Terrace Talk: A turning point — or papering over the cracks?

By Richard Kurt

You could almost smell the lipsmacking anticipation above the frying breakfast bacon on Saturday.

A nation of ABUs and Joséphobes had been building up the steam for two weeks, waiting for the explosive moment when Mourinho’s old club would take him down for the final time, and put an end to the supposed has-been’s reign of terror.

Sadly for the vultures, no-one had shown Tony Martial and Juan Mata the script, and that duo proceeded to inspire an astonishing second half of the kind we hadn’t seen in, oooh, a good two weeks.

Even the Chelsea equaliser didn’t ruin the overall impact of the afternoon on United fans who - whisper it - have started muttering to each other about A Turning Point.

A few minutes after Martial’s brilliant second, a long-term anti-José United fan colleague turned to us and, shamefacedly-yet-joyfully, grinned “just what the **** is going on here?!” Heh. Who can honestly say?

United’s players showed the fight and urgency during that 45 minutes for which we have been craving all season, and which some had alleged the players have not been wanting to produce for this particular manager.

Martial went out of his way to dismiss any suggestion that there’d ever been a problem with José although, let’s be honest: no-one believes him. It’d have been more convincing if he’d signed the contract Ed Woodward, his biggest fan, keeps waving in front of his turned-up nose.

Luke Shaw has, after all, just put our money where his mouth is by penning a new deal for a boss he was supposedly at daggers drawn with just six months ago.

But let’s not carp about the past. Let us assume, for the sake of the argument and general giddiness, that we are indeed in corner-turning mode. Can the change be backdated to half-time against Newcastle?

Legend has it that Mourinho did something unexpected and almost noble in that critical 15 minutes; he is said to have handed Pogba, of all people, the keys to the car and told him to drive it.

That’s the same Pogba he had just spent the last fortnight fighting quite publicly with, to such an extent that most observers thought the situation terminal.

United responded by accomplishing a famous comeback, and thereby “saving José’s job”, in a spirit of genuine camaraderie; Chelsea on Saturday could be seen as a continuation thereof.

Will the visit of Juventus thus see us reap yet more of what José has sown tomorrow night, and complete the relaunch of this hitherto-benighted season?

Hardcore Joséphobes will disdain talk of turning points. They will tell you that this little passage of glimmering light changes nothing; that overall, Mourinho is still a busted flush, and that United’s players simply aren’t good enough .

I’m not here to tell you which camp you should be in on this. Viewing it as objectively as I can, I think the arguments are still weighted against José.

But what I do know is that, as I suggested in my last column, Jose has definitely not ‘given up’, as many were alleging was the case.

Quite the opposite; he is raging against the dying light because his pride is hurt and his record matters to him.

So he is still desperately looking for solutions to all the obvious problems.

On Pogba, for example, he is less draconian than you might expect; I am told he has confided that he thinks Pogba himself isn’t the problem.

It’s Pogba “listening to the wrong people” around him, and that all José feels he needs to do is ‘get into his ear’. This is classic Mourinho, of course; he always used to pride himself of being able to get into the psyches of his charges, in a manner reminiscent of Fergie at his best.

That he thinks he might still be capable of doing this is a sign of hope, perhaps.

Unless you’re one of those who are just desperate to see him go.

But Jose may not be hogging the headlines next week as there may be exclusive things to report here on my return about Saudi Arabia and United. So stand by your camels!”