It’s the EFL Cup so everything must be taken with a grain of salt, but Manchester United’s dominate victory over West Ham in the quarterfinals saw United resemble a waking giant. It must also be said that West Ham’s performance was totally in line with their 2016-17 season so far — disastrous.
Dating back to December of 2004, it’s been a miserly stretch of 13 games for Arsene Wenger against his old nemesis, Jose Mourinho. It’s not just the inability to defeat the former Chelsea manager that must irk Wenger, but the style with which Mourinho has gone about stymying his Arsenal sides.
Eleven matches into the season and we are still waiting for Jose Mourinho and his squad to show any real signs of challenging for the Premier League title. It's still early, but United already trail Liverpool by eight points in the EPL table.
Manchester United, it's fair to say, has not had the greatest season so far. Jose Mourinho's men currently reside in the foggy depths of sixth place in the Premier League table. To put that in perspective, they're even with Everton and three points above Watford.
To make matters worse, there has been a litany of issues for United in the past few weeks. A frustrating loss to Fenerbache in midweek has left United in third in their Europa League group and Mourinho's squad is facing a mini injury crisis.
The sharp decline in Jose Mourinho’s career over the last 12 months is undeniable. As a measure of his drop-off, consider the following: In the Portuguese’s first 130 games as a Premier League manager, he lost just a dozen times. It’s taken him just 25 further matches to double that tally.
There was a strange moment in the EFL Cup fourth round match between Manchester United and Manchester City during the half-time break. The first half had passed largely without incident save for a Kelechi Iheanacho header that the young Nigerian got completely wrong. Zlatan Ibrahimovic had a wretched opening 45 minutes, but the half-time punditry, as it so often does this season, gradually shifted to Paul Pogba.
During the commercial intermission, we were treated to this beautiful Adidas commercial concerning the world’s most expensive player:
Marouane Fellaini needs to be dropped. For a player whose job is to link defense and attack, he is one of the most unreliable middlemen in the game. The only consistency you get from the afroed Belgian is a world class chest trap and an imposing-yet-bumbling aerial presence.
With a resounding 4-0 win over the Chelsea side, Antonio Conte showed Jose Mourinho how it’s done as he defeated the Portuguese with nearly the same squad he failed to perform with.
Is it finally time to accept that Mourinho isn’t who he once was? Chelsea fans surely seemed to agree during the titanic clash:
"You're not special anymore," sing the #cfc fans
In a news conference following Monday’s tie with Liverpool, in preparation for their thursday night Europa League match, Mourinho made it clear to reporters that Manchester United have no “untouchables”. He contrasted it to his time at Chelsea, where in 2006 Moutinho described his squad as having nine players that would not be dropped.
It hasn’t been the dream beginning that many anticipated following three straight victories to open their 2016-17 Premier League campaign, and many within the Manchester United camp are already beginning to feel the heat.
Wayne Rooney has been in dire form, and his inclusion in the starting XI has been relentlessly questioned. Zlatan Ibrahimovic hasn’t scored a Premier League goal since September 10th. Paul Pogba has hardly justified his gargantuan transfer fee, and Jose Mourinho’s personnel choices, including the ostracizing of Bastian Schweinsteiger, have been criticized.