Some time, this purgatory must end. Some time, even a board as laissez-faire as Manchester United’s must decide enough is enough. Some time, José Mourinho will be relieved of his position as manager at Old Trafford, everybody can relax and start to regroup and United can look to salvage something from this most miserable of seasons. Even fourth place may be out of reach now – Chelsea are 11 points ahead of them – but United are still in the Champions League, still in the FA Cup. Even a temporary appointment would bring some respite: no season should be over in December. This cannot go on, and yet it goes on and Mourinho continues to measure out his life in Liverpools.

With football this dire you have to wonder if José Mourinho is enjoying it | Barney Ronay Read more

In October 2016 Manchester United went to Anfield sixth in the table, their form stuttering. Mourinho had been in the job two months, Klopp’s Liverpool had just won five in a row and the way he closed the game down, squeezing out a largely uneventful with a 0-0 draw, seemed to suggest he still had the old knack. If you wanted somebody to organise a defence, Mourinho was still your man. The foundations, it seemed, were being laid. Nobody was talking then of Mourinho as a busted flush.

When they met at Anfield a year later, form was reversed. Liverpool had won one in their previous eight, had not kept a clean sheet in seven. United had won six in a row, scoring 20 goals. They were playing Liverpool at the ideal time, Manchester City were rampant and had made it clear it was not going to be a normal season, that an extraordinary number of points would be necessary for the title. This, it seemed, was an opportunity for a landmark victory, to steal a march on City, who would almost certainly end up going to Anfield when Liverpool were in better form.

And yet Mourinho set up in much the same way. Again, nothing happened in the game and the result was a 0-0 draw that helped stabilise Liverpool and let City off the hook. It was a baffling performance. Had Mourinho not trusted his players? Had he misread the situation? Or was that gameplan the product of a mind in the grip of defensive dogma?

Sign up to The Recap, our weekly email of editors’ picks.

Mourinho had once prided himself on his pragmatism, on his willingness to do what was necessary to get the best result for his team, but Anfield last year seemed an ideological statement: he had only one way to play. He had become one of the “poets” he affects to despise, too hung on up ideals to see the reality; it’s just his ideals were not those of soaring attacks or intricate passing moves that usually lead aesthetes astray, they were those of graft and resilience. It was as though, like the worst kind of 1960s urban planner, he had eschewed beauty in the belief that a surface functionality alone would get the job done, with little heed for the consequences. He had become a parody of himself, asking not how best to solve the problem, but how José Mourinho would solve the problem: what was the most Mourinhoist solution?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Marouane Fellaini and Marcus Rashford look downcast as Xherdan Shaqiri and his Liverpool teammates celebrate. Photograph: Matthew Peters/Man Utd via Getty Images

And yet watching the shambles on Sunday, even those seem like heady times. Again United went to Anfield in sixth, but a distant sixth, a hopeless sixth. What now is left? This is not a Mourinho who can organise a defence any longer: United this season have conceded 29 goals in 17 games. Only four sides have conceded more in the Premier League this season.

Liverpool back on top after Shaqiri double floors Manchester United Read more

There was, it’s true, a period just after half-time when it seemed they might be able to frustrate Liverpool, but once Klopp had persuaded his defenders not to keep trying shots from 40 yards, that passed. United offered up 36 shots to Liverpool, a number so preposterously high you start to wonder whether it’s even possible, or whether there might also have been a shooter hidden on some grassy knoll.

Injuries offer only the slightest mitigation. They are not the reason Mourinho has made 53 changes to his starting lineup in the Premier League this season, eight more than anybody else. They are not the reason he would have changed every single outfielder from Tuesday’s defeat at Valencia had Chris Smalling not pulled up in the warm-up. What’s the plan? What’s the strategy? This feels like a manager shaking a kaleidoscope and hoping for the best. Clinging on until you can throw Marouane Fellaini at a problem should not be a long-term plan. The only other constant seems to be ostracising Paul Pogba, at which Mourinho’s diligence has, admittedly, been thoroughly rewarded.

But what happens now? Surely there cannot be any kind of January splurge, one last bout of spending to try to prop up a lame duck manager. Can the season really be written off pending a potential sale? Is that what season-ticket holders deserve? Is it what anybody should expect from the richest club in the world by revenue? The endgame, already, has gone on far too long.