line but i included it as a thought provoker to think how different would things have been.
Here, I wrote mainly about points and trophies as that is more tangible but I also think style of football and tactics come into play in my rankings, I just haven’t explained it because this is not the forum to do so in depth. I’d say from 1-5 is the managers with the strongest identity of tactics.
I think most Utd fans would disagree with having Ole so low. Since Fergie he probably had them play their best offensive football. Mourinho relied a lot on a world class De Gea.
I don’t think Ole even played that good football. They didn’t have loads of possession. They didn’t play that high a line. They were middle of the road in terms of pressing.
Sure some people don’t like the defensive style of Jose but it wasn’t like Ole was playing good exciting football.
Jose’s transfers were bad but wasn’t it Ole who spent £75m on Sancho and then £80m on Maguire?
For me it’s the fact he was given the most time and still didn’t deliver a good style of football or a single trophy. At least the others delivered a trophy