PL Preview: Call off the Hounds; It’s Far Too Soon to Write off Mourinho

In a week news broke of the highest-profile divorce since Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton called time on the “marriage of the century” back in 1974, Jose Mourinho must feel his own honeymoon period at Manchester United is similarly over.

While there is no chance of a quick annulment at Old Trafford, the odds have lengthened of late on a long and prosperous marriage. After three defeats in a week, and a leaked story of dressing-room unrest, editors across the globe will have started to sound out potential obituary writers.

Mourinho may be just 118 days into his tenure, but in a sport that deals in dog years, it’s best to be well prepared. His methods are being written off as anachronistic after an indifferent, not disastrous, first 450 minutes of the Premier League season. You couldn’t fly one-way from London to New York in the game time he has overseen domestically. Still, if it bleeds it leads. 

It’s always difficult not to divorce football from real life. A manager or a player can never just have an off day, like we might at the office because we’re stressed, or tired, or had an argument with a partner, or one of the kids has kept us up all night. There always has to be a black-and-white reason for performance, which can be scrutinised and analysed by knocking up a heat map.

Maybe Mourinho isn’t quite at his best because he’s still coming to terms with the enormity of the job, as David Moyes and Louis van Gaal are said to have struggled with when they occupied the most important office in a huge corporation. Maybe he’s still getting used to life in a new city, living as he is in the Lowry Hotel while his family continues to reside in London.

It’s almost as if footballers and managers are real people and don’t always perform at their absolute peak in the first few weeks of a new job—a bit like the rest of us, then.

A win at Northampton Town on Wednesday in the Capital One Cup has already been forgotten as thoughts turn to Saturday’s game against Leicester City at Old Trafford. Should the champions inflict on United a third league defeat on the spin, knives will replace pens as the implement of choice for those charged with reporting a tempestuous sea change, perceived or otherwise, inside the club.

ICYMI – See the key action from last night’s win. #MUFC https://t.co/Rt8Tq5gPj2

— Manchester United (@ManUtd) September 22, 2016

If nothing else Mourinho can take a perverse pleasure in returning Manchester United to their perch as public enemy No. 1.

To read the press since the Watford game without the context of a league table, it would be impossible to conclude anything other than the club is engulfed in a full-blown catastrophe. James Ducker’s piece in the Telegraph at the start of the week has given plentiful ammunition to a cartel of critics who see Mourinho as yesterday’s man clinging onto the coattails of a new breed of manager.

It began:

Manchester United’s players fear that Jose Mourinho’s fierce private and public criticism is damaging confidence and already having a destabilising effect on their season.

“The squad have been left shocked not only by Mourinho’s public censure of individual players, including Luke Shaw, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Jesse Lingard, but the personal nature of criticism behind closed doors as the United manager faces an early crisis in his reign.

Ducker quotes a source as revealing: “His delivery of criticism is nasty. It is far more personal than Fergie ever was.”

Presumably Sir Alex Ferguson’s infamous hairdryer blew out whale music and yogic chanting. Given the sharpness of Ferguson’s tongue could cut through a concrete breeze block, it’s hard to imagine United’s senior ranks—the only players to have served under both managers—would deem Mourinho any more overbearing.

Seemingly when Ferguson fell out with retiring characters over the years like David Beckham, Jaap Stam, Roy Keane, Gordon Strachan, Paul Ince, Paul McGrath, Norman Whiteside, Carlos Tevez, Ruud van Nistelrooy et al it never once got personal, which is nice.

The sanctuary of the dressing room, it appears, remains sacrament, with any criticism uttered outside of its four walls one of the game’s last remaining taboos. Say what you want in it, but woe betide anyone who talks with candour to an interloper not in possession of a peg.

Gary Neville was quick to lambast a leak in United’s camp, while at the same time giving Ducker’s piece due credence by stating it was clearly based on information passed on to the writer. The assumption Manchester United have a mole has turned Twitter this past week into a playground for amateur George Smileys, with Wayne Rooney inevitably the man accused most often of having a loose tongue.

Leaks already after one bad week! Embarrassing!! https://t.co/VS6lViGywD

— Gary Neville (@GNev2) September 20, 2016

Absolutely not . However I can sense a piece that’s had info passed on and one that’s speculative! https://t.co/EPWKLVySGR

— Gary Neville (@GNev2) September 20, 2016

Given he’d probably top a straw poll asking who was responsible for Brexit, the Crimean War, Opal Fruits changing to Starburst, polio, the murder of Twin Peaks’ Laura Palmer, the Bake Off’s defection to Channel 4, climate change, queue jumpers, grassing up Billy to the Bishop in Coronation Street, slow traffic on a hot day and the global financial crisis, it was no surprise when United’s captain was held accountable by …

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