United trio need to take off the shackles and it will be win-win for Jose

THERE will only ever be one Holy Trinity as far as Manchester United are concerned.

And I’d never suggest that Alexis Sanchez, Paul Pogba and Romelu Lukaku (left) could compare with Bobby Charlton, George Best and Denis Law. But if United are to keep pace with Manchester City domestically and start challenging again in Europe anytime soon, then they need their modern-day trio to form the sort of union their illustrious predecessors enjoyed. Pogba should be picking up balls and instinctively raking passes into the channels Lukaku and Sanchez are running into. And those two should be feeding off the midfielder and each other, and like all good strike partnerships, be operating no more than 10ft or 15ft apart. They will need Jose Mourinho’s help in taking off the shackles to get to that, but if they can work it then everything will click again at Old Trafford. I have always liked the fact Mourinho sets up his teams to be defensively stable but there does also need to be an element of, ‘We’re Manchester United, this is how we play’. If he can get those three performing together – and between them they are on £1million-odd a week, so he has to – then he will get people off his back so it’s win-win for all of them. Much has been made of Pogba’s form and relationship with his manager in recent weeks and I understand why people get frustrated with him. He can blow teams apart one minute, dominate midfield and eat up the turf, then the next he just looks like a wannabe rapper in a football kit, which is obviously no good.

The dyed hair, the big earrings, the Stormzy videos… all that stuff leaves you ripe for criticism.

He ought to be more like Kevin De Bruyne, like Paul Scholes, players who simply signed on the dotted line then got on with their business.

Pogba puts himself out there, though, when he is seen as louche and gaudy, and that’s fine.

But if you do that then you have to be a nine out of 10 every week when it comes to the football and, since returning to United, he has been mostly a six or seven with the odd eight, nine or nine-point-five.

That isn’t good enough for that football club.

So what I want to see from him now is an understanding developing with Sanchez to build on the one we’ve seen glimpses of with Lukaku.

I want to see him getting his confidence back and the same goes for the rest of the team as well.

When they click as a unit, United are a big, strong, quick, physical unit and not many sides in Europe will fancy taking them on at their best, especially not a team such as tomorrow’s Champions League opponents Sevilla.

They aren’t the Sevilla who have done so well in the Europa League in recent years, but they will try to get the ball down and create a shock.

However, I feel that United are ready to dish out a hiding to someone – and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Spaniards were on the end of that.