Louis van Gaal can attempt to dress failure up as boisterously as he likes, but the reality is that the Manchester United manager cannot count on FA Cup success, the club’s last real hope of salvaging something positive from a terrible season as reason enough to avoid losing his job. This could be a third successive season without silverware for a club that loves to brag about its stature, and it’s almost impossible to escape the narrative that places one Jose Mourinho in the Old Trafford hot-seat this summer should the Dutchman depart. It might not be ideal for swathes of the club’s fans, or several members of its board, but given United’s need for immediate success and the dearth of realistic options available, it feels an almost unavoidable appointment.
Discontent aside, the club could be making a very wise move; the Portuguese has won league titles in his homeland, England, Italy and Spain, and despite Chelsea’s spectacular capitulation costing him his job this season, he still remains highly sought after around the world. The club ignored Mourinho in favour of David Moyes three years ago when Sir Alex Ferguson retired; common sense suggests that they won’t get a better chance to right that wrong.
Of course, hiring Mourinho comes with caveats; his famously volatile attitude has seen him embroiled in an unedifying and troubling legal dispute with former Chelsea club doctor Eva Carneiro this season, and his record of nurturing youth prospects looks alarmingly poor for a prospective manager of a club with a proud tradition of giving its young players a stage on which to impress. Odds on Mourinho to Manchester United have been slipping almost everyday, get your money on it with a betfair promo code here. Problem is that United’s need for success is growing; they’ve been mere spectators in the last three Premier League title races and were dumped out of Europe having failed to navigate a kind Champions League group. As such, they currently look no closer to challenging for the honours a club of this stature demands, and with fan discontent and sponsor unrest growing, the pressure to turn the current malaise around is increasing.
The self-proclaimed Special One isn’t a perfect man, and there’s not yet enough evidence to suggest that managing Manchester United would be enough to dispense of some of the negative traits that have dogged his managerial career. But with the club’s short-term needs exacerbated after a disastrous season under Louis van Gaal, United’s board must be finding it very hard to avoid the notion of giving Mourinho the keys to Old Trafford.
