I have a friend who supports Man U (no really, he's quite a nice guy
) and he is hoping that Mourinho is given some slack. There's a lot of pressure for the team to perform, particularly since their owners have the club mortgaged up to the eyeballs, but it needs time to pull things together and for everyone to get used to a new management style. The ghost of Ferguson looms over everything that happens at Old Trafford but people tend to forget that it took some time - and some patience with mediocre performances over a few years - before the glory days arrived.
Rovers are a very small club compared to the giants of the premiership around the Merseyside and Manchester area. However we are going through a few seasons of turmoil simply because, we had a manager who outperformed every other manager we have ever had.
His style and achievements are the most successful during his tenure, only John Aldridge came even close, and he also performed miracles getting us to a major cup final. But the bread and butter of promotion and bringing silverware to the club, there was only one magician, his name was Johnny King! Three promotions, Wembley trips galore, and the respect of the football community.
He did all this on a budget that couldn't compare with the bigger clubs we were beating week in and week out!
Since then, around the turn of the century, we were hanging on in there, with a string of managerial appointments that didn't live up to what had happened to the club. A succession of managers that didn't have the money or the know-how to get the club back to even winning ways.
The downward slide continued and that's one of the reasons why we are where we are!
The majority of older, wiser, knowledgeable supporter, recognize the deficiencies of some of our recent incumbents. We know when something is not right!
The younger more rash supporters are not as tolerant and it is them that sully the club's reputation and add even more pressure on the manager than it it should be.
I can remember a time when managers were rightly revered for the hard job they did. Now they are sometimes scapegoats for the boardroom for there policies within the club, when the club doesn't get results.
A coach and a manager is a different role, most managers are now just coaches that don't have a lot of say on who or how they go about the business of running the football side of a modern football club.
The amount of money at the top of football and so called supporters react to results because of the astronomical fees payed for world class players.
Instant success is paramount. The press and media fuel speculation like a dog with a bone, not letting go until it has ripped apart a managers carrier and an agenda to disrupt clubs to make headlines. To sell newspapers.
Football is a great sport, undermined by idiots!