PL Preview: If Jose Mourinho Parks the Bus Again at Chelsea, What's the Problem?

While some wry satisfaction can be gleaned from watching football's most polarising manager beaten with his own stick, it seems a little excessive to run him over with his own bus.

As Red Monday bled into Pitch Black Tuesday, hysterical pre-match propaganda over how good Liverpool vs. Manchester United was going to be was matched by the morose reaction to how good it wasn't. Chuck D had never felt so prescient.

The world felt cheated, and it was all one man's fault.

Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho parking the same bus he popularised back in 2004 when lamenting Tottenham Hotspur's desire not to be soundly beaten by his far superior Chelsea side, was for many an act nothing less than blasphemous under the floodlights of Anfield. A first goalless draw in the fixture since 2005 and only the third in the last 49 meetings between the two sides had the Portuguese's fingerprints all over it.

Mourinho coming back into the post-match press conference to dispute a possession stat of just 35 per cent, United's lowest since Opta began collecting such data 13 years ago, was the equivalent of a child denying raiding the biscuit barrel despite having chocolate smeared all over their face.

In his pomp, he would have crooked his lip into a sneer and moved on. He'd probably have taken all three points, too, just as he famously did in 2014 to put a knife through the heart of Liverpool's unexpected title tilt.

Whereas once he'd swallow criticism from the likes of Johan Cruyff and Jorge Valdano with a single exaggerated yawn, now Opta can get under his skin.

Whether it was 35 or 42 per cent possession is immaterial. A 6-3-1 formation is not "the United way," and that's all that matters to many.

United employed a back six at times on Monday evening, and it was not overly admired. Pep Guardiola will have swooned at Mourinho's unique use of false full-backs, though, as Ashley Young and Marcus Rashford spent most of the second half sitting on the toes of Daley Blind and Antonio Valencia.

United being the superior team throughout the first half was forgotten by the time the second period got under way. David De Gea's two excellent saves thereafter seemingly confirmed the away side had played anti-football throughout. 

Mourinho's detractors handed out rose-tinted glasses to all watching on Monday, but it's worth pondering whether using Phil Neville as an additional holding central midfielder as Sir Alex Ferguson did in a number of big games is the United way, or if sacrificing a striker for Park Ji-sung in numerous European sojourns is the United way?

That's not a criticism of Ferguson whatsoever but an observation that the Scot was more than capable of being pragmatic even amid all the romance of injury-time goals and wingers that actually played on the wing. He didn't have United playing like United after his first eight league games in charge.

In the intervening 12 years since being coined, "parking the bus" has gone from being a throwaway soundbite to so ubiquitous it became an ultra-realistic tactical option on FIFA 15. Sounds fun, kids, is there a "called-off" option, too, where instead of playing a match you sit in traffic trying to make your way out of the car park in driving rain?

Nonetheless, it's still just a soundbite, and a pretty glib one at that.

While Italians appreciate defending as they might a fine wine, one suspects the art of Catenaccio is often discussed over a glass of Chianti, in England, pragmatism and rigour are seen as little more than party-pooping props. Going into a game with the primary objective of not getting beaten is about as much fun as going to the cinema with the sole aim of not falling asleep.

Given there's every chance Mourinho could use a similar approach on his return to Chelsea at the weekend, #SheepishSunday may be an apt strapline for Sky Sports' marketing department to consider. Plans for the players to be serenaded onto the field by Elton John before white doves are released from his piano have been shelved. U2 will give a live performance of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" instead.

To borrow momentarily another adage from football's rich lexicon, it's a results business. However, in (successfully) attempting to prevent Manchester United falling to the same fate Liverpool have inflicted on Arsenal, Leicester City and Chelsea already this season, Mourinho enraged not just the home supporters and a smattering of the away ones, but seemingly a large majority of neutrals watching as well.

To be bored by a team's stylistic tendencies is one thing, but for a neutral to be ensconced in a favourite armchair with a beer in one hand and pack of crisps in the other, and feel outraged by United's temerity in not even trying to entertain, is a little peculiar. It's a bit like screaming obscenities at a strong finisher in a distance race for not leading from the front.

Perhaps it's here where football has veered from being a sport first and foremost to little more than another branch of the entertainment industry, an alternative to Netflix when the decent box sets have been exhausted.

Spoilt as we are by blanket television coverage of Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, it's as though their regular jaw-dropping brilliance has infantilized our threshold for anything falling below such exacting standards.

Having watched Oldham Athletic for 20 consecutive seasons in English football's League One, I can categorically confirm to the Twitter generation that Monday's game was not, contrary to widespread chagrin, the "worst game ever." Crap almost certainly, cataclysmic no.

Football can often be boring, that's kind of the point. If everyone played like Barcelona, how could one appreciate Barcelona? If both sides in any given game attacked like basketball teams, football would be basketball. And nobody wants that.

Mourinho's obligation is to his team and, as an extension of them, the club's supporters. It's worth noting that a Manchester Evening News poll saw 82 per cent of United fans who voted declare themselves happy with what they had seen at Anfield. Though, of course, Manchester City supporters could have sabotaged that figure. 

The rest of us, whether neutrals, writers, reporters, lovers or fighters, are rightly no more than an afterthought to all but the weakest managers.

A question for Manchester United supporters is whether they would be willing to sacrifice being pleasing aesthetically for the right results?

It's a predicament that tends to worry only supporters of clubs that banquet at football's top table, and as such is one unlikely to elicit too much sympathy from afar. For a neutral to be bothered, it would be akin to losing sleep over Brad Pitt's quandary when he was tasked with choosing between Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie.

The harder-to-please United supporters would argue—just like Pitt—they have ended up with neither. Mourinho's worst start with a new club since 2001 sees United sat in seventh place courtesy of a brand of football unlikely to sit well with those who mean the opposition when they sing "attack, attack, attack," as opposed to rival managers or the Opta stat man.

Mourinho has always worked his teams out from back to front. His script has never altered. If United wanted to play like Barcelona, they should have appointed Guardiola. He wouldn't park a Smart Car, let alone a great big bloody bus. Some might say a goalless draw at Liverpool is a better result than a 4-0 defeat at Barcelona, though.

Ruthless professionalism and dependability mean everything to Mourinho, but such qualities, as the writer John Updike once opined, are not always universally appreciated: "To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is aesthetically boring—an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed."

Attacking cohesion will come in time, as he's been quick to reassure supporters. For now, anti-virtues need to be tolerated.

There are myriad issues with his Manchester United side. Grinding out a goalless draw against a Liverpool team who had scored nine goals in their previous two home games is not one of them. Neither would the same scoreline on Sunday. Had Mourinho instructed his side to go toe-to-toe with Liverpool, it would have been a more entertaining game, and United would have lost.

It will be fascinating to see how sensitive Mourinho is to bad press these days, as his natural inclination would be to adopt a similar approach at Chelsea. Thursday night's 4-1 victory over Fenerbahce in the Europa League, in which United were excellent from half an hour onwards, would perhaps embolden greener managers, but it's unlikely to cloud his thinking for Sunday. The much-improved performance of Wayne Rooney will be the one that interrupts his thoughts most often over the next few days.

A point away from home at one of your biggest rivals is a decent result, whichever way you cut it. Mourinho knows from experience drawing away at fellow contenders and then beating them at home lays solid foundations from which to build a title challenge. It might not be the fabled United way, but he'd take a stalemate from his return to Stamford Bridge were it offered now. As would Ferguson were he still in charge. 

Especially given the fact United's record against Chelsea is abysmal. They have lost more Premier League matches to Chelsea than any other top-flight side (16, five of which were overseen under Mourinho's two respective tenures); while it is seven games and counting since United have tasted success against the west Londoners.

The only previous time Mourinho has returned to Chelsea as an opposition manager was with Inter Milan in March 2010. Such was his currency with the club's supporters back then, even eliminating Chelsea from the UEFA Champions League at the round-of-16 stage could not dampen the affection he held. Chelsea supporters singing the name of a Manchester United manager seems less likely.

While it's nonsense to judge Mourinho so soon, it's hard to watch United in various guises since Ferguson's retirement and not feel a twinge of sadness at Sir Matt Busby's words to Sir Bobby Charlton, per the BBC: "All those lads you see going to the factory, they come to watch you on Saturday. They have boring jobs, so you have to give them something they will enjoy."

In fact, Busby's wisdom could retrospectively be a lament for modern football per se, with its prohibitive prices rendering largely redundant attendance for the type of people he was so intent on entertaining.

Busby's way was the United way, but just at the minute, billionaire beggars can't be choosers. Few in the away end at Anfield will have enjoyed a United performance in which they failed to register a shot of note on target, even less will fail to appreciate Mourinho's tenure is still in its infancy.

The most expensive squad ever assembled in football history is essentially a cast of A-list actors and a stellar director signed up to a film with a working title but no script. 

While Paul Scholes has been quick to decry United's lack of identity to date under Mourinho, a fair if perhaps premature assessment, Rio Ferdinand has argued of all the managers jettisoned into top jobs over the summer it was the latest Old Trafford incumbent that inherited the most cleaning up to do.

"Yeah, I do. There was a lot to do. There was a lot of cleaning up to do," Ferdinand told BT (via ESPN’s Arnidam Rej), when asked if Mourinho had the most work to do of this season's new managers.

"There was a big void in the group—in terms of mentality to win. The personalities needed to be brought out of the players to perform. There was a lot of rebuilding of characters to be done. All of that added up, in finding out who was right and who was wrong [for United]."

Sunday's game in the capital should give a fair indication of how far in Mourinho is in terms of cleaning up the mess of his predecessors. Antonio Conte could complain of similar inheritance issues, but he might not feel it apt to bring it up in any post-match manager drinks.