No light at the end of the tunnel.
Mourinho, as he is wont to remind us, is an educated man. Surely, a man with a taste for ontological conundrums who loves quoting Hegel, is no doubt familiar with Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus.
He will also appreciate that at the moment, he quite resembles the protagonist, a man of hubris who angered the gods and now must spend an eternity dragging a rock up a hill only for it to tumble down yet again.
Currently, Manchester United are so unlike a regular Mourinho team that it belies belief. There is none of the clear-cut tactical plans that defined his teams, not even defensive ones to contain opponents.
Their latest performance at Southampton – a side which has failed to win a single game at home – just burnishes the complete lack of a blueprint at Old Trafford.
The players appear to be beyond caring. Not that Mourinho ought to be exempt from criticism. With three of his centre-backs injured, Mourinho’s maverick solution was to play two central midfielders – Nemanja Matic and Scott McTominay – with Phil Jones as a centre back trio in a 5-3-2 formation.
It was also bizarre to see Anthony Martial – a forward who has been banging them in for fun – on the bench. Instead, we saw Paul Pogba, Ander Herrera and Marouane Fellaini in midfield, with Rashford and Lukaku up top, which meant that there was no width whatsoever.
Within 22 minutes, United were two goals down and even Sir Alex Ferguson was seen giggling in the stand after Cedric Soares’ free-kick, perhaps bowled over by the absurdity of what was going on.
The two-goal punch did wake up United. As has been wont this season, only when they are under and chasing a game do the players realise football is a game where one has to put the ball in the net.
Littlefinger – from Game of Thrones – had once remarked that chaos is a ladder, and for United it only appears when they are sinking.
For yesterday’s comeback, they have to thank Rashford, the only United player who looked like he gave a damn.
The young Mancunian took the game by the scruff of the neck, laying a ball for misfiring striker Romelu Lukaku before a slaloming run to the bye-line to lay on Ander Herrera.
Mourinho refused to smile even after it became 2-2, prescient perhaps that his team would let him down again. Yet, just as they had found the initiative in the first half, United hit a classic anti-climax sidling back into darkness.
After 23 minutes of hectic activity in the first half, they sleepwalked in the 2nd half again.
It’s reached a phase where Mourinho – like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke hoping to stop a flood – is not even pretending that United doesn’t have a problem. A man who usually has a ready bag of excuses couldn’t even be bothered to come up with one after the abject performance.
Mourinho moaned after the match, trying to pin the blame on the players instead of the system: “It doesn’t matter about the system. It has to do with the characteristics of the players and we don’t have many, with all the respect, mad dogs – the ones who bite the ball all the time and press all the time. We don’t have many with that spirit.”
Mourinho went on to suggest that his players weren’t even capable of being better: “If they did not do better than they did, it’s because they could not do it.”
In a thinly veiled dig at Paul Pogba, Mourinho reiterated the Einsteinian belief that ‘simplicity is genius’, clearly slamming the Frenchman’s tendency to dilly-dally on the ball, saying: “Somebody said many years ago that simplicity is genius. I agree totally with that old manager who had that brilliant phrase. In some areas of the pitch simplicity is genius. In the second half we wanted to win – the players showed that desire, I’m not saying they didn’t want it – but we needed better decisions. We needed to move the ball faster.”
Pogba, a World Cup winner with a repertoire of footballing gifts, sadly seems to only have one parlour trick when he wears the United shirt – the disappearing act.
How a player of his gifts can go missing to such an extent is quite bewildering, but the Pogba who plays for France and the one that plays in England appear to be two different individuals, perhaps a lesser-gifted brother we are not aware about.
He wasn’t the only culprit and another player who looks far more comfortable away from the confines of Old Trafford is the big Belgian centre-forward Romelu Lukaku. Even though he managed to get his first goal in ages, Lukaku was consistently poor, perhaps let down by the build-up play behind him but that still doesn’t justify his poor touch.
He resembled, if 90s kids will remember the basketballers from Space Jam whose powers were zapped by aliens. There was a surreal moment when United’s 75 million centre-forward showed the grace of Sunday pub footballer drunk on 10 pints when he tried to trap the ball and fell dismally. He quickly pulled a Neymar and feigned injury, but his lack of basic footballing skills isn’t a one-off.
The problems are compounded by the fact that there seems to be no clear indication or a way forward. United have a lot of money, but they seem to end up spending it on players who simply don’t justify their wages. Alexis Sanchez – the most well-paid in the Premier League – has barely justified his free transfer from Arsenal. Lukaku and Pogba, who are among the top five paid in the Premier League, along with Mesut Ozil and Kevin De Bruyne, barely justify the club’s outlay. Every the defender or midfielder Mourinho has brought in looks clueless, including summer signing Fred, who doesn’t appear to have earned the manager’s trust yet.
The only players who have continuously justified their presence at Old Trafford is goalkeeper David De Gea, perhaps the only world class player at the club and youngsters Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford.
Along with the lack of quality, United also lack the ‘mad dogs’, players who wore their hearts on their sleeves and fought till they dropped. They were the ones who made the difference between victory and loss when the tough times called.
The likes of Roy Keane, Gary Neville, Phil Neville, Nicky Butt, Rafael Da Silva, Nemanja Vidic, Rio Ferdinand, Carlos Tevez, Wayne Rooney and even Cristiano Ronaldo all understood what it meant to play for United.
The truth is that nothing appears to go to plan either with Mourinho or Manchester United. England’s top club now appears to hurtle from one crisis to another, a bunch of overpaid footballers running around with no clue what’s going on.
Camus had written: “The struggle itself ... is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy". It’s quite clear that no one is happy with the never-ending struggle at Manchester United every day – not the fans, the players and definitely not the manager.
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