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After the calamitous season Manchester United have had so far, Jose Mourinho has been relieved off his duties by the club.
The news has been a long time coming, as poor results on the field coupled with numerous off-field clashes with players, media and opposition fans and coaches had become one too many, with the 3-1 loss to arch enemies Liverpool being the proverbial straw that broke the Camel's back.
Manchester United have been utterly disappointing this season and that is putting it mildly which is a shame considering how much investment has been made into the playing personnel at the club.
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Jose Mourinho arrived Old Trafford in 2016 amidst much fanfare as it was believed that he would be the man to lift the club to its previous heights having fallen massively since Fergie departed the club.
He started well enough, delivering two trophies in his first season which was seen as progress despite the club finishing a distant sixth position in the league and it was believed that the next season would be better.
Heading into his second year in charge, much was made of Mourinho's second season factor, which emphasized the fact that hr has always won the league title in his second season in charge right from Porto through to both stints with Chelsea.
However, Man Utd turned out to be the exception, as The Red Devils finished second in the league (albeit some 19 points off Manchester City) while crashing out on embarrassing circumstances to Sevilla in the UCL round of 16 at Old Trafford.
Mourinho reached loggerheads with the United board over their failure to back him in the market and the announcement by the club signalling the end of his spell at the helm of United has been a long time coming.
In this piece, we take a look at why The Special One has now become The Sacked One.
#5 His negative tactics
Manchester United is a club steeped in tradition and history. They are the most successful club in English footballing history and all their success has been achieved by playing an attractive style of football which peaked under the glory years of Sir Alex Ferguson.
Manchester United fans have given us some of the most gifted attacking players ever to grace the game including George Best, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Bobby Charlton, Ryan Giggs, David Beckham but to name a few and this illustrious history of free flowing football is one Red Devil fans around the world are immensely proud of, with the club expected not only to won but to win very convincingly.
Jose Mourinho on the other hand has achieved immense success mostly through being a pragmatic coach, prioritizing the need to win at all costs over the need to be aesthetic, with his defensively stable Premier League winning Chelsea team (which won the 2005 EPL title with just 15 goals scored) as well as his treble winning Inter side of 2010 being the best examples of his model.
When United hired Jose, they knew what they were getting but his arrival was one which was seen as a necessary evil, as they had fallen too far behind their rivals and needed instant success no matter the cost.
In hindsight, the appointment has proven to be nothing short of a disaster. Mourinho has not had the success in terms of trophies which was expected, while the football on display has been nothing short of boring.
United fans have watched on in horror as a club brimming with some of the brightest attacking talents in the world struggled to impose themselves on matches and it was disheartening to watch as a club once renowned for brilliant attacking football began to put out snooze fests on a weekly basis.
Jose Mourinho is undoubtedly one of the most successful managers of all time and this success has been built on a pragmatic style, but with success deserting him at United, his boring brand of football meant it was only a matter of time before he got axed.
#4 His fractious relationship with his players
Managers are very much more than mere tacticians who provide tactical switches and formations for their teams to win matches, they must also act as motivators to help their players perform at an optimum on a weekly basis.
There are different ways they go about this, with some going the fatherly way by absorbing everyone in with Carlo Ancelotti and Arsene Wenger perhaps being the best proponents of this method, others harbor genuine relationships with their players and Jurgen Klopp's hugging of his players shows a bond which goes beyond professional.
Others maintain a sort of aloof and professional relationship with their players, with Pep Guardiola giving off the notion that he operates in this way, while others yet still go about criticizing their underperforming players in public in a reverse psychology way to get the best out of them.
Jose Mourinho is a major proponent of the last method and while none is a distinct blueprint for success, with different coaches applying different methods to varying methods of success, but the evolving nature of the game means that the public criticism methods rarely gets the desired result.
Jose Mourinho famously deployed these methods in the past and got the response from said players, but times have really changed and the modern player wields a lot of power, owing to increased exposure to endorsements, salary increases and global presence thanks to social media and they know this, with the result being that players today have super inflated (fragile?) egos than at any point in time.
Jose Mourinho once quipped that Lampard and Terry were already men at the age of 22 and gave him the responses he needed, but Terry and Lampard played in an era where there was no social media and footballers were just that professional footballers who went about their job with minimum fuss, with only a few such as David Beckham and Ronaldinho enjoying extensive media coverage.
Today's world has seen footballers evolve from being just players to luxury brands in their own right and the notion of no player being bigger than a manager has become outdated, as so many players earn more than their coaches, with the result being that they most times have huge says in boardroom decisions.
Numerous examples of players wielding power exists today, from Bayern players effectively getting Ancelotti sacked (same as with Jose during his second spell at Chelsea), to Sergio Ramos stating that respect was earned not demanded which was a damning indictment on Conte's disciplinarian methods (and effectively put an end to his getting the Real Madrid job that he was in pole position to land).
Jose Mourinho infamously fell out with key players at Real Madrid including Sergio Ramos, Iker Casillas and Cristiano Ronaldo, and the same thing happened at Chelsea during his second spell, with the Portuguese stating that he felt betrayed by his players upon his sacking.
Apparently, he did not learn his lessons and barely a year into his tenure as United boss, he had begun to have clashes with his players, publicly criticising players like Luke Shaw, Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial.
His feaud with Paul Pogba was the most high profile and dragged out, with Mou stripping him off the vice captaincy in addition to benching him for some key matches and there were numerous signs of cracks appearing in the United dressing room.
Jose Mourinho's repeated clashes with his players cost him his job at Real Madrid and Chelsea and it is also a huge factor in why he was dismissed by Manchester United.
#3 The improvement made by rivals
As if being knocked off their perch as the top club in England was not enough, Manchester United fans have had to also look on as clubs who they hitherto looked down upon have overtaken them in the English football hierarchy.
Manchester is no longer the premier club in England, they are no longer the premier club in Manchester - that honor belongs to Manchester City these days, as their once mocked neighbors have become the model team in the club which all other teams look up to.
United fans only have to look over at their neighbors and the brilliant football being played and compare with the drab football on display at Old Trafford, or looking further down the M16 at what Liverpool is doing.
Managers like Mauricio Pochetino, Unai Emery, Maurizio Sarri, Jurgen Klopp and most gallingly Pep Guardiola are not only winning matches, but also winning them well and convincingly by playing an exciting brand of football which goes in stark contrast with what Mourinho offered at United and on the basis of this, it was inevitable that he would struggle in the face of competition from these progressive managers.
#2 Failure to get the best out of his players
Jose Mourinho has infamously complained about the spending of his rivals and how he did not get the players he asked for during this transfer window, but beyond his grandstanding lies the fact that the 56-year-old has simply not gotten the best out of the bunch available to him.
Jose inherited a squad which was admittedly devoid of too much quality, but he still had some promisisng talents within the squad including Anthony Martial, Marcus Rashford and Luke Shaw, but it is hard to argue that any one of them has improved in almost three years of Mourinho's tutelage.
Beyond the players he inherited, Mourinho has made 11 signings as Manchester United boss, with most of them being sanctioned by him at a total cost of about £391m (which is second to only Manchester City's spend in the same time), but while Manchester City can justify their spending as they are unarguably the best club in the league, Manchester United are nowhere near being the second best team in England.
Mourinho might not admit it, but he had the privilege of working with the most expensive midfielder, the most expensive striker and the highest paid player in EPL history, but the squad looked nothing like that.
Alexis Sanchez and Fred are both players who were actively sought by Man City but they ended up at United and look nothing like the players they were at their previous clubs.
Paul Pogba, Romelu Lukaku, Henrikh Mkhitaryan (forgot for a moment he was ever a United player), Eric Bailly, Nemanja Matic, Diego Dalot, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Victor Lindelof. These are the players signed by Jose Mourinho as Manchester United manager and they were all either highly rated or world class at their previous clubs, but other than one or two who have performed fairly, all the others dropped significantly, with Sanchez perhaps being the best (or worst) example.
At Manchester City, all of Pep's signings have gelled in well (apart from Nolito and Bravo who are arguably his only dud signings) even Mahrez has slotted in seamlessly, while he improved the likes of Raheem Sterling and Fabian Delph among others.
At Liverpool, the story is not much different as Klopp goes about building a solid team capable of pushing City all the way in their quest for a first league title in three decades.
Sarri has also scored impressively with his teransfers, while Tottenham infamously became the first side to not make a transfer signing.
Jose Mourinho has lamented a lot about the fact that he was not backed in the market, but the truth is that he had a lot of quality at his disposal and his failure to get the best out of them was to be his albatross.
#1 His arrogance
Mourinho announced himself in the boldest way possible upon his unveiling as Chelsea coach in 2004, proclaiming himself The Special One and he indeed went about showing his abilities by dominating the league in a manner not seen before, as Chelsea became a major footballing force under his tutelage.
His exploits with Inter Milan futher heightend his legend, but his relative underperformance at Real Madrid despite having the most expensive squad ever assembled up until that time helped clear some of the mirage, with his exploits at Chelsea where the club was tethering on the edges of relegation only a season on from winning the league damaged his reputation beyond measure.
Jose Mourinho left Stamford Bridge with his tail between his legs and the Manchester United job offered the Portuguese tactician an opportunity to restore his badly damaged reputation but it did not pan out as expected for him.
Things have gone badly downhill for Jose Mourinho, battering his already damaged reputation, but instead of him to accept reality that he was maybe past his prime, the bullish Mourinho refused to face reality and kept referring to his achievements as proof of his greatness.
Mourinho is a great manager no doubt, but his constant need to keep reminding everyone of his achievements smacked of desperation and showed negative signs that he was past his prime.
If Mourinho had been humble enough to accept the reality that things had gone awry at United, he might have had a chance to turn things around. Instead, he chose to bullishly keep referencing achievements from over a decade ago and this false sense of security he created around himself no doubt played a role in his downfall.
