Can Mourinho's stock remain high long enough to win battle of succession at United?

Alex Ferguson in 1986

Since Sir Alex Ferguson announced "three more years" just before the shock defeat to Blackburn, the spotlight on succession at Old Trafford has intensified. The three-nil defeat at Newcastle doesn't help Fergie either.

Fergie cites good health and vigour for staying on. He's just turned 70 having completed a quarter-century at Old Trafford in November. Winning is a great tonic and he does seem in rude health.

But just as the England job is dubbed a poisoned chalice, United is whatever the opposite of that is: a refreshing glass of water on a summer's day perhaps -  it's an urgent requirement for those with wildblood..

O'Neill at Sunderland: contender for United job.

Of the two perennial frontrunners, one's sharpened his credentials just by taking a high profile job in the Premier League; the other jokingly referred to a return to a big stage in England in two years, made days before Fergie's seemingly unprompted remark.

I talk of course of Martin O'Neill and Jose Mourinho. O'Neill, whose sheer force of intellect and personality light up wherever he goes, would be a Sunderland hero with Europa League qualification or a trophy. The Roker Roar's been on mute since they left Roker.

Mourinho is the itinerant winning machine. So portable and successful in England, Italy and now Spain at the world's most glamorous club stage. His Midas touch is so powerful, he even got an assist in Andre Villas-Boas' big chance at Chelsea just by being young Portuguese and winning at Porto in similar fashion.

As with Inter, Mourinho's got to wrestle with the best Barcelona of all-time, but as in Italy where Milan and Juventus were beaten off, who'd back against the Portugeezer?

The Special Two

United must learn from their own history though. They've attempted to replace the irreplaceable before. When Sir Matt Busby left, United scrambled round for the right man, a decision at which they repeatedly failed, ending in tearful relegation.



So how to replace the greatest club manager of all time? well, it's got to be someone who consigns United's immediate regime to the past while continually winning at the same pace. A contradiction in terms surely not lost on the Old Trafford ownership. 

Chin up. Mourinho's eyeing Old Trafford

But in reality, it's no different to the way Fergie runs United now. He enjoys the win for a couple of days, then sets the clock back to zero ready to conquer again.
And in both leading candidates, they have the capacity to create distracting tabloid headlines to focus on the hype of the present and ensure the past is the inspiration not the millstone.

Yes, there's other candidates I've not mentioned here: David Moyes, Josep Guardiola, even Eric Cantona's name gets chucked in occasionally, but why look further when there are two outstanding candidates with the all-round CV?

If Mourinho can maintain his reputation as the Special One, I take him to replace Ferguson when the Govanator calls time as Old Trafford's ultimate keeper of the temple.

With that stand named after Sir Alex and squad problems, will the opportunity come faster than the Special One thought?

Black Hole in Alan Hansen's education

Why are we forced to watch Alan Hansen on our screens as a Match Of The Day pundit?

Kick It Out, Kick Him Out!

I can't bear him anymore: to me, he represents the blunt, outdated instrument the BBC has become in these post Credit Crunch years. Not for profit; not for us either.

I'm of a certain vintage so I remember him as a player, but millions of under-40's don't. Is there someone else Auntie could find with a more contemporaneous spin on the game? Point of information: Hansen retired from football before the Premier League years.

Yes, he won nine league titles with Liverpool, but he wasn't considered good enough to be part of Scotland's World Cup squads either in 1982 and 1986. He was a good club player in a brilliant team. A sort of 80's Steve Bruce.

Lazy and complacent, Hansen's long-institutionalised body language screams of the waged and entitled. I mean, what does he do in between Match Of The Days to justify his vast £1.5m salary a year? It looks like very little to me.

But he stooped to a new low when discussing the hot topic of racism in the game: he outed himself as an equally culpable ignoranamus that our Beautiful Game is populated with at the moment.

‘If you look at 25 or 30 years ago it was probably in a bad way - not as bad as some of the other nations on the Continent - but certainly there is always, always room for improvement.’ said the 56-year-old. Starting in the Match Of The Day production offices after the show, I say.

Lee Dixon, on set with him, visibly squirmed as Hansen added, ‘I think there’s a lot of coloured players in all the major teams and there are lots of coloured players who are probably the best in the Premier League.

Hansen and Lawro chew the footy fat.

"It's a generational thing", I'm told. "Older people I know would use the coloured word". Maybe.

But here is a so-called professional broadcaster, someone who operates in a metropolitan world of all peoples. Has he not embraced any of the zeitgeist of what's acceptable?

He's specialised in the nothing special for years: the BBC is a non-profit-making company; Sky Sports is - and that's no more clearly demonstrated in the differences between the quality of the pundits they use on their respective outputs.

For all Andy Gray's faults, he was a hard-working, incisive pundit, schooled by TV executives to feed us football insight we weren't aware of before. Jamie Redknapp and Gary Neville are as credible and interesting as anyone on sports telly these days.

Hansen's gone from asset to liability in record time. While Hansen's doubtless got some columns of support; (you can't have been on-air for that long without any), I can't imagine any justification for renewal of his contract on anything like the terms he enjoys at the moment.

And I'd prefer him gone.  

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A Highland Fling double header

Regular Soccermongery readers know how I love to experience the lore of other football nations to see how their fans, players and stadia fit together.

..and if you know your history! Celtic fans before kickoff.

And there's few lands this sassenach has greater respect for than Scotland. When football was proclaimed to be 'coming home' at Euro 96, the very assumption seemed one-eyed.

No doubt England is 'a' home of football. The Sheffield Rules and the Football Association are indeed foundation stones. But it was the Football League and my beloved Aston Villa that was literally built on the pioneering skills and drive of Scots. Archie Hunter, George Ramsay and William McGregor are basically the forbears of the football industry. They did it from Villa's boardroom, touchline and playing fields.


And so it was with a keen eye to history, I went along with my pal and fellow journo Iain Ramage to not one, but two games. Talk about making the most of a Saturday afternoon!

Terry Butcher's team play for him.

First destination: the Tulloch Caledonian Stadium for Inverness Caledonian Thistle against Celtic. Hype sprang eternal from the local press. Fresh memories of a 3-2 Caley win the season before coupled with Celtic's Premier Lag to Rangers put a determination in the step of the home team.

And a well organised Caley proved a match for the visitors even growing in stature as the game progressed. That was until Greg Tansey was sent off for what boss Terry Butcher called "assault by fingernail". A midfield challenge with Georgios Samaras ended Caley's chances as Celtic eventually broke the ten men's resolve - but not until the hour mark.

Celtic's sell-out end sung with vigour all game even finding time to taunt Terry Butcher for being both English and outclassed by Maradona in Mexico. To me, those taunts sound like back-handed compliments. Inducted into the Scottish Football Hall Of Fame earlier this month, the ex-Rangers star must reflect with quiet satisfaction at Celtic's attention. After all, it was 25 years ago.

Still, one day Scotland will be good enough to play Argentina in the second round of a World Cup - well, possibly.

Good game!

It was disappointing to see the Caley contingent punctuated by empty seats but walking out of the stadium to see a beautiful stretch of water, forest and hills certainly wasn't. There aren't too many more beautiful settings for top division football in the whole world.

After a minor battle to get out of the car park, it was six miles down the road to our next game, a Highland League encounter between leading lights Nairn County and Lossiemouth at Station Park. With no preconceptions of what to expect, I must say I was totally bowled over by the experience.

Walking into the ground, I saw about thirty heads above the perimeter wall. I imagined a modest uncovered terrace about ten rows deep. Turning the corner, to see a mound of turf was a bit of a surprise. The row of heads stood at the back of the hill for the best view. Truly a Spion Kop!

It's such an intimate ground. Fans and players, keepers and management interact. There's nowhere to run and hide at this level. You can hear everything. For Lossiemouth, read potty mouth!

As the visitors left back took a throw, a kid in the stand shouted, "you need a haircut!". The mop top, two hours from a Saturday night out just nodded in agreement.

Special mention for Andy Neill and Connor Gethins, who looks a real talent. I haven't watched enough football north of the border to make a judgement on how high he could play, but surely there's a Scottish League club who could use the ex-Peterhead striker's services again.

Honoured to talk to Les Fridge on the pitch post-match

We sat in the main stand and watched ebb and flow to a three-all climax, although opportunist Lossiemouth took their chances when County should've wrapped it up at 2-nil and 3-2.

The Highland League is played with commitment, pace and fitness. There's quite a lot of chasing the long ball.

Donald, the club photographer saw me take a photo of Nairn boss Les Fridge and offered me my own private audience with him at the final whistle. I was on the pitch talking football with the boss! That doesn't happen at Villa.

The ground is beautifully maintained and every club official wears a Nairn tie to add to the air of pride and professionalism at the club.

"Haste ye back", an expression I heard a few times during my afternoon. I really hope to very soon.

Also: Soccermongery visits Israel's number one derby game.

Pictures: Iain Ramage.

One-nil to the England!

England followed up a win over the world and European Champions on Saturday with a win by the same scoreline against Sweden.

Breaking a duck in beating the Swedes for the first time since 1968 is obviously a positive although again, the manner of victory shows we're lucky even to be fourth favourites to win Euro 2012. What does that say about the parlous state of French and Italian football at the moment?

England's autumnal era has everything to do with Fabio Capello's decision to step down at the end of next summer having given two years notice of his intentions. That, coupled with the lack of desire among our millionaire professionals to actually pull on the national shirt is a devastating double hit to our hopes.

The best that Fabio can do is to make young, hungry players the fulcrum of his squad and get Sergeant Stuart Pearce to motivate them for each game. To that end, Phil Jones, Jack Wilshere and Jack Rodwell could be so important.