the first time?
I remember in 2007/2008 we had an awfully dodgy start with very mixed results and pretty turgid football. It resulted in Jose leaving by mutual consent and since then it was widely assumed we would have turned it around because well, it was Mourinho, but with the benefit of hindsight, would we have under the Portuguese?
We weren't really creating many chances at-all and it didn't even change for the first few games after he left. It was only after Ten Cate was appointed as an attacking coach did we look like we knew what we were doing in attack again and we changed from the turgid football we started the season with under Jose (and played for most of the previous 18 months before if we are honest).
Again another side to the argument has to be how things fell apart at Real and all the more spectacularly his second spell at Chelsea, his teams tend to peak in the second season and never hit the same heights again under him, so maybe what we were seeing (early period of 07/08) would have actually got even worse if Jose remained.
If Jose stayed for one last season
posted on 22/6/17
I’m sure Chelsea could have done with him last season. The treble winner would have got you couple of more trophies instead of you ending the season with a solitary one trophy. The treble winners will only get better this season as well under the law of Mourinho’s second season. The treble winners could potentially become Octochamps. That is winning the European Super Cup, Charity Shield, Carling Cup, World Cup Club, FA Cup, Europa League, Champions League all in one season, making the Octochamps the most successful team of all time.
posted on 22/6/17
I strongly believed had mourinho stayed we would have won the league another 2 times atleast. Utd only ever had one great team in 2008. Bar that I think we would have won most other seasons if Jose was trusted.
Mourinho has definitely declined as a manager since however.
posted on 22/6/17
It's an interesting question to pose. Mourinho starts losing the plot when he wants to be somewhere else, and in 2007 he clearly wanted out/away from Abramovich.
With us the second time round is clearer to see where his eyes were, fixed on the United job LVG was going to be out of by now anyway. But in the noughties it did seem like he genuinely loved the club (why he didn't quit at the beginning of the 2007/08 season), and the players genuinely loved him, so I fail to see a scenario where he'd of lost that dressing room. Think he'd of pulled through myself but probably would've still taken the Inter job when he did - tried to leave us on a high.