Mourinho’s humiliation of Pogba puts pair on path to inevitable split
THEY may never have met, but Jose Mourinho had a lot of time for Brian Clough and his hardline approach to man-management.
The United boss has adopted a number of the Nottingham Forest legend’s tactics - ignoring injured players while they are on the treatment table for example - but Clough never did this.
Stripping a player of the vicecaptaincy just weeks after handing him the honour. Even Mourinho would not have envisaged resorting to such a drastic measure after extending an olive branch to Paul Pogba earlier this summer.
Mourinho has not been afraid to remind Pogba who is boss dropping him after he debated his tactical instructions on the touchline against Spurs last season - but this is an unprecedented move.
Mourinho stripped Pogba of the honour of being ‘second captain’ in front of his teammates at Carrington.
Pogba may ooze selfconfidence, but that will have hurt.
The 25-year-old has cherished the captain’s armband and what happened on Tuesday, hours before the Derby game, will have humiliated him given how much he relishes leading his side out.
“It’s good that the manager believes in you, and the players,” he said earlier this year. “It’s an honour to wear the captain’s [armband], and just to wear the shirt and play at Old Trafford. I was here in the academy and for me it was a dream to play for the first team, and I did it”
Did Mourinho have a choice? When he has been asked about Pogba’s explosive comments in the past, he has merely said, ‘Ask Paul’. But enough was enough.
In the last six weeks, Pogba has stopped to talk to Manchester-based reporters on two occasions in the mixed zone. That may not seem much, but he only did that once in the whole of last season and that was to explain his stamp on Hector Bellerin, which earned him a red card, was not intentional.
After the first game of this season, against Leicester, the Frenchman admitted ‘there are things that I cannot say, otherwise I will get fined’; following the draw with Wolves on Saturday, he said his side should ‘attack, attack, attack’ and it was a ‘mistake’ that they failed to do so.
Intentionally or not - Pogba is a smart guy - the midfielder has undermined his manager one time too many. It would be bad enough if he was stepping up as a consistent match winner, but that has not been the case since Pogba returned ‘home’ two years ago.
Hence Mourinho’s decision to humiliate him - even if the United manager insists there are ‘no problems at all, no fall out’. So what happens next?
Pogba, and his agent, Mino Raiola, are keeping their silence but all eyes will be on the team sheets at the London Stadium when they drop in at around 11.30am on Saturday.
Mourinho insisted he only left Pogba out of the match day squad in the defeat to Derby because he was being rested alongside David de Gea, Luke Shaw, Antonio Valencia and Victor Lindelof.
It seems unthinkable Pogba will not start the game against West Ham but Mourinho has already drawn a line in the sand.
What was once a truce is now a crumbling marriage of convenience as Barcelona continue to lurk in the background. United chiefs have made it clear they are fully behind Mourinho but, equally, that they could never countenance selling Pogba.
Already, it seems unlikely that both will be at Old Trafford this time next year.