On April 26th, 2018 I opened an article with the following paragraph: “I don’t know what it is about Manchester United retreads and Everton, but it seems like we can’t escape getting linked to them. Whether it was Tim Howard in the old days, Wayne Rooney coming back home or even Morgan Schneiderlin, we’ve seen a number of players make the jump, and we have been linked to players like Luke Shaw, Phil Jones and Chris Smalling, and recently even the return of Maroune Fellaini have all been rumoured to make the move this season.”
At the time we were being linked to sacked Manchester United manager Louis Van Gaal so I had absolute déjà vu when I saw us recently linked to Jose Mourinho. In that article I described Jose as being as creative as an unshorn sheep (not my best simile, I’ll admit) and said that while I didn’t question LvG’s competence I did not think he was what Everton needed.
I’ve already been on the record saying Silva should continue in his post, and Mourinho tends to chase Champions League situations, so I do not really consider this move prudent or likely, but I think it is important that we remember what Mourinho’s time at United was marked by before we add this particular Champions’ League winner to our wish list. The dressing room was divided, Alexis Sanchez’ career was utterly ruined, the guy couldn’t even get performances out of Romelu Lukaku who both Ronald Koeman and Roberto Martinez put in a position to get goals.
Despite being more talented than most of their opponents, United sat back and refused to attack, this wasn’t the counter-attacking of his Real Madrid days, this was Burnley ball without the defensive solidity. United’s roster is an absolute mess right now after years of absurd spending, much at Jose’s request. Fred, Alexis, Paul Pogba, Lukaku, Victor Lindelof, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, all bought for big money under Mourinho and all under-performed relative to expectations (some spectacularly so). This is the story of a once great manager who has absolutely lost his touch.
With his track record in recent years of leaving teams in worse disarray than when he came onboard, Mou does not seem to be the right solution despite a glittering career where he picked up accolade after accolade, mostly earlier on.
If Marco Silva ends up losing his job, I don’t consider it particularly likely that Jose wants the job. Even if he does, I really don’t think we want him to want it.