United a team in manager’s image

WHEN Mourinho won the Premier League with Chelsea two seasons ago they played open, expansive football up until the turn of the year, when they had a couple of poor results and went out of the FA Cup to Bradford. After that they reverted to Mourinho’s normal, stifling style of play, as if he was saying ‘now we do things my way’. It was all about killing the game, which was very tough to watch for the neutral and it looks like he is going through the same transition with United. They were second best against Manchester City and Watford in the Premier League, allowing the opposition far too much space and freedom. There was no way Mourinho was going to allow the same thing to happen against Liverpool on Monday. Jurgen Klopp’s side are like a swarm of ants when you have possession near your own goal — an injection of energy enables them to win the ball back in the final third — but Mourinho ensured this couldn’t happen on Monday by telling his side to hit long balls and not build any momentum. It was such a disappointing game to watch, but a very professional performance by United. Watching Ashley Young and Marcus Rashford track back on the flanks and Ander Herrera and Marouane Fellaini bottle up the midfield was reminiscent of Mourinho’s Chelsea teams at their best. All that was missing was a late winner. Or if Zlatan Ibrahimovic had put away his header, we would all be calling it a great performance by United. This weekend there will be a lot of Chelsea players fired up to beat him. Mourinho had special relationships with players but he often pushed it too far and fell out with a lot of people. It’ll be especially interesting to see how Eden Hazard performs tomorrow. When George Graham came back to Highbury with Leeds and Tottenham, we all had a great respect for him but were also desperate to beat him. His management style was so demanding and we knew it inside out. We felt like we should beat him because we knew exactly how he would set up and exactly what he’d be saying to his players in the dressing room. Plus there was only one of him and eleven of us.