Mourinho’s reign at United is now more about damage limitation
▶ The short-term thinking of the manager feels sadly appropriate at a joyless football club, writes Richard Jolly
The sound of mockery probably was not audible the best part of 300 kilometres away. After their dismal defeat at West Ham United, Manchester United were probably boarding their train back from London around the time on Saturday afternoon that the Manchester City fans launched into a chorus of “don’t sack Mourinho”.
Schadenfreude can feel a growing feature of football support and it is often misguided. Yet it has come to something when Jose Mourinho, who used cutting comments to undermine many a rival, is now the subject of such mockery, when the author of a thousand jibes is now the recipient of them.
Antonio Conte’s sneer last year about a “Mourinho season” appears as prescient as it was memorable.
Mourinho’s United look fractured and fractious, just as his Chelsea did three years ago in another third-season slump.
Rewind 12 months and United had already scored four goals in six different games. They had only dropped two points. It felt entirely plausible Mourinho could win his gladiatorial battle with Pep Guardiola for the title. His dismissal would have been welcomed by the City faithful.
Now? It is less a question of if Mourinho leaves, but how and when.
If, as at Chelsea, things spiral so far downhill that he has to be removed to defumigate the place, if his is a drawn-out goodbye, delayed by false dawns, or if he can salvage a sense of respectability by clinching a top-four finish.
Yet it borders on the inconceivable that he will win the title with United, and not just this season. His tenure has become a damage-limitation exercise with Mourinho seemingly most concerned with protecting his reputation.
His band of defenders are diminishing. Yet if they are right that the issues do not begin and end at the Portuguese’s door, it is just as correct to say that he is part of the problem.
They abound, which explains why, in a perverse way, he feels