MANCHESTER:  Jose Mourinho is into Groundhog Day. In all his major appointments he has run into a crisis in his third season. It was the same at Chelsea, at Internazionale and at Real Madrid. Now the pattern is being repeated at Manchester United.

Suddenly, the ‘Mourinho magic’ does not work any more. The players are no longer responding as they did when he was fresh, excited and galvanised by a new challenge. Mourinho’s record shows him to be a manager who guarantees success in the short term but disappointment and disunity in the long term.

Mourinho’s mood music has been off tune ever since pre-season in the United States. Then he was complaining about transfer policy, about his players’ post-World Cup delays.

In his dealings with the media he was grumpy and irritable. This has not changed with the start of competition. United are misfiring. The fans are growing increasingly impatient with not only erratic results but the safety-first strategy which runs directly against the club’s attacking traditions.

The single most evident headline issue has been Mourinho’s problems with the infuriatingly inconsistent Paul Pogba. United eased concerns by launching their Champions League campaign with a 3:0 win away to Young Boys. But in the Premier League they prepare to go to West Ham on Saturday a poor seventh in the table and already eights point behind leaders Liverpool.

All this after only six games.

An effective, in-form, concentrated United should have beaten promoted Wolves at the weekend. Instead there were held 1:1 in front of their own fans. Worse was to follow on Tuesday night. Mourinho’s former Chelsea pupil Frank Lampard brought his second division Derby County to Old Trafford and triumphed 8:7 on penalties after a 2:2 draw.

United fielded only a slightly weakened team: no De Gea or Pogba or Alexis Sanchez. Also they were reduced to 10 men by a red card for goalkeeper Sergio Romero after 67 minutes. But Mourinho lined up stars such as Juan Mata, Jesse Lingard, Ander Herrera, Ashley Young, Phil Jones, Nemanja Matic, Romelu Lukaku and Antony Martial.

Lampard triumph

They should have won easily. Lampard is a novice manager, in his first season in charge of a modest club from the shadows of the English game. Derby even looked to have secured victory inside 90 minutes after substitute Jack Marriott followed up an exceptional Harry Wilson free-kick to cancel out Juan Mata’s early goal. Marouane Fellaini rescued a 2:2 draw deep into stoppage time.

Former Liverpool goalkeeper Scott Carson proved Derby’s shootout hero, saving Jones’s attempt to shock Old Trafford.

Mourinho claimed United had lacked intensity in the weekend draw with Wolves and England left-back Ashley Young agreed that the team had been similarly guilty against Derby. Young said: “They had more intensity than we did. You’ve always got to go further than the opposition. We didn’t do that. We got punished.”

Lampard said: “I’m a bit shell-shocked, in a good way. To come here and play the way we did, it on this stage, against this team, is immense. It’s up there with the things I did as a player.”

Hanging over everything at United is the Pogba crisis.

It’s been a painful story for the club since even before Mourinho: Pogba was the youth star who felt he was not given his chance and ran away to Juventus before being bought back for a club record £89m. But Mourinho has a love/hate relationship with the French World Cup-winner. On Tuesday morning Mourinho had told his players that Pogba would not captain United again.

Pogba has fulfilled the role three times when the club captain, Antonio Valencia, has been unavailable. Mourinho’s decision was seen as a direct response to the player’s comments after the Wolves draw when he appeared to question his manager’s tactics and called for United to adopt a more attacking approach, especially at Old Trafford.

After the Derby defeat Mourinho confirmed his decision but refused to provide a satisfactory explanation. He said: “The only truth is that I made the decision for Paul not to be the second captain any more. But no fallout. No problems at all. The same person that decides Paul is not second captain anymore was exactly the same person that decides that Paul was the second captain — myself. I am the manager, I can make these decisions, just one decision that I don’t have to explain.”

Barcelona were interested in signing Pogba in the summer but United refused to consider a sale. However Mourinho, if he stays, may prefer to sell Pogba as soon as January. United’s board must now decide whether to support Mourinho or bring the increasing turmoil to an end by paying him off. Already speculation about a successor is under way with Zinedine Zidane and Mauricio Pochettino the favoured candidates – whether they like it or not.

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