Watching Manchester United sure is painful

To be fair to Jose Mourinho, whatever his plan was, it was over within a few minutes. Ander Herrera started for Manchester United against Sevilla, and he had two jobs. One, the cover story, was to bustle around in midfield. And two, his real mission: along with Scott McTominay, he was there to ostentatiously not be Paul Pogba. A shame his hamstring went, really. When it comes to not being Paul Pogba, he’s a natural.

In his absence, and Pogba’s presence, United slipped once again into their signature style: a strange grey nothingness that isn’t precisely bad, but certainly isn’t good, and more importantly than either is amazingly dull. It felt very Mourinho-like in one sense, because the result was okay; as Chris Smalling noted after the Sevilla game, you “can’t argue with a clean sheet away from home in the first leg.” But it lacked any kind of control. Just as well David de Gea is made of only the strongest magnets and the finest velcro.

It’s not entirely clear what’s going on between Pogba and Mourinho, but it seems pretty clear that something’s going on. In many ways it seems to be the classic Mourinho vs. player argument that we’ve seen many times before. What might seem on the surface to be footballing questions — what’s Pogba’s best position? why is he out of form? why is this angry Portuguese man shouting at him all the time? — are addressed through the mechanisms of exile and shame.

Transfer rumours coincide with convenient illnesses, briefings and counter-briefings flourish. Mourinho says something intemperate to a journalist or two. The stench of performative machismo descends. And then, at least in this phase of Mourinho’s career, things don’t really seem to improve.

This, broadly speaking, is the most frustrating thing about watching Mourinho’s United. It’s not Phil Jones or Chris Smalling, the hangovers from previous regimes that may never be good enough. It’s the players that should be or could be good enough, or at least better than they are, and the opportunities they aren’t being given. Pogba is the emblem here: a player of expansive creative talents, ambition, and imagination, being asked to keep things tight in midfield and then punished when he can’t.

But there are others. Romelu Lukaku, at his best when feasting on crosses or running at defenders, spending every game with his back to goal. Anthony Martial, and his dancing feet, phasing in and out of favour. Luke Shaw, a proper attacking left-back with the instincts of a proper attacking left-back, understudy to Ashley Young. It’s probably a little early to claim the same for Alexis Sanchez, but if Mourinho has a plan that makes the most of him, we haven’t seen any sign of it so far.

The result is that United’s team is built from very expensive parts that grind against one another in frankly unpleasant ways, occasionally sputtering to a complete halt. And this means that United’s improvement under Mourinho, which is evident if slow, has been freighted with the sense that things could be both better and — perhaps more importantly — much more entertaining. Sevilla could easily have beaten them. One of Europe’s stronger teams would have taken them to pieces.

This would all be a problem even without the unflattering context of the rest of the Premier League. But it’s all thrown into sharper relief by the fact that City are winning the league by miles, and Liverpool are scoring goals by the fistful, and Spurs are polishing rough diamonds into gems, and Chelsea just turned in a smart, committed, clever performance against Barcelona. These are all things that Manchester United should, in theory, be able to do. These are things that Manchester United used to be able to do.

The club may be second in the Premier League table, for now, but there can’t be many fans of the sides below that would swap their manager for Mourinho. It’s hard to imagine, too, that those managers wouldn’t be doing something more interesting with United’s squad, beyond making an example of one of its most talented members. And that’s the real problem. This may all be just how Mourinho operates, but when his team looks tired, so does his nonsense. And right now, set against their peers and their competitors, United look absolutely knackered.