Manchester United’s vast commercial incomes can’t buy them soul - and this was the missing quality as Jose Mourinho’s team became more and more uptight, less and less fluent, at the end of a trophy-less campaign.

Mourinho will not hear of it, of course, but this United side have forgotten how to express themselves. They pressed and scrapped with Chelsea here but lacked the inspiration to add the last trophy available to them to their runners-up spot in the Premier League. Their attacking play is stilted and unconvincing.

In a painting of hell by United’s fans, Manchester City would win the title by 19 points and Liverpool would be in a Champions League final. In this perdition, United would be left needing to win the FA Cup to stave off an inferiority complex and stop people dozing off during their games. That vision is now reality.

The Consolation Cup final, as many called this one, posed much sharper questions for United than Chelsea, where managers come and go like London buses. Chelsea are at a junction, where their power in the transfer market will be tested. But United’s record-equalling 20th FA Cup final was a much bigger deal for the team in red. Mourinho’s mistrust of entertainment, which sits so uneasily with City’s artistry in the same metropolis, asks an awful lot of modern audiences.