Manchester United’s mini-crisis seems to be over. This was a comprehensive and crowd-pleasing dismantling of the defending champions, with the home side playing the sort of football and scoring the type of goals that Old Trafford wants to see, trashing Leicester’s reputation for doughty defending in the process.
Never mind that three of the four first-half goals came from corners – although Claudio Ranieri certainly will – here was United looking more balanced, mobile and adventurous. Paul Pogba came into his own for perhaps the first time this season and one goal of the season contender he almost created for Zlatan Ibrahimovic would have brought the house down had the Swede been able to keep his volley a little lower.
Watching from the bench, the United captain could only have been impressed. Presumably it was some sort of coincidence that Wayne Rooney’s absence brought about one of the most emphatic displays of the season. The traditional observation to make here would be that Rooney might have a fight on his hands to get back into the team, perhaps even that José Mourinho ought to consider dropping his captain more often, though the United manager would not be in favour of such an interpretation. It might come under the heading of cruelty.
“The boys need support after hearing and reading cruel comments,” Mourinho said in his programme notes, placing the blame for recent disappointments on the “football experts” who changed their opinion about his side in the space of just over a week. Three successive defeats tend to have that effect, as Mourinho has surely been around long enough to notice, even if having to explain away a poor run of results is relatively new to him.
“During the week we are not on holiday,” Mourinho continued. “We have no time for posh dinners in restaurants, and what we have in life no one gave us on a silver plate.” By the time the manager got round to encapsulating his career as a fighter – “some are happy to choose the easy jobs, I have always chosen the challenge” – he was protesting too much and sounding more than a little paranoid. As the psychoanalyst in Fawlty Towers might have put it, there’s enough material for a whole conference in there.
The message Mourinho seems to want supporters to hear is that he has no cushy job at Old Trafford. Restoring Manchester United to greatness is a challenge because they have had three difficult years. That much is true, though in the light of United’s faltering start – and the way Pep Guardiola has begun his career at the Etihad – this could simply be a case of Mourinho getting his excuses in first.
His task did not look all that complicated when the United board agreed to spend a world-record sum on buying back Pogba, and any difficulties the manager has experienced in finding a role for Rooney were caused by himself when he said he would only ever play him as a striker, then promptly changed his mind. It would appear “football experts” who revise their opinion on the evidence of a few poor games are not confined to the ranks of the media.
At least Pogba was a success against Leicester, and United played with much more freedom without Rooney, even if they faded slightly in the second half and allowed Leicester the most spectacular goal of the afternoon. Pogba scored his first goal for the club and said he hoped it would not be the last, while Rooney appeared as a late substitute to show he could accept a demotion in his stride.
Mourinho insisted his change of personnel had nothing to do with the ease of victory and convincing performance, yet explained he decided to leave his captain out because he wanted to play his fast players – ie Marcus Rashford and Jesse Lingard – against Leicester because they are so quick on the break. While that makes sense, it is tantamount to the first admission of the season that Rooney is actually quite slow these days. It will be interesting to see which opponents Mourinho believes are more suited to the experienced, yet sedate, Rooney-Ibrahimovic partnership the manager imagined would see him through the season – though, for the moment at least, the former is possibly glad to get out of the firing line.
“He’s happy, the team won,” Mourinho said. “Wayne is still a big player for me, for United and for his country. I have nothing else to say about him. He’s my man.”
The manager himself was happy too, after United went four goals up before the interval for the first time in a league match since 2006. First halves under Louis van Gaal were notoriously slow and frequently scoreless, though thanks in part to Leicester’s shocking inability to defend set pieces United were able to get off to a flier.
“We started well for a change, Mourinho said. “Normally our second halves are much better than our first halves, but this time we started well and didn’t stop until we had closed out the game. It was good to win in such a comfortable way. Last season we couldn’t beat Leicester; this time we’ve won against them twice already.”
