ONE FELL SWOOP
Van Gaal’s fall guy becomes Jose’s go-to man as he puts United on course for a crushing win
HE was once the towering symbol of everything rotten post-Sir Alex Ferguson, an unmistakable stick with which to beat David Moyes and Louis van Gaal.
Marouane Fellaini, the mop-topped poster boy of Manchester United’s mediocrity.
Now, Jose Mourinho would not be without him. He might not start him, but he would not be without him.
The United boss feels “weaker” without him. Because it is Jose, even the purists will stomach it.
Fellaini might still not cut an archetypal, stylish United figure but if Mourinho trusts him, then fine.
And here was why Mourinho trusts him, why he is his go-to guy, if change demands it.
Change demanded it when Paul Pogba, the driving force behind United’s muscular start to the season and skipper for the night, pulled up lame.
He had stretched into a challenge on Basel’s Mohammed Elyounoussi, barely 15 minutes into his captaincy.
If Mourinho considers himself “weaker” without Fellaini, he must surely be verging on the truly vulnerable without Pogba.
Yet the Portuguese likes the simple, reliable things in football and Fellaini finding his way on to the end of a decent cross is one of life’s bankers.
So it proved after half an hour of United sloppiness against as pedestrian an opponent as you could wish for in a Champions League opener. United would, undoubtedly, still have won this low-quality contest at a canter but the breakthrough needed to be made to halt frustration’s creep.
It was Fellaini who made it, timing his leap and nod to perfection, and doing full justice to a delicious Ashley Young cross 10 minutes before the break.
Fellaini’s celebration suggests he is determined to prove a point with every single minute he is given by Mourinho.
He might be given a good few if Pogba’s hamstring injury proves as costly as one did at Juventus a couple of years ago.
Pogba also struggled with a niggling problem in the same area last season and United will be ultra-careful with this one.
Despite Fellaini’s decent deputisation, Pogba will be sorely missed but, even in this mundane affair, there were still luminous signs of why United are a different proposition under second-season Jose.
The addition of Romelu Lukaku will probably prove to be the finest piece of Premier
League transfer business in a long time. He led the team superbly. If anyone brushed Basel aside, it was Lukaku.
So what if he bullies the lesser sides? The big guns meet a lot of lesser sides, which is why no one will be as important to United and Mourinho than Lukaku.
His strength was evident in the way he simply ignored the attentions of a couple of Basel pests to head in a standard Daley Blind cross from a standard short corner routine.
A simple finish from a striker who keeps it simple. Counting his effort in the Super Cup, that is half a dozen for Lukaku already.
You suspect he will be rather looking forward to Everton’s visit on Sunday.
Lukaku (right) is probably disappointed he did not reap more from a Swiss rollover.
Mourinho would certainly have been disappointed by certain elements of this performance, not least Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s wastefulness in front of goal.
But he would not have been disappointed with his man Fellaini, who capped his night with an assist of sorts, his deflected pass scuffed and ballooned home by latecomer Marcus Rashford.
It gave the scoreline an emphasis Basel’s limitations deserved.
For Felllaini, it gave him another small reason to forget those times when he was lampooned as everything wrong with United.
Those times are gone. Just ask Jose.