Jose Mourinho must bring Manchester United back to basics against Tottenham to restore fear factor

Facing Spurs and summer target Toby Alderweireld could come at exactly the wrong time for United but it could also provoke a big-match response that gets back a bit of respect

For all of the grimaces pulled by Jose Mourinho and images of an unimpressed Ed Woodward, as well as the coded comments from Paul Pogba and conspicuously strong ones from Mino Raiola, the most overtly problematic element for Manchester United from the last defeat was something that went overshadowed by all of that pantomime. It was the assessment of Brighton and Hove Albion’s Leon Balogun following their 3-2 win.

“Some of the lads have just asked me that too and I said I had expected the Premier League to be quicker, but they told me this is always the kind of game you play against United,” the Nigerian defender said. “They like to slow it down a little bit sometimes. Liverpool is going to be completely different. I know how [Jürgen] Klopp likes to play. It’s going to be a lot quicker and a lot more intense.”

Or, to put it even more damningly, word has got around that United can be got at. And you don’t just hear it. You could see it in the two league performances so far, as both Leicester City and Brighton pressed Mourinho’s side, pushed them, put them on the back foot.

The key was that there was no fear to United, no level of intimidation. Brighton knew they weren’t that much of a threat, knew they were vulnerable, and had no trepidation about going for it.

As Balogun explicitly states, that is in real contrast to Liverpool – who he almost seems awed by – and you could add Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City. It feeds into another issue that has become a problem for Mourinho. There is a sense of excitement around all those teams right now, against a sense of emotional exhaustion around United.

This is also why pre-season was so important, and not just in terms of performances. It’s difficult not to think Mourinho himself further fostered this by essentially talking the team down by talking so much about transfers.

Jose Mourinho was powerless to stop defeat at Brighton (Reuters)

The greater challenge for the Portuguese is that this was precisely the problem he found at Chelsea in 2007-08, Real Madrid in 2012-13 and Chelsea again – most dramatically – in 2015-16. So many opposition sides realised that Mourinho teams that had previously been oppressively brilliant were now much softer, a lighter touch.

This is the great danger for United now: that they’re not quite right, and that teams sense it, and show them no respect. This is where things could start to get tricky, where it could lead into greater problems.

This does not necessarily mean that it will naturally end the same as at Chelsea and Madrid, but it does mean the challenge is the same, and it is not one that Mourinho has yet risen to. It did feel at Stamford Bridge and the Bernabeu that he was at a loss as to how to get a response from his players once his teams’ fear factors had gone, once the awe they were previously held in had evaporated.

So how can he recover it? The best ways are individual performances of bombastic intent, or resilient unbeaten runs – but then how do you generate those? As regards the latter, Sir Alex Ferguson always had one solution: get back to basics. This was best exemplified after the famous 6-1 defeat to Manchester City.

That has become a landmark match in City’s recent history, but wasn’t quite in Ferguson’s reign. It could well have been the sort of display that caused the aura of his teams to disappear, given how ragged United had been run, but it was not. Ferguson immediately ordered everything to be locked down, and the side won four of their next five games 1-0, drawing the other 1-1.

This should be a Mourinho speciality, and he did do something similar in his first United season as they went 25 games unbeaten after a 4-0 defeat to Chelsea… but 12 of those were draws, and there was just never the same sturdiness as 2011-12. There meanwhile just doesn’t seem the same confidence in this defence to do that, as has been one of the themes of the summer.

Mourinho wanted to sign Toby Alderweireld (Getty Images)

It is all the more pointed then the next match will involve the team of a centre-half he so wanted to sign in Tottenham’s Toby Alderweireld, and such a challenge. That could come at exactly the wrong time for United or, as has happened with this fixture twice in the last two years, allow the kind of big-match response that gets back a bit of respect; a bit of fear.

And might make for some happier images and comments. Talking about it is one thing, though, as United have found.