Sorry, Jose, I know it’s pantomime season but your act is wearing thin

JOSE MOURINHO’S pantomime act is wearing thin at Manchester United.

I take no pleasure in saying it, because I have been one of his biggest fans and I tipped United for the title before a ball was kicked in

August.

But in the derby defeat by Manchester City at Old Trafford, it looked like there was one team trying to win it and the other trying not to lose it.

And for arguably the biggest club in the world – a club whose whole ethos is based on the attacking flair and style of Busby and Ferguson – 35 per cent possession at home is not going to keep the supporters happy.

When I saw the teamsheet, and Mourinho had picked four forwards, I thought he was going to go for it.

But as my Mirror Sport colleague Simon Mullock put it, I can’t understand why he selected four Rolls Royce players up front and asked them to play like double-decker buses.

And whatever happened in the tunnel afterwards, Mourinho (right) has to be careful when he claims that it was a “question of diversity” in behaviour and education.

This is, after all, the man who ran along the touchline at Old Trafford and performed an extravagant knee-slide when his Porto team knocked United out of the Champions League in 2004.

And this is the man who ran across the pitch at the Nou Camp to celebrate when Inter Milan knocked Barcelona out in the semi-finals seven years ago. Humility, some might say, has not always been his strongest suit.

And the alleged rumble in the tunnel was a distraction from how poorly United performed in the derby. I look at the spine of Mourinho’s team last Sunday: Where was the creativity?

Paul Pogba’s suspension was clearly a massive blow, but Victor Lindelof and Chris Smalling don’t bring it out from the back like

Rio Ferdinand, while Nemanja

Matic and

Ander Herrera were outgunned in midfield and

Romelu

Lukaku, not for the first time, was ineffective against the big guns.

The Belgium striker will prove worth his weight

Mourinho’s nightmare scenario is to face City again in one of the cups

in goals, but if he is going to silence the doubters he can’t just score against the likes of Bournemouth and Swansea but come up short when City or Chelsea are in town.

I wouldn’t call him a flat-track bully, but the best players find a way to deliver in the big games. If he scores 25 goals this season for United, and none of them are against top-four rivals, the question mark will remain. The title race is over. I called it last month, and nobody is going to catch City. As good as Pep Guardiola’s side were at Old Trafford, and 49 points from a possible 51 is phenomenal, I have to ask the question.

Would the outcome have been any different if Mourinho had not been so cautious, and the shackles were off ?

For Manchester United to play for 45 minutes at home, and barely get in the opposition’s box – let alone shoot – is not what the club stands for.

At times it was men against boys in the derby. City are on course to win the title with 100 points and 100 goals, and the challenge facing Mourinho now is to make sure the gap does not become embarrassing.

Success, for United, means putting trophies on the table. The fans will only tolerate occasional negativity if it means laps of honour around Old Trafford with silverware.

All is not lost: They could still make serious headway in the Champions League, they have a League Cup quarter-final at Bristol City next week and have another Championship side, Derby, to come at home in the FA Cup third round.

But the nightmare scenario for Mourinho is that City are still in all those competitions, too,

CLAUDE PUEL had the last laugh by going back to Southampton with Leicester and wiping the floor with them.

That’s four wins in a row, and only one defeat in eight (against Manchester City), since Puel became Foxes boss.

So much for the Saints stars who were happy to see him leave because his style of play was “dull” or “boring”. To sack

a man who took them to eighth in the Premier League and a cup final at Wembley, which they deserved to win, always seemed a bit ungrateful to me.

When Leicester were putting four past Saints, home fans must have felt like contestants on Bullseye who missed out on the main prize with host Jim Bowen telling them: “Let’s have a look at what you could have won.”