No word from Jose Mourinho was without motive

Jose Mourinho’s press conferences in recent months became increasingly fraught affairs; all sneering condescension, whining self-justification and self-pitying, mixed in with a healthy dose of Stalinist-era rewriting of history.

But if any Manchester journalist tells you this morning that they are glad to see the back of the Portuguese manager’s increasingly brief briefings, rest assured they are lying. I covered perhaps 100 or more such audiences over Mourinho’s two-and-a-half years in charge at Old Trafford and was always struck by two aspects of his public relations philosophy.

Firstly, Mourinho’s grasp of the English language, its subtle nuances and hidden meanings, was masterful. The greatest compliment that can be paid the 55-year-old former sports science student is you constantly found yourself forgetting that he was conducting his press conferences in a foreign language, one of four he speaks extremely well.

One of many master classes in his dark arts came last season after United had beaten Derby in a Friday night FA Cup tie, in the middle of the latest bout in his never-ending war of words with then Chelsea manager Antonio Conte.

In response to a Conte insult, Mourinho mumbled something inconsequential before mentioning: “What never happened to me — and will never happen — is to be suspended for match-fixing. That never happened to me and will never happen.”

When prompted further, asked whether that was a reference to Conte’s much-publicised controversies in Italy with match-fixing allegations, Mourinho played dumb and claimed he did not know what the questioner was talking about.

It was an astonishingly nimble and adept display of Mourinho setting the agenda, turning up the name calling scale to an 11 and then, having pulled the pin from the grenade, stepping back to watch the explosion from a safe distance.

In fact, so skilful was that particular example that newspaper journalists reporting his words were as likely to libel Mourinho — for claiming he had called Conte a match fixer — as they were libelling Conte himself for repeating allegations of which he was eventually cleared.

On another occasion this season, I was present towards the end of one press conference, when Mourinho himself brought up the subject of the recently-issued Manchester City Amazon documentary and asked us to ask him what he thought of it. The response was predictably incendiary.

Alex Ferguson was every bit as quotable as the outgoing United manager but never possessed quite the same level of cunning as Mourinho does.

And that brings us to the second point to make after my weekly exposure to Mourinho press conferences, briefings that by the end of his stay had been reduced to a frantic eight minutes most Fridays at the club’s training ground, limited by a press office struggling to cope with that perfect storm of the world’s biggest football club and the world’s most quotable manager.

No word in a Mourinho Manchester United press conference was ever uttered accidentally or without motive. Mourinho knew precisely what he was saying at all times and was usually saying it for a specific effect.

In recent weeks, his agenda has been obvious. Every aspect of the club — its transfer policy, playing staff, its failure to keep pace with Liverpool and Manchester City — has been highlighted by Mourinho as examples of why the club’s problems extend beyond him.

Self-serving? Of course. But as we prepare for a potential Friday press conference with his successor, every self-respecting journalist tasked with covering this troubled club should bemoan the fact we will no longer be able to work with Jose Mourinho — “The Quotable One.”