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Alex Keble

Fellaini is the perfect symbol of disastrous post-Fergie years

It was so nearly the perfect Sunday afternoon for Manchester United, a club finally showing signs of mutating into a Jose Mourinho killing machine. There is a prowling, serpent-like quality to Mourinho – all beady eyes and snatching rhetoric - and until the 88th minute at Goodison Park United played like this was finally his side: the injection of venom; the hypnotic lull; the slow suffocation – it was the sort of cold, ruthless performance Mourinho loves more than anything else.

That is until, with five minutes remaining, United’s comedy beanpole bounded onto the pitch, elbows flailing, mop-top bobbing in the wind, to clatter his way into mischief with all the grace and subtlety of Marvel’s Groot.

It was a befitting symbol of the post-Fergie era that it was Marouane Fellaini - United’s bumbling Giant - who cost them so dearly at Everton. Ever since his arrival in 2013 Fellaini has been the emblem of United’s disastrous transfer policy, his playing style a physical representation of the board’s clumsy decision-making and directionless management; he is the shining beacon of Man Utd’s 1306-day calamity.

Mourinho’s initial trust in Fellaini is waning, his decline in game-time suggesting Jose has finally worked out that the former-Everton midfielder is drastically unreliable. Fellaini is a hard worker and listens to his manager’s instructions better than anyone, which explains why David Moyes and Louis van Gaal both had so much time for him, but sadly being teacher’s pet counts for little if performances on the pitch are wild and uncontrolled. Over the last three and a half years no player at the club has come anywhere near the defensive naivety, positional indiscipline, and aimless passing of Fellaini.

He has, in short, been at the epicentre of everything that has gone wrong at United since Ferguson stepped down.

Let’s start at the beginning. David Moyes’ doomed tenure was defined by a failed transfer policy and overly-defensive football, two factors that revolved around Fellaini. Signed for an inflated fee after United missed his release clause deadline, the Belgian was Moyes’ only signing that summer – and one that encouraged him to play long-ball, defensive football. Fellaini was the wrong signing at the wrong time for the wrong price, encapsulating a dreadful year in the transfer market and a tactical shift that saw the club descend into turmoil.

Under Louis van Gaal, Fellaini once again became the embodiment of the club’s flaws. He was the archetype of the LVG midfield - shuttling pointlessly left and right, moving the ball at an achingly slow tempo and always – always - laterally. Following his manager’s instructions to the letter, Fellaini helped produce the most boring and lifeless football at Old Trafford in living memory. It is a damning indictment of the club that Fellaini – a clattering and ungainly midtable player - was the most Moyesian player in Manchester for seven months and then the most Van Gaalian player for the next two years.

Mourinho will not make the same mistake. There is a gradual but meticulous incline taking place at the club over the past month with Fellaini very much on the outside looking in. After a wobbly start threatened to plunge the Portuguese straight back into third-season crisis, Mourinho appears to have cleared his head. The psychological damage of those horrible three months in 2015 took their toll, but ever-so-slowly he is resurfacing from the murky waters. It will take a long, long time, but things are starting to come together.

Ander Herrera, Michael Carrick, and Paul Pogba are all considerably more intelligent footballers than Fellaini, and have shown as much by combining to make a neat, swirling system over the past few games. Mourinho’s early interest in directness on the flanks is being replaced by a recognition that narrow playmakers – such as Jesse Lingard and Henrik Mkhitaryan – bring greater control than the likes of Marcus Rashford, while Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic are finally finding their groove through the middle. Things are looking more sophisticated and more interconnected than they did in August and September, when Fellaini featured prominently in a team of disparate abilities that was never likely to meld together. Having finally worked out which players truly deserve to feature in a Mourinho side, United are on the mend.

Chaotic, unintelligent, and utterly infuriating: words that accurately describe Manchester United’s post-Fergie years and one particular footballer who has existed at the epicentre of it all. The club will not fully overcome this difficult period until the heavy baggage of the era is removed, and while Mourinho may already have worked out that Fellaini is the curse Sunday’s crucial error was – surely - the final nail in the coffin. To end the three-and-a-half-year nightmare they must remove the figurehead – the grand symbol of their failure – that is Marouane Fellaini.

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