Tired, angry Jose needs to get out of Manchester United... spend time with his friends and family, travel the world and rediscover his love of football
I MAKE no apologies for this being probably the fifth time already since the end of the World Cup that I have spoken about Jose Mourinho in this column.
The reason for that is without wishing to say ‘I told you so’, I told you so.
A lot of people were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and say if he buys this or that player Manchester United will be all right, they will be more motivated this year etc etc etc.
I don’t buy into the whole ‘Mourinho third year’ thing as the reason why things aren’t going right at the moment. It’s a lazy cliche.
The reason he has been underwhelming is because he didn’t adapt.
I was excited about him going to Manchester United because he had been at Real Madrid and basically messed that up with his mardiness.
I thought – no disrespect to Porto, Chelsea and Inter Milan – that he would take his second chance at one of the really biggest clubs in the world.
But whatever his demons have been in the last four or five years he has brought them to Old Trafford.
At Real Madrid he was almost reviled by the end and that was the first time probably in his career when he wasn’t desperately loved.
That, for me, has stuck with him. He walked out of the door at Real Madrid and every day since he has been spiteful, mean, moody.
The barbs aimed at Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola are coated with jealousy.
What he now needs to do is get out of Manchester United as quickly as he can.
He probably won’t because his agent Jorge Mendes will probably tell him to wait to be sacked and paid off.
But he should leave and say, ‘I need some time for me.’
Go and have a year’s sabbatical, like Guardiola did after his time at Barcelona left him burnt out.
All these managers are in the spotlight 24/7. It is 12 months of the year planning football and it can get very mentally wearing and what we are seeing is not a man who has lost his tactical edge.
Not a man that is stubborn to the point of not changing. This is a man who needs a break, spending time with his friends and family on the coast in Portugal.
He should go and travel the world, watch games and different styles and tweak and tailor what he has got and rejuvenate himself because he looks tired, angry, aggressive and moody – and that is not going to be a good fit for however long he is going to be at United.
The rot has set in. You can see how he has treated some of the players – (above, left to right) Luke Shaw, Paul Pogba and Anthony Martial.
They don’t like him. They don’t want anything to do with him. The tipping point has gone where more than half of that dressing room will not like Jose Mourinho one bit.
The sooner he goes, the sooner he can get back on track and the sooner Manchester United can look around and say, ‘OK, we made a mistake with that one. Who can we get that fits our history and tradition?’.
I’ve always thought Mauricio Pochettino would be an obvious candidate. I like the idea of Zinedine Zidane, too.
But right now Manchester United are going nowhere fast.
They won’t drop out of the Champions League places as they are still good enough to make the top four.
But they are all about attacking football, feelgood factor, the Theatre of Dreams, winning trophies with a smile and swagger.
With Mourinho that’s never going to happen.