JOSE FACES THE FINAL CURTAIN
Mourinho seems lost, a man out of ideas on how to revive this great club
IF these are the last weeks of Jose Mourinho in English football, they will have been wholly atypical.
Not the addiction to conflict, nor the use of mass media, such as a televised training session, to make a public point: none of that is new. That was Mourinho’s default from the moment he arrived at Chelsea in 2004 and swept us all away.
But the football? That’s a wholly different matter. His teams were rarely like this: spineless, timid, incoherent. Only that awful period at Chelsea in 2015 was comparable to this and that ended in the sack in December. This is heading the same way.
You might dislike Mourinho’s style but you wouldn’t deny his teams had certain qualities, such as a fierce tactical intelligence and a basic competitiveness.
Yet for so much of this match, United showed none of the above. Forget the Paul Pogba show, underwhelming though he was. (He was withdrawn on 70 minutes.) This ran far deeper than a feud between two sparring egos.
This was a performance, like that at Brighton last month, which questioned t he very point of Manchester United.
The fact that a struggling West Ham team who had l ost their opening four games could induce Mourinho to field a back three, which at times played more like a back five, would have been unimaginable under Sir Alex Ferguson.
But it would also have been anathema to Mourinho in his glory days. When he first came to England, his tactical switches were innovative and usually inspiring. Now they just seem bizarre. His teams were solid but his choices demonstrated swagger.
Here there was a sheer lack of coherence to this team. So when Marcus Rashford l ost the ball under challenge to Pablo Zabaleta for 3-1 on 74 minutes, it came from David de Gea’s kick out. In other words, United should have been in an ideal position to repel any counter-attack.
Yet Mark Noble, man of the match, simply strode through midfield. He had time to pick out a pass and Marko Arnautovic (right) ran past Chris Smalling, with the back line (now a back four) looking porous and lacking any midfield protection.
Mourinho could complain about the ‘ foul’ on Rashford — it might have been given by other referees — but it missed the point. United had ample opportunities to withstand such an attack but failed to. They look tactically adrift, unable or possibly unwilling to do what their coach asks of them. Playing a back three seemed a case of massively overthinking the opposition but employing Smalling as the central pivot and Scott McTominay as the right-sided central defender suggested he was again illustrating that the board hadn’t provided him with the requisite defenders in the summer. Victor Lindelof, on the left of the three, lasted 56 minutes, hooked for Rashford as Mourinho eventually reverted to 4-3-3. Eric Bailly, signed by Mourinho for £30m, was sat on the bench. Phil Jones, after his penalty miss in midweek, didn’t even make it that far. Neither did Alexis Sanchez, Mourinho’s ‘must-have’ signing of January. It would be hard to argue with that on the basis of his performances. Yet this was West Ham, not Barcelona. Manuel Pellegrini admitted he was pleasantly surprised to find that his compatriot would not feature. Mourinho’s reasoning was he wanted to play Anthony Martial — ‘something you are asking for a long, long time’ — and he is ‘not a player very focused on his defensive duties’. Yet it was extraordinary to witness the opening 15 minutes. United barely ventured out of their half. West Ham had 84 per cent possession. Within six minutes United were 1- 0 down, with Noble the instigator. What he lacks in Instagram interactions, he makes up for in contributions on a football pitch. He played a superb ball through to Zabaleta and the 33year-old raced on to it and crossed for Felipe Anderson, who had drifted into space to score easily from a few yards out. Zabaleta may have had a foot offside; yet McTominay was deeper than his colleague and it was a close call.
‘I think we need a good start after the result on Tuesday,’ said Mourinho. Since when did a United team crumble because Derby and West Ham had put them under pressure? He urged more of his team to have the mentality of McTominay but admitted: ‘Not all of them [have that]. Scott is a kid with a special character.’
The rest looked like a team con- strained by their manager’s caut i on. Romelu Lukaku headed against a post after good work from McTominay and Ashley Young. But it was a rare foray.
West Ham got a little lucky on 43 minutes. Anderson’s corner was mis-headed by Issa Diop and picked up by Andriy Yarmalenko. He sized up his options, tried a chipped shot and saw it rebound off Lindelof and loop over De Gea.
On this Mourinho did concede: ‘We have Matic on the ball, we have Luke Shaw and Lindelof a couple of yards away; we have to block, we have to press and we didn’t.’
United were much better when Rashford came on for Lindelof on 56 minutes and switched to 4-3-3. With Rashford tying up Arthur Masuaku, Young had repeatedly got in to cross, and Marouane Fellaini always lurked, ready to punish any lapse. It required an excellent save from Lukasz Fabianski on 65 minutes to deny him.
It was of course a coincidence that the moment Pogba left the pitch, Manchester United scored. He alone could not be blamed for the performance, though he had done nothing to ameliorate it.
Yet after he trudged off the pitch to be replaced by Fred, Shaw’s corner was met by Rashford’s impudent back-heel, which beat Fabianski and hinted at a comeback.
The problem was, United had left themselves so much to do, they couldn’t afford further mistakes, and they were authors of their downfall in the move in which Arnautovic scored.
He celebrated furiously, running to the bench. A few yards away stood Mourinho. He seemed lost, a man out of time and out of ideas to revive this great club.