Ed Woodward, Manchester United’s executive vice-chairman, finds himself between a rock and a hard place, although it is a situation entirely of his own making.

If you commit to a model that empowers the manager to call the shots in the transfer market, it is no good then turning around two years in - and at a critical juncture after a season in which you have just finished 19 points behind the champions - and telling that person you will not back him because you are not keen on the targets he has identified.

And if you believe the profile of targets the manager has chosen are largely short-term fixes that stand at odds with the club’s desire to sign players with the longer-term in mind, why appoint a manager such as Jose Mourinho in the first place and, moreover, why hand him a contract extension in January?

As Gary Neville, the former United captain, articulated on Sky Sports on Monday evening, “the minute [Woodward] gave Mourinho a contract extension, he had to buy him centre-backs”.

Failure to do so ultimately demonstrated a lack of faith in Mourinho and, by extension, undermined him. The result is a manager who feels unsupported and a board who, for all the declarations of public support, know trust has been eroded. And when trust erodes and relations come under severe strain or break down, things usually end one way. In that respect, is it worth keeping up the pretence of an unhappy, awkward marriage and the wider damage that has the potential to inflict?