All is not well at Manchester United.
Jose Mourinho has reached his third season with the Red Devils, and just like clockwork things are starting to come apart at the seams. He looks moody and tired, his appearance has become dishevelled, his tone is bleak.
It’s the same old recipe we’ve seen so many times before with Jose, and for Chelsea fans who watched it happen twice at their club, it’s an especially familiar sight.
Complaints about preseason fixtures, transfers and a tangible disdain for the young players in his squad have all come to the fore in the last week, and we know what comes next.
If he follows the usual pattern, it will be a shaky start to the season, with ever more morose press conferences that hint ever more openly at failures in the transfer market by those above him.
Then it all reaches boiling point in the approach to Christmas, and that’s when the club has had enough, and gives him the bullet.
Manchester United are not as trigger happy as Chelsea when it comes to sacking managers midseason – perhaps because they have a share price to worry about – but at the rate at which things seem to be souring at Old Trafford, their patience will be severely tested before long.
Those at the Bridge have seen it all before, and it never ends nicely.
