He’s going nowhere. Hemmed in against his own left touchline, retreating towards his own goal, with N’Golo Kante and Willian stalking him like sentinels. No space, no options.

We’ve seen this situation a thousand times before, in a thousand different games with a thousand different players, and we can predict exactly how it plays out. Best case scenario, he manages to knock it against Kante and win a throw. Or perhaps squeeze a pass all the way back to David de Gea, 45 yards away in the Manchester United goal.

But every so often, you come across a player like Paul Pogba, who isn’t bound by our expectations of him. A player who will beat the trail unblazed, try the unconventional, deliver the unforeseen. Who will take on the pass nobody else even contemplates, the long shot nobody else even sees, because for most of us, it’s simply not within our capability. What we know as muscle memory is, in Pogba’s case, better described as muscle ingenuity. His every movement fizzes with invention, inspiration, the mercurial.

Sometimes it gets him into trouble. Marking at corners, for example. When your entire footballing identity, your every sporting instinct, is based on setting yourself apart, finding space, transgressing the usual conventions of movement, perhaps tracking another player step for step isn’t the most natural thing in the world. And so around 50 minutes earlier, Pogba had found himself largely at fault for Chelsea’s opening goal, momentarily losing his man Antonio Rudiger after David Luiz had expertly blocked him off.

Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Show all 22 1 /22 Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Kepa - 6 One excellent save in the lead up to Martial’s first, but otherwise a quiet afternoon. Getty Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Cesar Azpilicueta - 6 In quite the contrast to his opposite full-back Marcos Alonso, Azpilicueta played very deep. He performed well for most of the game and was not really at fault for either of Martial’s goals. His desperate, hooked cross forced the opening for Chelsea’s equaliser. Getty Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings David Luiz - 6 Missed a couple of opportunities going forward but made a header count at the right time, rising magnificently to head against the post for Barkley’s goal. Defensively solid, but not quite so as Rudiger. Getty Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Antonio Rudiger - 7 A towering header to give Chelsea the lead and several excellent pieces of defensive work, including a crucial toe in stoppage time to prevent Paul Pogba likely scoring. Good showing. Getty Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Marcos Alonso - 5 Diced with danger with his forward positioning, though Manchester United largely failed to exploit the space he left. Poor to just lie uninjured as Martial scored his first, and didn’t deliver much of quality into the box. Miscontrolled with goal agape in the first half. Getty Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Jorginho - 6 Typically calm and composed in possession, Jorginho used the ball well and nullified Juan Mata, rather than Mata nullifying him as was Jose Mourinho’s apparent tactic. Getty Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings N'Golo Kanté - 6 Busy throughout, and forced one excellent save from David De Gea. Getty Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Mateo Kovacic - 6 Ever-lively, Kovacic has formed a good link with Eden Hazard and Marcos Alonso on Chelsea’s left. Still doesn’t provide too much once he progresses further forward, and with Barkley scoring again his place will be under serious threat. Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Eden Hazard - 6 Quieter than usual as Ashley Young showed serious defensive solidity. Magnetic when on the ball, dragging red shirts with him wherever he wandered, but maybe his most hushed showing of the season so far. Getty Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Willian - 6 Not the threat he has been in the past, but his delivery was improved in this game compared to recent outings and he takes home an assist. Getty Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Alvaro Morata - 5 Struggled to get himself involved in the game. His hold-up play was a little lacklustre with Morata too often looking to go to floor rather than work space for one of his teammates. Squandered his best chance with a weak left-footed effort. Substituted with Chelsea seeking a goal, which perhaps say a lot about his form and Maurizio Sarri’s opinion of him. Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings David De Gea - 6 A couple of superb saves including prior to Barkley’s goal, and commanded his box quite well. Getty Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Ashley Young - 8 An early booking did not discomfort him and he kept Hazard remarkably subdued. Captained his team with both passion and calm. Top performance. Getty Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Chris Smalling - 6 Deserves credit for keeping Alvaro Morata quiet and was strong in the air. Smalling and Lindelof don’t look like the most solid or in-tune defensive partnership, however. Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Victor Lindelof - 6 Not a bad showing by any means. Fortunate that one defensive lapse playing far too deep in an offside trap was not capitalised upon by Marcos Alonso. Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Luke Shaw - 7 Very stout defensively. Looks back to somewhere near his best in that regard. Getty Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Paul Pogba - 6 Lost Rudiger poorly in the first half to allow him to head home, and never took hold of the game. Better needed in games like these, though he defended quite well. Getty Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Nemanja Matic - 5 Strong defensively, and played with physicality to unsettle Chelsea’s slight midfield and attack. Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Juan Mata - 6 The man-marking of Jorginho didn’t really work and was quickly discarded with. Bright at times, particularly in the lead up to his side’s second, but for much of the afternoon content to press relentlessly. Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Romelu Lukaku - 5 Too quiet. Lacked impact, failed to hold the ball up effectively and never looked a likely goalscorer. Remains without a Stamford Bridge goal. Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Anthony Martial - 8 Two extremely well-taken goals. His performance aside from those moments was rather typical of Martial in this Manchester United team (drifting in and out of the game and seeing little of the ball), but without his finishes this game ends very differently. Chelsea v Manchester United player ratings Marcus Rashford - 7 Rashford didn’t see a huge amount of the ball, but always looked threatening with his pace in behind Marcos Alonso. A lovely assist for Martial’s second.

For Pogba’s detractors, this sort of stuff drives them crazy. Graeme Souness, famously, can’t stand Pogba, to the extent that he seems to be offended by the very concept of him. And while people like to assume this antipathy is based on race and culture, perhaps it’s as much about footballing ideology and temperament. While they played in roughly the same area of the pitch, performing roughly similar roles, it’s hard to think of two less similar players in terms of their approach to the game.

Souness’s career, essentially, was based on doing simple things to an exceptional level. The short pass, the crunching tackle, the timely intervention, the 20-yard shot; rarely would he surprise you with what he did, but he would just do it calmer, stronger, better, more consistently than you. Souness’s gift, essentially, was one of anticipation: the ability to see what was going to happen before it actually happened.

Pogba’s gift, on the other hand, is to make that thing happen. His urge is to create, to paint, to make something from nothing. It’s why he doesn’t really understand defensive movement. Never has. If you go left, Pogba's instinct isn't to follow you there, but to feint right instead. If he were 5ft 9in and Spanish instead of 6ft 3in and French, he wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near his own penalty area.

And where Pogba has excelled in his career, it has been with a more defensive-minded foil behind him: Arturo Vidal and Sami Khedira at Juventus, Kante with France, and here Nemanja Matic, shuttling from collision to collision like a very large wardrobe being controlled from the touchline by remote control.

“Everyone knows with closed eyes which man is their man, and which zone is their zone,” an exasperated Jose Mourinho sighed afterwards, but he didn’t throw Pogba under the bus. Perhaps, over time, he too has grasped the basic covenant you sign whenever you engage Pogba: that the occasional lapse going back will be counterbalanced by the occasional flash of insight going forward that only he can really provide.

It was just Mourinho’s luck, and Pogba’s, that both would occur in the same game.

Pogba is an unconventional midfielder (Getty)

And so, nine minutes into the second half, hemmed in against his own left touchline, retreating towards his own goal, with no space and no options, Pogba somehow found both. In a fraction of a second, he swivelled on the ball, spinning back towards the Chelsea goal. As Jorginho steamed in to put out the danger, Pogba stretched out a telescopic toe and nudged the ball in between his legs, sending him all the way back to Naples. Thirty seconds later, the ball was in the Chelsea net, via a parried shot, a couple of crosses and about half a dozen deflections. From a nothing position, United and Pogba had indulged their inner chaos, and hauled themselves back into the game.

For the next 20 minutes, Pogba was in control of the game. He did the simple stuff well, but as ever it was the complicated, far-sighted stuff that stood out. The elegant flicks and lay-offs. The quick long passes. The audacious long-range efforts. “We did not have to think about it, we just had to go for it,” Pogba explained after United came back from 2-0 down to beat Newcastle 3-2 a couple of weeks ago, and this was another example, as was the second half of the World Cup final against Croatia. When play is broken, when the momentum is lurching, when chaos reigns, there are few better interpreters of the game anywhere in the world.

But then, Mourinho took control once more. He brought off Juan Mata and Anthony Martial, brought on two holding players in Andreas Pereira and Ander Herrera, and all of a sudden Pogba was shackled again.

Mourinho's substitutions inadvertently shackled the Frenchman (Getty)

This time, Mourinho’s attempt to sterilise the game failed. Not only did Ross Barkley slam in a late equaliser and cost them two points, but Pogba was a shadow of the player he had been just minutes earlier. Between 45 and 75 minutes, Pogba completed 13 passes, seven in the opposition half, with three take-ons and four ball recoveries. Between 75 and 99 minutes (including extensive added time) he completed two passes, neither in the attacking half, with one take-on and no ball recoveries.

Mourinho, as a rule, has always preferred the known to the unknown, the sure thing over the hopeful punt, the guaranteed return over the intrepid investment: Sanchez over Mkhitaryan, Pandev over Quaresma, Oscar over De Bruyne, Ronaldo the striker over Ronaldo the winger. But with elite attacking football shifting ever more resolutely in the direction of imagination over organisation, formlessness over structure, Mourinho’s teams are in danger of looking increasingly predictable.