Put it into the context of the Sir Alex Ferguson era, it was yet another classic Manchester United comeback – gung-ho football inspiring a succession of late goals to secure the Red Devils an invaluable win from the clutches of defeat. But this isn’t the Sir Alex Ferguson era at Old Trafford; this is the Jose Mourinho era, one filled with paranoia, cynicism, paralysing fear, fractious dressing rooms and commercial interests overshadowing footballing ones.
Manchester United used to launch their thrilling comebacks from a platform of belief in their own abilities, the idea that such victories were a part of the club’s identity and destiny. What manifested in the final twenty minutes against Newcastle on Saturday though was an unrelenting desperation formed from the realisation that as players, as a club and as a manager, Manchester United had little left to lose.
Facing a third consecutive Premier League game without a win and a second consecutive defeat to a team involved in last season’s relegation battle, it was a choice of either pulling themselves back into the match by any means necessary or accept the club had entered a full-blown crisis – the casualties of which would likely extend far beyond the under-fire manager.
Mourinho, inevitably, sought to build narratives after the 3-2 win, billing the performance as an act of defiance and vilifying the apparent ‘manhunt’ launched against him. But if there is a manhunt against Mourinho it certainly hasn’t been motivated by any personnel dislikes or vendettas. Quite plainly, Mourinho’s in the firing line because – as United’s very own comeback proved – he’s not doing his job properly.
Forget about Ed Woodward, the failure to sign a centre-half, the polarised relationship with Paul Pogba and all the other white noise that has besieged Old Trafford this season. Mourinho’s greatest quality as a manager at the most fundamental level has always been his ability as a tactician – to set a team out to win a game of football, whether that’s by one goal or three.
But that just hasn’t happened enough this season and Saturday’s game caught the trend in a microcosm. Within twenty minutes, as Newcastle scored twice, Mourinho’s game-plan had gone out of the window; he brought on a player in Juan Mata who hadn’t started a Premier League game since the first week of the new season, he took off a clearly emotionally fragile Eric Bailly and then stuck a 21-year-old midfielder in Scott McTominay at centre-half. At half time, it was McTominay’s turn to be hauled off, Mourinho admitting after the full-time whistle that the Scotland international looked ‘scared’.
There is certainly something to be said for managers being proactive with their substitutions, and the bizarre 3-3-4 setup Mourinho fielded in the second half with Paul Pogba bombing on from central defence did play a noteworthy hand in United’s comeback. But the Portuguese was clearly making it up as he went along, and that’s a very strange thing to say about Mourinho – a manager who once made game-plans with meticulous detail and prepared for every eventuality.
When Chelsea beat PSG in the quarter-finals of the Champions League during his first season back at Stamford Bridge, there was no panic or fear. The Blues instantly changed shape and the nature of their attacks, pushing the French champions back and launching diagonal balls into the box to besiege the final third and create sustained pressure on the visitors.
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Yes, Mourinho had to fling on Fernando Torres and Demba Ba to find the late goal, but the comeback was calculated and methodical. Between Newcastle’s second strike and United’s first on Saturday though, Old Trafford was pure pandemonium. There was no rhyme or reason to anything United were doing, or to the calls Mourinho was making. It was a case of sticking this player here and that player there, hoping something somehow would make the difference.
And that has been common place throughout this disastrous start to the season. From Mourinho’s 24 substitutions in the Premier League this term, 12 have been made with less than 65 minutes gone, and in two games already he’s been forced to make changes by half time or earlier. Equally tellingly, just seven of United’s 13 league goals have come before the first substitution has been made, compared to six after, and no club has more Premier League goals from substitutes this season than the Red Devils.
There was once a time when Mourinho’s triple substitutions at half time, or in some cases earlier, earned praise for their audacious bravery, their obvious intent on achieving perfection. But much like how Saturday’s performance would feel like a genuine triumph under the United gaffer’s great predecessor, these changes have taken place in a completely different, far less flattering context.
They’re a sign of a manager continually getting his game-plans and team selections wrong, and often being forced to turn to players that he would rather ignore. Tellingly, all three of United’s goalscorers on Saturday have been at logger-heads with him at some stage of their careers, or are in that exact predicament currently, and it was Pogba who made the biggest difference in the second half despite being stripped of the vice captaincy just a matter of weeks ago.
Credit must be given where it’s due and there’s certainly some to be handed out from Saturday’s shambolic revival, but how much of that rightly belongs to Mourinho? As much as there’s an obvious hypocrisy in criticising the manager as soon as everything goes wrong but refusing to praise him when things start to go right, United’s comeback against Newcastle owed as much to the quality of player and how the Red Devils reached the point of having nothing left to fear as it did Mourinho’s directions from the dugout. In fact, the first few of those – sticking McTominay at centre-half and then bringing on Marouane Fellaini to pump the ball forward – initially only made United’s problems worse.
Before Saturday’s late kickoff, there was talk of Mourinho’s fate being decided regardless of the result. It would take a brave man to dismiss the Portuguese after that kind of comeback, but it would also take a foolish man to forget what took place in the first 70 minutes of the match, not to mention the first seven-and-three-quarters games of United’s Premier League season.
It has been littered with confused team selections, players clearly misunderstanding the systems they’ve been deployed in, substitutions made seemingly made for political reasons as much as footballing ones and overall, starting XIs that haven’t been prepared in the way you’d expect of not only Manchester United but also Mourinho – a manager who has built his career on impeccable organisation and game management.
And as far as the comeback goes, how much can you really praise a man for hitting a six when he’s bet everything on his last roll of the dice? Does that qualify as genius, or fortune favouring stupidity? Either way, United once again almost paid the price for being improperly prepared for a Premier League game, and the responsibility for that only lies with the man in the dugout.
United need to get rid now, because next time they won’t be so lucky.
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