Manchester United, the long-distance sprint and how Jose Mourinho has started losing at his own game

Pep Guardiola is beginning to do to Mourinho what he has done to so many before

Jose Mourinho was the master of blowing opponents away early in the season (Getty)

Only once in the aftermath of Manchester United’s laboured victory over Bournemouth did Jose Mourinho sound himself. In the tunnel, straight after the final whistle, he was asked if the title race was over with Manchester City 11 points clear. “If it is over,” he retorted. “I will go on holiday to Brazil or Los Angeles.”

Later, when he had made his way to the Old Trafford press room, he was more downbeat, admitting that Eric Bailly’s ankle injury that has kept him out for six weeks might require surgery. When he was asked if his players still believed they could win the title, he replied: “They believe they can win the next match.” Beating West Bromwich Albion on Sunday represents a very limited objective.

Perhaps the reason for Mourinho’s frustration, the reason why he marched into the Manchester City dressing room on Sunday and told them to turn down the Oasis songs, was because Pep Guardiola is doing to him what he once did to others.

When Mourinho first came to England, he was asked the old questions about the Premier League being a marathon. “No,” he replied. “It is a long-distance sprint.”

His plan in his first two triumphant seasons at Stamford Bridge was to break the opposition before the halfway mark. In his first season, Chelsea had racked up 40 points after 17 games, a four-point lead over Everton. They won the league by 12 points.

The following season Chelsea were even more brutal out of the blocks. The lead after 17 matches was nine points. It was the best start any club has made to a Premier League season – until this one.

The gap between Manchester City and the rest – which is what the Premier League may become until Guardiola decides whether to take the longstanding offer to lead Qatar into the 2022 World Cup – is now 11 points.

Only one club, the Manchester United of Keane, Cantona and Schmeichel were further ahead at this stage of the campaign, 14 points clear of Leeds as Christmas 1993 beckoned. They did not look back and it is hard to see Manchester City stumbling.

Nobody now does long-distance sprints better than Guardiola. Whenever Manuel Pellegrini was asked about his season at Real Madrid, he would talk about the 92 points his players amassed and the 102 goals they scored, he would give a shrug and say that it still had not been enough to overhaul the Barcelona of Pep Guardiola.

Pep Guardiola has blown away rival Jose Mourinho so far this season (Getty)

It was not enough to keep him his job at the Bernabeu. He was replaced by Jose Mourinho and he still believes Mourinho’s ‘people’ had plenty to do with undermining his position.

Compared with his past, the European trophies with Porto, storming the barricades with Chelsea and taking an Internazionale side, half of whose members were over 30, to a Treble, Mourinho’s achievements since his return to the Premier League in 2013 have been modest.

Thirty-eight points represents Manchester United’s best start since Sir Alex Ferguson’s departure and before the Premier League became a long-distance sprint it would probably have been enough. Five of Ferguson’s first eight Premier League titles were won with Manchester United trailing at the halfway mark.

Thirty-eight points would have given Manchester United the lead or put them within two points of it in every one of the Premier League’s first 12 seasons except the no contest that was 1993-94.

In five of the last seven seasons, including this one, it would have left them with a serious deficit. Ferguson tended to win his titles in February and March. Now they are won in October and November. The game has changed and it was Mourinho who changed it.