I still don't know about him, for me its between him and O'Neill and recently I've been siding towards O'Neill but now I think about Mourinho its balances out again.
The stumbling blocks of Mourinho for me are:
The short-termism of his management: He has no track record for planning for the future. He can bring instant success in the present no doubt, but look whats happened at Chelsea, they didn't plan for the future and now they're a shadow of what they used to be. However in the past few days he has said he wants to be bringing players through the youth ranks at Inter and buying young Italian players to build for the future so hopefully he's changing on that one.
The long ball football: Even though he did play excellent football with Duff & Rooben on the wings, there's no doubt he does often use long ball football. Which not only isn't what we traditionally do, but I don't think we have the players to suit this kind of system. Also, he usually stops his fullbacks from getting forward much at all, which would be a great shame for us with Rafael and Fabio coming through they could be such an asset to have bombing forward.
They are the only negatives I see. People call him arogent but I like the guy, and I think he uses that arogance to gain respect from his players.
The main positives with him are:
Proven success: Look at where he's been, Porto he won the Champions League, Eufa Cup and Portugese league. Chelsea he won 6 trophies in 2 seasons including back to back league titles, and went out of the Champions league to a dodgy Liverpool goal. Inter Milan he is definitely going to win their league - and you could argue he went out of Europe in the last 16, but it was to the reining champions who have a much better team.
Character to succeed Ferguson: I think only him and Capello in world football have the necessary personality to take over from Ferguson and command instant and unconditional respect from the players. This will help us to carry on winning ways, rather than maybe having a quiet year or so.
Experience in what we need: Think about it, everything we want to win, he has won, he knows how to do it. Premiership, Champions League, FA Cup, he's done it and who's bet against him doing it here?
Age: Its easy to forget with all his experience that he is still a young man, and potentially could stay here winning trophies for years IF he sorted out the first negative I mentioned which was that he hasn't got a track record of building for the future.
Tactical excellence: Whether you like his football or not, his tactics invariably bring success and you can only applaud that in a manager.
O'Neill is a completely different manager altogether, but nevertheless a good option for us:
The negatives I see with O'Neill are:
Character to replace Fergie: It will be deficult for big players who have won big things to respect O'Neill straight away like they did for Fergie, which could cause us to have a quiet period, maybe a year or so, but I think he would come good eventually
Lack of Experience in necesarry trophies: O'Neill has not been in a Premiership title race before, he has not competed for the Champions League and he has not won the Fa Cup. Could prove a downfall as he would need to be learning many things along the way himself.
However there are many poitives:
Bringing through young players: To have continued success at a club you need to be taking young players and improving them into top players. O'Neill has done this on many an occasion, the prime examples in his current squad are Young and Agbonlohor this season - Agbonlohor was just a kid in the youth team when he arrived but now he is an established Premiership goalscorer, Ashley Young was just a kid with a little bit of skill at Watford when O'Neill bought him, now he's a world class winger who is no doubt being tracked by some of the big clubs. But you only have the look at the way Barry, Milner and countless other players has improved under O'Neill to realise he is an expert at improving footballers.
Tendancy to like home grown players: This may just seem like an irrelevent preference for now, but if the '6+5' rule does come in, it will be vital to have many Englishmen in the team.
Building a team: O'Neill does not just buy good players and try to fit them into a system *robbie keane*, he is a genious at selecting exactly the right players, within his budget, to create his team and a winning system. This is important as some managers would go to a club with money to spend, and just spend money on big names without really considering how exactly they will fit in, and they can have very negative results.
Good tactically: His tactics are always solid in both attack and defense, do not rely on long balls, are adaptive to different situations and get the best out of his players. Without maybe being a genious tactically, his teams are always very very good.
Its really a very close call for me between the two of them. I don't see anybody else realisticly being involved. I can see Ferguson and Charlton being the two main people judging who the manager should be, and Ferguson siding with Mourinho while Charlton I think would side with O'Neill.
