Chronicle EditorLONDON. – He is dragging the good name of Manchester United through the gutter. Mindless. Needless. Shameless. Nobody is surprised, not anymore.Jose Mourinho sent off? Oh right, ok. Tell us something new. He is the story again – yet again – after being dismissed for booting a water bottle 20 yards down the touchline.
Mourinho is a menace: out of control, centre stage for all the wrong reasons. This angry, snarling, growling man cannot be stopped. He is at war.
With himself. With the world. With referee Jon Moss.
The pair have history, dating back to last season when he slammed the door shut to the ref’s room at Upton Park and refused to leave.
The FA threw their flimsy rulebook at him and banned the Special One from the stadium for a game when Chelsea travelled to Stoke.
English football has earned another well-deserved break from him.
He spent 68 minutes in the directors’ box, yards away from two giants of the game. What are Sir Alex Ferguson and Sir Bobby Charlton to think of this behaviour?
Like the FA, they must be pig sick of him by now. Everyone else is.
On a 1-10 scale of offences, taking a swipe at an innocent bottle of water in frustration is innocuous enough.
It is not a heinous crime. It is just plain stupid. When you start totting it all up, such as his dismissal in the 0-0 draw with Burnley on October 29, sympathy is in short supply. He is a fool, to himself more than anything.
Mourinho cannot influence anything sitting in the directors’ box, even if he did get an eyeful of Pretty Woman Julia Roberts on his way up to his seat.
Mourinho was once the face of the world football, the main man after winning the Champions League with Porto and Inter Milan.
Everybody – Real Madrid, Chelsea, you name it – wanted a piece of this charismatic super-coach.
Now he is just a petulant, spoilt brat.
Players would rather play for Arsene Wenger, Pep Guardiola, Antonio Conte or Jurgen Klopp these days and he just cannot handle it.
They are the main men. Mourinho is just another United manager passing through. He is disrupting them, bringing the club into disrepute with his baffling, psychotic behaviour on the touchline.
Moss, the poor fella, called it right in the incident that led to Mourinho’s dismissal. He booked Paul Pogba for simulation when he jumped through the air to avoid Mark Noble’s reducer
Pogba, booked for the fifth time this season, is banned from United’s EFL Cup tie with West Ham tomorrow.
He had set up United’s equaliser, a clever chip after 21 minutes that was headed beyond West Ham keeper Darren Randolph.
From there we should have seen the relentless United of old.
Instead it was the New United. Mourinho’s United. Manchester dis-United. They drew again, yet again, in front of their own miffed supporters.
It is four in a row in the English Premier League at home: Stoke, Burnley, Arsenal and West Ham.
It is toe-curling to watch them at Old Trafford now. They are staring up at Arsenal in the final Champions League spot, eight points off Wenger’s side in fourth. Mourinho will hate that.
Chelsea, the league leaders under the Italian specialist Conte, have pulled even further clear.
Mourinho will hate that, too.
United have to get their own house – and manager – in order first.
They fell behind after just 95 seconds on Sunday against West Ham.
It happens, deal with it. United did not. Dimitri Payet sent in a delicious free-kick and Diafra Sakho eluded his marker Ibrahimovic to head West Ham in front. When Ibra made amends after 21 minutes it should have been the incentive for United to win their first game in the league at OT since the 4-1 thumping over Leicester.
Marcus Rashford, clean through after reading a Phil Jones header, was denied by Randolph’s outstretched right leg. Pogba, looking decent enough in the centre of midfield, sent a header wide before the break.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan, on as a substitute for captain Juan Mata, hit the post and Jesse Lingard’s effort on the rebound was ruled out for off-side.
That was about it for United.
West Ham grew into it, recovering from Ibrahimovic’s equaliser with a disciplined, dogged performance.
Payet, as ever, was the out ball.
He was convinced, as Slaven Bilic was convinced, that West Ham should have been awarded a penalty just before the break. Payet lured Rojo into it, delaying his cross from the left until he could pinpoint the United defender’s arm on the way into the penalty area.
Moss, under almost intolerable pressure, opted against it.
Wise move, wrong decision.
By then Mourinho was making his way down to the dressing room, but something is desperately missing.
Judging by this, he has lost his bottle. – The Sun.
Online Reporter