Mourinho is gone but will Manchester United have the guts to make genuine change?

Alex Ferguson's legacy leaves more than a tricky act to follow for incoming managers – it has stopped the club from matching the ambitions of rivals

The seemingly immutable first law of football is that when the going gets tough the manager gets fired. Jose Mourinho is already familiar with this law, having previously been disposed of by Chelsea and Real Madrid. Now it is Manchester United’s turn.

Being sacked as the manager of a football club is an occupational hazard, even if this is somewhat tempered in Mourinho’s case by a generous salary while he was in the job and a reportedly generous pay-off now that he’s not.

He will be back, probably in yet another high-profile post. However, you have to wonder what remains of his tattered brand and reputation following this latest troubling episode in an increasingly diminished career.

Indeed, as I try to recall Mourinho’s recent achievements I am constantly reminded of the Coen brothers’ 2007 film, No Country for Old Men. It is nearly fifteen years since the young buck Portuguese ran the length of Old Trafford’s touchline to revel in Porto dumping United out of the Champions League.

Since then, Mourinho has aged, as have his tactics, and young pretenders with more progressive ideas have usurped him. Jose need only look eastwards across Manchester for an illustration of a learned, more adaptable coach at United’s fierce rivals City. Or, for that matter, thirty miles westwards to Liverpool and Jurgen Klopp.

For all of his maturing years, Alex Ferguson seemed forever able to adapt. He reinvented United several times, even if the changes in the sport bemused him. In an invite-only interview I attended with him in 2010, the Scot recounted how: “Bryan Robson never used to cry in the dressing room – young players now do so regularly”.

Ferguson, however, never took to the media to berate his younger players or question their commitment. Instead, in the same interview he emphasised that he was the one who had needed to learn, to change, to adapt. Before heading out of Manchester, Mourinho would do well to heed these words.

Ironically though, it is the spirit of Ferguson that did for Mourinho and, before him, David Moyes, Louis van Gaal and, let’s be honest, Ryan Giggs too. Such was the legacy of Sir Alex that he established and perpetuated a culture which the club is now struggling to break, both on and off the field.

Mourinho needed to be the culture-busting leader that United required. Clearly he failed. This reflects as much on the club and its owners as it does on him or any of his predecessors. The warning signs were there: Ferguson had previously threatened to retire in 2002, before eventually doing so in 2013.

With this in mind, United’s owners should have been engaged in succession planning so that when the end of Ferguson eventually came, there was someone to seamlessly and successfully walk into his position. But this never happened, and there has been no effective leadership on United’s bench ever since.

This is a symptom of the club’s problems rather than a direct cause of them. After all, there has been little sign of effective leadership of the club off the field either. Not only did Ferguson’s true successor never arrive, the club has failed to strategically change in order to keep pace with the likes of rivals such as Juventus.

Manchester United’s owners and their senior management team have been content to sit on their laurels, revenue harvesting on the basis of past successes, signing one short-term commercial deal after another (think Kansai Paints as an illustration of this observation).

Hence, as Manchester City has developed its franchise network and Bayern Munich has built its digital presence United has carried on being, well, United.

There will no doubt be flurries of excitement as potential incumbents for the Old Trafford post are touted. However, it is questionable how long they will last before they too fall victim to the club’s failing, dare one say toxic, culture.

As such, what might normally be an important impending managerial appointment must instead serve as the tipping point for root-and-branch organisational change. In turn, this should generate a positive cultural change that returns Manchester United to the upper echelons of both the domestic and international game.

Until this happens, it won’t just be United’s young players who are prone to tears, large numbers of the club’s fans will likely be joining them too.

Simon Chadwick is Professor of Sports Enterprise at the University of Salford