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MANCHESTER, England – It was past midnight when José Mourinho and his coaching staff finally left the Old Trafford locker room, with their impromptu conclave at the end.
They spent two hours there, thinking about Tuesday's loss at Derby County, which ended Manchester United's (certainly sweet) interest in this year's Carabao Cup.
For the most part, though, they had come up with ideas for approaching Saturday's Premier League match at West Ham United, looking for a tactical adjustment, a selection decision that could put their team back on track. market. shadow of the looming crisis – never too far to Old Trafford, these days – to the collar.
By the time Tuesday became Wednesday, however, no answer was found, no solution was found, so Mourinho and her entourage called her one night. There was no epiphany, no brightness of clarity, no white smoke. Manchester United and his manager would remain in uncertainty for another day.
The feeling is more and more familiar to Old Trafford. Writing the obituary of Mourinho – or that of his team – is of course a crazy race. He is, as he himself so kindly highlighted just recently, one of the best coaches of his generation; few of his peers boast of a record worthy of the respect he often feels deprived of.
His team may be flawed, but he does not work much with Flotsam: only a handful of managers in the world would happily exchange their team against the collection of World Cup winners and Mourinho World Cup champions, with 100 millions of dollars.
Manchester United could win in West Ham, beat Valencia in the Champions League next week, then beat Newcastle United – the next visitor to Old Trafford – for good measure. Mourinho, as he did before, would take great pleasure once again to prove to the "geniuses of football" news media that they were (probably correctly) convinced us.
Mourinho, however, is not a fool. He knows that drifting at Old Trafford is not an invention of newspapers desperate to increase sales. He does not sincerely believe that all the dissatisfaction reports of his players are just clicks from ad-hungry websites, or that some social media algorithms have decided not to play football enough attractive .
He knows that to pretend that he believes all these things is useful; that the media provide a convenient and sometimes entirely obliging scapegoat; that it was in 2018, and assail the evils of fake news and failed newspapers and party party leaders is really the zeitgeist, and that among his fans, he will find those who are willing to believe what is wrong. they want to be true.
But he and his staff did not stay late late Tuesday because of hysterical reports in the morning papers, or because of Google's inequities, or because Twitter was furious. They stayed because Mourinho knows that something is wrong, and because he has to fix it, he must first know what it is.
It's been like that for a while: for much of this young season, certainly; for most of the preseason, too; all through his time at Old Trafford, actually. Manchester United has become the kind of club it has ever been: one of those teams that always seems to be close to collapse, one of those places where there is not much to do to win.
This could be a couple of bad results; the defeats in Brighton and Tottenham, for example, sparked an examination just a month ago. It could be the result of insulting comments from a player: most often at this point, Paul Pogba, who has repeatedly raised issues with his manager in public, and privately revealed that he wished to leave. This could be a sign of discord between the Director and the CEO regarding transfer budgets.
Or, as was the case on Tuesday, this could be something as insignificant as a poor Wi-Fi connection. Pogba had watched the Derby game from a private box. During the first semester, he tried to upload a video on one of his social media accounts. The connection was mediocre and it was only put online after the end of the game and United was beaten. Ignoring the technical difficulties, Mourinho understood this moment, which is understandable, while Pogba shed light on the defeat of the team and that the two words exchanged during the training were captured by a television camera. Pogba apologized, explained, and Mourinho quickly progressed, but the damage, at least for the viewing public, was eliminated.
The public position of Mourinho has always been that a hyperbolic medium is to blame for this culture, where a defeat is a disaster, where a banal misunderstanding is a diplomatic incident. The fact that there is an element of hypocrisy in this assertion – Mourinho, more than most leaders, is a media creature – should not detract from its inherent accuracy.
Yet he stayed long enough to know that the existence of the cycle itself is remarkable, a consequence rather than a cause of the condition. There are breakdowns in communication and strained relations and poor days in Manchester City too, and yet the same sadness never seems to come down.
Mourinho's logic has always been that it is based either on bias against him or his club, you guessed it, on the media, or because football has no more power than Manchester United. But Old Trafford was not always a bed of roses under Alex Ferguson, United was no less popular and the media was no less hungry. The consequences are different because the circumstances are. In simple terms, many problems disappear when you win.
Mourinho tried everything to inspire his team to do it more reliably. In fact, he tried almost anything in his arsenal: he protected his players in public, protected them and blamed them for triggering a spark. He changed his team and his system. He recalled the world of his record: a kind interpretation would consider this as an act of comfort for an uncertain team; a less generous one might have as a first rebuttal.
He has sometimes succeeded in inspiring a brief recovery, but there is nothing permanent yet. It's hard not to feel that, because he's trying to find the solution, while his first concern is to fully understand the problem.
All that could be a topic of debate. Some might suggest that Mourinho's cautious style does not correspond to Manchester United's traditions, his team's talents, or those of the modern Premier League. Others have indicated that he may not know how to make the most of a younger generation of players who do not share his martial values. He may be missing his trusted lieutenant, Rui Faria, who left this summer. Maybe the club dropped it by not investing even more millions in the team.
There is no sense of mutiny among the players. Pogba is not the only one to believe that United's style has become a bit too rigid, a little too predictable, that Old Trafford can not stand what he did and that Mourinho has to adapt accordingly, but his methods do not arouse any discontent.
Similarly, there is no appetite for a change of manager among the hierarchy. Speaking to the club's investors this week, Ed Woodward, Executive Vice President, made it clear that everyone at Old Trafford was determined to increase the number of club and Mourinho trophies. Mourinho was named because he always won where he works. This faith has not yet evaporated.
No one is under any illusion that his job is getting harder and harder. United is already eight points from Liverpool and six from Manchester City and Chelsea. Since City has only lost 14 points over the whole of last season, there is now little room for error.
United pursues his own tail, comes out of the crisis and then backs off, drifting and turning at a time when his rivals are advancing, the gap widening slowly, inexorably bigger. Mourinho must find an answer or, sooner or later, he will swallow it whole.
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