Warning signs as Jose Mourinho enters his third season at Manchester United

In September of Jose Mourinho’s miserable third season at Chelsea in 2015, he was asked if he was suffering from one of his infamous third season syndromes. As you might imagine, his response was on the zesty side of rude.

“Look, my third season in Porto, I didn’t have a third season.” He left after winning the Champions League and Portuguese League to join Chelsea.

“My third season in Inter, I didn’t have a third season.” He left after winning the Champions League and Serie a to join Real Madrid.

“My third season at Chelsea the first time, I won the FA Cup and the Carling Cup, and I played the Champions League semi-final.” And, with much the same team, they lost to Manchester United in the Champions League on penalties, under Avram Grant.

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“My third season in Real Madrid I won the Super Cup, I lost the cup final and went to the Champions League semi-finals.” While true, this is where the retort loses its way, given how dramatically the side imploded, the impact cushioned by the sheer advantage Real had over the rest of most of the league.

“Click Google instead of asking stupid questions.” Thanks, Jose.

We don’t have to Google, though. There is plenty of evidence that when Mourinho gets to his third season, things fall apart for him. At Real Madrid he set his Spanish internationals against their rivals and teammates at Barcelona, whipping them into such a febrile frenzy that they held their nerve while Pep Guardiola’s side briefly dissolved. The stress forced Guardiola into a sabbatical, and Mourinho claimed, “I can truly say that I gave more to Real Madrid any club than I ever have before.”

It showed. Sergio Ramos, a violent provocateur under Mourinho, referred to him once he left as, ‘just another coach.’ Mourinho had isolated Iker Casillas and that was part of the disruption, treating a club legend with a lack of respect, saying to the press, “As you Spanish are world champions, your friends in the press protect you… like the goalkeeper.” Mourinho had shown that Barcelona were beatable, but few regretted his departure when it came. Diego Torres’ The Special One: The Dark Side of Jose Mourinho gives an account of a man willing to attack almost anyone and do almost anything in order to get success. Warren Buffett famously said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” Mourinho obviously doesn’t think the payoff is worth it.

While Mourinho combusted at Real in his third season, the time it really came to the fore was, indeed, in his second spell at Chelsea. The season started with him criticising his own staff. In the same way that women and children are excluded from mafia hits, so are the non-playing staff in front of the press. It was so severe that it ended up in court, and before them it cost him the trust of his players. They were tired of him, and he quickly became just as tired of them.

When Alastair Campbell popped up on Channel 4 in 2003 to dispute the BBC’s attacks on his and Tony Blair’s dodgy dossier, it should have spelled the end of the folly. Instead, the BBC turned the other cheek and has largely been gutted since. But the move from Campbell was a mistake – as the Iraq War is criticised with each passing year as a humanitarian disaster verging on a war crime, that appearance seems self-serving and deceitful.

While not on the same scale of importance, Mourinho turning up on Goals on Sunday was something similar. The desperation of the act was self-sabotaging.

He attacked a referee: “The best players in the world can make mistakes. They miss penalties. The best goalkeepers make mistakes. This gentlemen is one of the top referees in European football. He can also make mistakes. He made important mistakes yesterday.”

Then he attacked Sky Sports: “When I finished at the game against Liverpool, I went to the dressing room and the first thing I saw on the big screen, reading non-stop – ‘Diego Costa crimes.’ I would like to know how to you, Sky Sports, describe the actions of the Burnley player yesterday? My English is not good enough to find a word.

“Did you apologise to Chelsea, to Diego or myself? You didn’t. As an institution, Sky is so important in the Premier League, you never apologise.”

The unravelling was compounded by a post-match interview after losing 2-1 to Leicester City, when he told Sky Sports that his players had, ‘betrayed,’ him by ignoring his orders. From alienating his staff, to hinting at wild conspiracies, and then to placing the blame at the feet of his players before seeing the exit door, it is clear that it was the third season to end all third seasons. So miserable was it that he only needed half of it to make his mark.

The question now is whether or not there are warning signs coming out of Mourinho in the same way there is comedy steam shooting out of his ears when he talks at press conferences. History might not be repeating, but it is rhyming.

He has told Antonio Valencia that he is out of shape: “Antonio Valencia comes from holiday – I think too much holiday for him. His condition was not good when he was back, then injury and also go back.”

He said Anthony Martial should be back: “Anthony Martial has the baby and after the baby is born – beautiful baby, full of health, thank God – he should be here and he is not here.”

He described Eric Bailly as, ‘no leader,’ and complained about not having even 30% of his squad. There are ways of acknowledging a lack of resources without denigrating the players that are at his disposal – if he really does give youth a chance, as he claimed at the start of his United tenure – then this is an opportunity as much as a talent. He has guilt-tripped his World Cup players into coming back early from their much-needed breaks.

There’s more, but this is a carry-over from the second season. He dropped Casillas at Real, and fell out with Cristiano Ronaldo, saying, “maybe he thinks he knows everything and the coach cannot help him develop further.” He has done the same to Paul Pogba. It doesn’t stop there, though. Luke Shaw deserves little sympathy for being unable to perform the basic task of staying fit, but he is clearly a player for whom tough love has only a negative effect. Rashford was bombed out for selfishness instead of refined and improved. There are always going to be problems between players and manager, but what is so tiresome is the way that Mourinho seems to almost deliberately go the worst way about it.

The root of Mourinho’s anger this time though is not his players. It is Ed Woodward. He has bristled at not signing the players he asked for already once last season. He was in a better mood, saying, “I understand the situation, I understand the market and if my club is not able to do two players and do just one, I will accept that as a consequence of the market now.” But that outlook was before he was denied Ivan Perisic.

This World Cup, as he was one of the best players in the Croat team, he said, “did not know,” why Manchester United had not signed him. Now we do – football talent expert Woodward believed Perisic wasn’t worth the money.

A month later, we find Mourinho openly at odds with Woodward. Wanting two players, he has explained, “I think two is not what I will get… We basically have the same players. The players we have bought one is a goalkeeper cover, one is a 19-year-old kid, so in fact we have one new player which is Fred.”

For all the problems Mourinho has created in the past at Real Madrid and Chelsea in his third seasons there, to his credit he has conjured up plenty of different ones at United.