‘Mourinho is an absolutely top manager’ – Manchester United coach McKenna talks up ousted former boss

Jose Mourinho may have been unceremoniously dumped from the hot seat at Manchester United, but Red Devils coach Kieran McKenna considers the Portuguese to be “an absolutely top manager”.

Those at Old Trafford had hoped that the proven winner would be the man to rekindle former glories. Three trophy triumphs in his debut campaign boded well, but Mourinho was relieved of his duties in December 2018 after two-and-a-half years at the helm.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is now the man charged with the task of getting United back to the top, with McKenna forming part of the Norwegian’s coaching staff.

He had, however, been working in the youth ranks during Mourinho’s reign and saw enough of the current Tottenham boss to convince him that the former Chelsea and Real Madrid manager has lost none of his spark.

McKenna told The Coaches’ Voice: “He's an absolutely top manager in a lot of different ways.

“A very intelligent man. A fantastic communicator across different languages and it would be impossible to not pick things up from someone like him.

“I think probably one of the biggest insights that I gained was just seeing the levels of organisation around both his training process and his match preparation.

"The process behind his design of training practices, the small details within the session and the transition between the practices and the flow of work and the delegation and clarity of duties from different staff within and around the session were all organised to a really high level and a higher level than I had experienced before.

“Around the match preparation, just seeing how he went from that process of study in the opposition and identifying things from within them to then turning it into training practices, and then the analysis side of it and how that was broken down and filtered into the players and what they would need to know.”

Mourinho took in 144 games as manager of Manchester United, collecting 84 victories from those contests and suffering only 28 defeats. His win percentage of 58.3 is only bettered by the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson, with Solskjaer currently on 52.6 from his 78 matches at the helm.