Win vital for Mourinho to fend off talk of Pochettino

FOR a team who have just proved themselves to be the best of the rest — behind one of the most heralded teams in Premier League history — Manchester United find themselves short of credit heading into their 20th FA Cup final.

Jose Mourinho’s team finished the league season with 81 points. Six times in the Premier League era, that would have been enough to finish top.

Interestingly, Sir Alex Ferguson won Premier League titles with fewer points on four occasions. But as Sir Alex recovers from his recent health problems, Mourinho’s popularity both inside and outside the club continues to wax and wane.

If the Portuguese does not totally understand it, who can really blame him? A win against Chelsea today would be his third in a major final in two years. During that time, two of his much-feted rivals, Jurgen Klopp and Mauricio Pochettino, have won precisely nothing at Liverpool and Tottenham. But if those two men, alongside Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, are seen to represent the new age of coaching, then there are those who see Mourinho’s way only as a signpost towards a less glamorous past.

Unfortunately for Mourinho, that view is held by some people inside his club as well as outside.

Mourinho hates this and little wonder. He is a manager who wins and wasn’t that what United wanted when Louis van Gaal followed David Moyes out of the door two summers ago?

Of course it was. But the truth is that United want a little more as well and it is the shadow of Pochettino and his glamorous, progressive football that will stalk Mourinho most this summer.

United beat a strangely cowed Tottenham in the semi-final and beat them well. It was probably their best performance of the season but recent signs of Pochettino’s restlessness at Spurs have been noted by United.

The Argentine is the short-odds favourite to replace Mourinho — whenever that may be — and the more United’s football wavers between functionally productive and plain boring, the more the temptation will grow to pick up a conversation with Pochettino that was started by Ferguson himself last time round.

None of this is terribly respectful towards Mourinho. At times it feels unedifying, but he knows it is the way football works.

It worked this way, for example, when Mourinho got Van Gaal’s job just 24 months ago.

Mourinho has achieved much in that time. United are a much more formidable team now than they were under the Dutchman.

Nevertheless, it feels as though Mourinho needs a victory today. Not to save his job or anything as dramatic as that but to quell the talk and remind those who employed him that he remains a relevant modern football coach.

Ander Herrera, meanwhile, believes that lifting the FA Cup today will make it easier for United to accept the success of their rivals City and Liverpool this season.

‘If any player in the world tells you he doesn’t care about what the opponents do, he is lying,’ said Herrera. ‘I cannot lie to you. If I had to list at the start of the season who wins the Premier League and Champions League — if not United — I wouldn’t choose Manchester City and Liverpool.

‘But if we finish second in the league and win the FA Cup, we can go away very happy.’ Herrera’s winner against Tottenham in the semi-final clinched United’s return to Wembley today. If the Spaniard plays, he can expect to be man-marking Eden Hazard again. When Herrera first tried it in an FA Cup tie against Chelsea last season, he was sent off in a 1-0 defeat.

A month later he was man of the match, marking Hazard out of the game in a league win at Old Trafford. ‘After the second game we spoke because we had some challenges between us but he’s the best player in the League,’ said Herrera.

‘I was telling Marcus (Rashford), Jesse (Lingard), Paul (Pogba) and (Marouane) Fellaini, who were in front of me, that the more difficult the ball that comes into Hazard, the easier the job is for me.’

But he will not change his style, adding: ‘I have to do my job but football is 11 players. If one player gets free with the ball and Hazard is with me, I’m dead.

‘But I try to face every game the same way. I don’t make any difference if I’ve been sent off.’