It hadn’t even hit 7am on Wednesday morning when people were already starting to compareJose MourinhotoOle Gunnar Solskjaer.
The formerManchester Unitedmanager had been announced by Tottenham via their Twitter account at 6. 33 am just 10 hours and 59 minutes after they had revealed Mauricio Pochettino had been sacked.
Attentions quickly turned to the fixture list. Mourinho will make his managerial return toOld Traffordand Spurs’ announcement will have had Amazon chiefs doing cartwheels around their offices . It was one of the first Premier League fixtures they chose to stream.
The game is nearly two weeks away but the comparisons have already started between the Mourinho loyalists and the Solskjaer defenders. But what is there to really compare?
Is there really any debate to be had over who the better manager is? The answer is no.
Mourinho has won it all – 20 major trophies to be precise. League titles in four different countries, the Champions League twice, FA Cups, League Cups and the Europa League, his trophy cabinet is full and that’s without the individual accolades he has picked up along the way.
Solskjaer – who is with his third club as a manager – has won two league titles and both came in Norway.
Mourinho might rub some people up the wrong way with his management style and arrogance but there’s no denying he’s been one of the best in the game over the past decade.
A big win for Tottenham at Old Trafford in a couple of weeks time won’t expose Solskjaer like some supporters claim to think. It would just prove what everybody already knows; that Mourinho is a better manager.
That doesn’t mean United were wrong to get rid of him. Everything had started to unravel in the first half of last season his relationship with some of the players and the club’s staff were beyond repair.
When Solskjaer was brought in the day after Mourinho’s sacking on December 17 it was viewed as a temporary measure and it was testament to his emphatic start that he was handed the job on a permanent basis in March.
United wanted to go in a different direction. There was talk of a cultural reset and bringing the club’s identity back, with Solskjaer supposedly fitting a mold that Mourinho never did.
The comparisons between the two will continue, especially over the next couple of weeks, but the result at Old Trafford on December 4 won’t prove anything as to who is the greater manager – the history books already tell that story.
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