Don't expect Jose Mourinho to fight Liverpool's fire with fire
The point that Jose Mourinho's allies have always been at pains to make is that one does not appoint Jose Mourinho and expect him to play risky, attacking football, any more than one would anticipate that very same man hiring a suite at the Lowry Hotel and changing his own towels.
No plans to change: Jose Mourinho.
Photo: APWhich is to say that when you get Mourinho, you also get 17 years of managerial belligerence, and an occasional unshakeable commitment to killing any vestige of joy in a football match when he deems that the situation demands it. It takes a certain kind of character to do so, and there have been times when the results have been spectacular in terms of the epic drama of one man's sabotage, rather than the ebb and flow of the match itself.
Needless to say, it is all set up for Mourinho to interrupt the free-flowing goalscoring of Liverpool at Saturday lunchtime, in a game beset by all the usual pressure and expectations that you might expect of such an entrenched rivalry. On one side is the general consensus that this Liverpool side are better to watch, and that Manchester United's own traditions of attacking football have not been met by their form this season. On the other side, what we can only assume is Mourinho's immense private disgust at those kinds of theories.
With Mourinho, it is often the breathtaking contempt for other people's view of the game that can be the most entertaining part of the day's events. When United repeatedly failed to do anything of note against Liverpool at Anfield in October, in one of the most dismal games between the old rivals, the United manager was asked whether he believed this sort of thing passed for entertainment in the tradition of Britain's two most successful clubs.
"Depends what for you is entertaining game," he replied. "One thing is an entertaining game for fans, another thing is entertaining game for the people who read football in a different way. That's different."
By the people who read football in a different way, he meant, of course, people like himself, who get things done. Some will argue that the ends justify the means and if United play the same on Saturday and get a point, or even win, then the approach is right.
Mourinho would not stop there: the approach is right whatever the result, and if they lose then it will be the players' fault, or some other factor which he could not influence. But the title race is over and the challenge now is which manager, if any, has the strategy to make up the vast ground to City next season, an issue that will be in the minds of the five clubs that trail the league leaders.
Chelsea and Arsenal have more fundamental questions about new managers in the summer. Liverpool and Spurs have played arguably the best football after City, but both have financial limitations that mean they have always sold leading players and may well do so again in the future.
The team that is best placed to catch Pep Guardiola, with the resources to match them, is United - and a team with those ambitions should be confident of beating any side at home, including Liverpool. The two teams are not that far apart. Klopp's side have averaged more possession than United and more shots on target, although the margins are not great. When it comes to goals, Liverpool have scored 11 more and conceded 11 more than United.
The difference on Saturday is in what a manager is prepared to risk. When his Chelsea team beat Liverpool at Anfield in 2014 to deny them a Premier League title, Mourinho's greatest joy seemed to come from his side's refusal to fulfil the role of "clowns in the circus" that he thought had been measured up for them. He always knows what it is he does not want his team to be, but what of the other side of that coin: what identity are the current United side trying to embrace?
There will be many United fans who admire the bloody-mindedness, but where does it go in the long term? It is hard to see what kind of team Mourinho is building that, even in the exciting comeback against Crystal Palace, showed a lot of spirit but no great clue as to the style of football he envisages winning the league in the next three years.
When Spurs beat Klopp's side 4-1 at Wembley in October, they did so with just 36 per cent of the possession, half as many passes and fewer shots on target. Perhaps Mourinho will also counter-attack, but he will know that in games at Old Trafford like these, there is a tendency for the crowd to overrule a conservative manager and demand its team attack.
What works in theory does not always hold up under the external pressures of the crowd's expectation, and supporters who are used to things being done a certain way. "I was waiting for Jurgen to change," Mourinho said after October's game at Anfield. "I was waiting for him to go more attacking but he kept the three strong midfielders all the time where he had control." As the home team, Mourinho said, the onus was on Klopp to "break the game", and concede a defensive advantage for an attacking one.
At Old Trafford, the onus will be on Mourinho to do that, although when he feels a demand to play a certain way, his instinct is to resist it. He views any tradition with suspicion, and the old way of doing things as dangerously sentimental. But on Saturday, in charge of United against Liverpool, he is up against a powerful history.
Telegraph UK
Morning & Afternoon Newsletter
Delivered Mon–Fri.