The Special One was sent to the stands as his team failed to break down Burnley on a day in which Tom Heaton was in miracle form.
It might seem strange that Jose Mourinho is still living in a hotel nearly six months after taking over at Manchester United and he was similarly dislocated for the second half of United’s frustrating, temperamental stalemate against Burnley.
Mourinho’s passions got the better of him right before half-time on a day that was shaping up to be fruitless even at that stage. The United manager’s calls for a penalty stemmed from a Jon Flanagan challenge on Matteo Darmian just inside the Burnley area; it was a long-shot at best but Mourinho cried out in desperation for it to be given.
He tore into Kevin Friend – the fourth official – on the sidelines with later reports suggesting that his row carried on to the tunnel where he confronted Mark Clattenburg. Mourinho was frog-marched through the Sir Bobby Charlton stand at the start of the second period – all the way up to the players’ enclosure where he sat beside those who he’d left out of the matchday 18.
The referee did not exactly endear himself to the Old Trafford faithful throughout – there was that denied penalty call plus another in the second half on Darmian while the second yellow card he gave to Ander Herrera - which saw the Spaniard dismissed - was a mistake. Herrera was rightly booked for a first-half slider on Dean Marney but clearly slipped going in for the second. He was clapped off the field from a crowd that could appreciate the injustice.
Mourinho’s assistant in the stands was running as much as any of the players during the second half, carrying messages from the boss’s station in the United players’ row all the way down to Rui Faria on the sidelines.
At one stage even Tim Fosu-Mensah was despatched with instructions. There was a certain irony that Henrikh Mkhitaryan – sitting beside Fosu-Mensah, Eric Bailly and Anthony Martial – was even ignored for that job. He was not in the matchday squad either with Mourinho feeling the Armenian is not yet up to the intensity of the Premier League. It was left to Juan Mata to carry the fight – and the armband – from the No. 10 position.
In fairness to United, they probably did enough to win the game when they had 11 men on the field. They came up against Heaton – an FA Youth Cup winner in his United days – in imperious form.
Barely 30 seconds had elapsed when he had to be smart down to an Ibrahimovic shot. He made further saves from Mata, Pogba and Ibrahimovic again during the first half. Those three in particular were involved in good interplay around the visitors’ area.
Burnley surprised no-one; they dug in and were disciplined. It was up to United to break them down. They did indeed manage that to their credit but Heaton was impeccable.
There was one extraordinary stop off a Jesse Lingard header which suggested that the force field would remain resolutely across the Burnley goal line for the afternoon. When he star-jumped to find his way to a short-range Ibrahimovic volley in the second, United must have felt their luck was out.
Before that he had denied Mata again, after exchanging passes with Ibra, and Lingard who played a nice one-two with Pogba. When Heaton was beaten, the woodwork did his job for him.
A Mata half-volley hit the post. A deflected Ibra header hit the top of the crossbar. Even Michael Keane put in a saving tackle on Mata when he looked set to score off an Ibra set-up.
This could have easily finished 4-0 to United but it instead became a day of high frustration. It is hard to pinpoint what United could have done differently in order to win the game.
When Zlatan and substitute Wayne Rooney missed in the dying minutes, the stadium turned as one to the VIP section to see what Mourinho made of it all. He was already gone – on his way back to the temporary digs at the hotel.
[Goal]
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