Jose Mourinho Must Learn from His Mistakes If Manchester United Are to Flourish

On Saturday lunchtime, Manchester United got stuck on the carousel again.

This was how former United manager Sir Alex Ferguson described his team’s bewilderment when they came up against the great Barcelona sides, and the overwhelming reason they lost to them, in both the 2009 and 2011 Champions League finals.

“They try to get you on that passing carousel, try to make you dizzy, and you have to be patient,” he once said, as reported by Oliver Kay of the Times.

Managed by Pep Guardiola, those Barcelona sides played with a rarely seen fluidity and movement, brilliantly passing the ball at speed. On Saturday, the Catalan was in charge of Manchester City and tormenting United again with the same dizzying football.

For the first 40 minutes at Old Trafford, United were comprehensively outplayed and could not get close to a rampant City.

The ball was confidently ferried between City players as an impotent United did not know whether to press them or to sit back, and in the end, they simply looked slow, confused and second best.

While City’s football should be lauded, it will pain United so many of their problems in this defeat were self-inflicted.

It should have come as no surprise to United manager Jose Mourinho how Guardiola would set up his side, for this was the 17th time the pair had faced each other.

This was a signature Guardiola performance, yet Mourinho put out a side woefully ill-prepared to deal with the challenge.

United’s players were statues as their City counterparts moved between them, giving them all the space they needed to execute their game plan.

In the buildup to City’s opener, Henrikh Mkhitaryan gave Aleksandar Kolarov, near his own goal, ample time to launch his pass up field. The Armenian seemed genuinely confused as to what to do and simply decided to stand still and do nothing.

For City’s second and decisive goal, United had plenty of bodies back in their own penalty area, but no one reacted when Kevin De Bruyne’s shot hit the post, allowing a rather surprised Kelechi …

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