Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United strike force came up short when it really mattered
ENGLAND’S all-time record goalscorer, blessed with a seemingly insatiable thirst.
A charismatic megastar who has won 13 titles in four different nations and never lacks self-belief.
The most expensive teenager in the history of world football.
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And the new sensation of the English game — a kid who destroyed Arsenal on his league debut.
Jose Mourinho cannot say he does not have a stellar cast of finishers to choose from at Manchester United — in Wayne Rooney, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford.
And yet for a third successive Premier League home game, United were unable to win a match they had dominated.
So sickening was Olivier Giroud’s 89th-minute equaliser — Arsenal’s first serious attempt at goal — that Mourinho kept calling it a “defeat”.
As he left his post-match press conference, he smirked: “Finally, I have lost to Arsenal!”
Then he repeated the joke, underpinning how keenly he loves the fact that Arsene Wenger has never defeated him in 12 Premier League fixtures — and at least he was able to laugh at his own misfortune here.
In truth, this was a laughable result. Mourinho’s team simply owned the centre of the park, with Michael Carrick pulling the strings from deep, Ander Herrera in workaholic mode and Paul Pogba relishing the freedom of being the most advanced of Mourinho’s central players.
But this place is simply not the fortress it once was — as Stoke, Burnley and a woefully out-of-sorts Arsenal can all testify.
Mourinho said of those last three games: “It should easily have been nine points — and if we had nine more points we’d be in the top four.”
And if his auntie had a pair of chestnuts she would be the Portuguese conkers champion.
With Ibrahimovic suspended, Mourinho sent out Rashford as his No 9 and Martial was handed a rare start on the left — leaving captain Rooney (far right) on the bench for 63 minutes.
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Before kick-off Martial had been called out by United legend Gary Neville, who referred to his fee of £57.6million, which includes possible add-ons, and claimed the Frenchman’s work-rate was not good enough.
His attitude appears to have dipped under Mourinho and, despite once cutting inside and bending in a shot which forced a gymnastic save from Petr Cech, he failed to dominate Arsenal’s stand-in right-back Carl Jenkinson as he was expected to.
Rashford was useful in his best position as a centre-forward but after moving to the left, he failed to cut out the Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain overlap which led to the equaliser.
Rooney ran himself sockless for half an hour at the end of a week which will ultimately see him lose the England captaincy — but he was unable to come late and steal the limelight at this particular party.
Mourinho can bemoan his luck all he likes but United can ill-afford to keep dropping home points.
He has to find a way to get his strikers scoring here.
This is a manager who built his entire career on being unbeatable at home and Old Trafford used to be the most impregnable stadium in world football. Yet this place’s aura vanished when Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013 and Mourinho has been unable to restore it so far.
United should have had a penalty when Nacho Monreal impeded Antonio Valencia.
Under Ferguson, they absolutely would have got it.
When United were not winning here, we can all remember the feeling of inevitability as they built up unbearable levels of pressure and nicked it in Fergie Time.
Yet here they wasted Juan Mata’s opener and blew it in the dying moments of the match.
Mourinho pointed out that United’s fans had recognised their team’s dominance and cheered them off, despite the frustrating result — while under his predecessor Louis van Gaal, they were sometimes jeered after victories.
Where once Mourinho was famed for having an immediate impact on teams, here he was painting himself as a long-term manager needing time to build.
The Red Devils chief pointed out that Arsenal and Tottenham both had settled long-term plans and that Liverpool and Chelsea were benefitting hugely from not playing in Europe this season.
He declared his team the “unlucky ones” of the Premier League and tried to insinuate that he had a lot of promising kids, a few decent over-30s and perhaps not enough players at their peaks.
But in his heyday Mourinho never had to list excuses like those.
In his heyday, Mourinho’s teams simply found a way to win.