JOSE NEEDS CUP TO STOP TALK OF POCH
FOR a team that has just proved itself to be the best of the rest behind one of the most heralded teams in Premier League history — Manchester United find themselves short of credit heading into their 20th FA Cup final. Jose Mourinho’s team finished the league season with 81 points. Six times in the Premier League era, that would have been enough to finish top. Interestingly, Alex Ferguson won Premier League titles with fewer points on four occasions. But as Ferguson recovers from his recent health problems, Mourinho’s popularity both inside and outside the club continues to wax and wane. If the Portuguese does not totally understand it, who can really blame him? A win against Chelsea today would be his third in a major final in two years. During that time, two of his much-feted rivals, Jurgen Klopp and Mauricio Pochettino, have won precisely nothing at Liverpool and Tottenham. But if those two men, alongside Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, are seen to represent the new age of coaching, then there are those who see Mourinho’s way only as a signpost towards a less glamorous past. Unfortunately for Mourinho, that view is held by some people inside his club as well as outside. Mourinho hates this and little wonder. He is a manager who wins and wasn’t that what United wanted when Louis van Gaal followed David Moyes out of the door two summers ago? Of course it was. But the truth is that United want a little more as well and it is the shadow of Pochettino and his glamorous, progressive football that will stalk Mourinho most this summer. United beat a strangely cowed Tottenham in the semi-final and beat them well. It was probably their best performance of the season but recent signs of Pochettino’s restlessness at Spurs have been noted by United. The Argentine is the short-odds favourite to replace Mourinho — whenever that may be — and the more United’s football wavers between the functionally productive and the plain boring, the more the temptation will grow to pick up a conversation with Pochettino that was started by Ferguson himself last time round. None of this is terribly respectful towards Mourinho. At times it feels unedifying, but he knows it is the way football works. It worked this way, for example, when Mourinho got Van Gaal’s job just 24 months ago. Mourinho has achieved much in that time. United are much more formidable team now than they were under the Dutchman. Nevertheless, it feels as though Mourinho needs a victory today to quell talk of a Pochettino takeover.