LIGHT AND UPSETS FANS

fans, who made clear their discontent on Tuesday with the familiar chant of “Attack! Attack! Attack!”

Whenever that emanates from the Stretford End, it is a mark of disapproval at the team’s failure to embody the swashbuckling heritage on which their history is built.

At City, Guardiola has taken Kevin De Bruyne, Raheem Sterling, Fernandinho, Leroy Sane and Nicolas Otamendi to a new level , while getting even more out of the old guard including Vincent Kompany, Dav i d S i lv a a n d S e rg i o Aguero.

Can the same be said of Mourinho? Have any of Un i t e d ’s p l a y e r s truly blossomed and added an extra dimension under his tutelage? The answer is an emphatic no, with so many players having regressed , including young England talents Marcus Rashford and Luke Shaw, while Mourinho’s signings have largely failed to convince.

He has signed Eric Bailly, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Paul Pogba, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Victor Lindelof, Romelu Lukaku, Nemanja Matic and Alexis Sanchez.

Of those eight, only Bailly, Ibrahimovic, Lukaku and Matic could be said to have been a success, while Sanchez, involved in a swap deal with Mkhitaryan, has underwhelmed since his arrival.

Having handed Mourinho the thick end of £300m in two years, United’s hierarchy expected to be in a far better position.

But having handed their manager a new deal that runs to 2020, United have backed themselves into a corner – if it doesn’t work under him, where do they go from here?

That is the worry facing Woodward and United as they survey the wreckage of t h e i r e a r ly C h a mp i o n s League exit and wonder whether the Special One still deserves that lofty title.