It's not Fair

I saw an article on this website about how the players should be given a clean slate and everything that has happened should be blamed on the 'toxic' Mourinho. Alarmingly, everyone agreed with it. What this shows is a ridiculous concept that grown men don't need to take responsibility for their actions and an easy target instead can be scapegoated for them. It also makes it seem like the situation can only be black and white; If Mourinho does something wrong it's his fault, if someone else does something wrong, it's still Mourinho's fault because he somehow made them do it. This doesn't make any sense, and it's not a healthy way to look at things either. But above all, this isn't a fair way of looking at things.

Take Paul Pogba for instance. People talk about the negatives in the relationship between the player and Mourinho, but what about the positives? What about the faith Mourinho showed in Pogba to play him consistently in his first two seasons at the club, even at times when Pogba's form was poor. Mourinho didn't give up on him. He changed his position after season one when he could see that he could potentially get more out of Pogba by changing his role in the team. He arguably signed Matic to give Pogba freedom because he didn't have a purely holding midfielder in the squad initially and he believed having a player who could play that role was necessary, yes generally as well as you do need a holding player to bring balance to any midfield, but especially for Pogba's sake.

Pogba's form remained inconsistent throughout those first two years though. And yes you can talk about the style of play or his position on the pitch, but the performance levels from Pogba weren't good enough. If we do want to go down the easy route and blame Mourinho for this and say that Pogba had a 'bad situation', then isn't there a saying about 'making the best of a bad situation'? Can you say Pogba did this? Can you say Pogba tried to do this? Then at the world cup we see a new Pogba and I said at the time, the difference in focus and determination for Pogba for France is universes above the focus and determination of Pogba for Man Utd. Pogba for France is the player doing his best and it was different for Pogba for Man Utd.

So Mourinho sees this and wants to get Pogba playing to his best level for United as well. He has the, in my opinion excellent, idea to make Pogba captain in Valencia's absence. This was a show of faith from Mourinho. He wondered how to motivate Pogba more to take responsbility on the field and show that same focus and desire to win that he did for France and the idea he had, which was really good, was to make Pogba captain. Giving him that responsibility was the best way to awaken that desire in Pogba that he had naturally playing for France in the World Cup, the second greatest football competition in the world. The reason for this being obviously, if Pogba was captain, the responsibility of having to lead the team may have motivated him more to take responsibility for the game and to drive the team forward than he had been doing previously.

Instead Pogba's performances don't change and the guy even starts criticising Mourinho publicly. Can you imagine that? Mourinho shows Pogba a display of great faith and Pogba throws it back in his face completely. Mourinho tells Pogba that he will never captain the club again. Mourinho gave Pogba the captain's armband so that he would show responsibility on the pitch. Pogba instead decided to try and destabilise both the manager and the team. All to essentially save his own reputation because he wanted to make excuses for his own poor performances so clubs like Barcelona wouldn't be put off signing him. Mourinho is right to decide that someone like this can't be captain. He does it in front of the players to show that this selfish behaviour will not be tolerated from anyone, which again is the right move. Once Mourinho could see that Pogba thought himself above Manchester United, what he did was the right thing 110%.

You could say similar things about others Mourinho has supposedly had problems with. But I know Man Utd fans will forgive Pogba and anything he did wrong wasn't his fault, god forbid a grown man has to take responsibility for the bad things he's done, and they'll just blame blame blame Mourinho. If a United fans reads this they'll get angry at me because they know I'm right and if they believe what I'd say, then they themselves will feel guilty for continuing to support Pogba, so instead they'll deny deny deny and blame Mourinho for everything. Not only is it not fair, but it's blatantly not true that everything is Mourinho's fault and nothings is the player's fault unless you're a furrrking 5 year old who's completely delusional and detatched from reality. You can't act like this, it's just not fair.

I don't need people to love Mourinho, but just be fair.