In an effort to understand Jose Mourinho’s increasingly agitated state this summer, it is actually necessary to go back 12 months when the seeds for the Manchester United manager’s angst over the club’s approach to transfers were first sown.

Despite watching United beat Chelsea to Romelu Lukaku, and take Nemanja Matic from his old club, Mourinho never quite got over United’s unwillingness to pay an extra £5 million to secure the services of Croatia winger Ivan Perisic from Inter Milan.

Even with Perisic, Mourinho felt United would struggle to challenge the eventual champions Manchester City but, without him, the Portuguese believed his team lacked the balance and quality delivery they really needed out wide.

Alexis Sanchez arrived instead in January but, seven months later, as another transfer window prepares to close, Mourinho is again ruing what he doesn’t have rather than what he does and letting anyone who cares to listen know just how unhappy he is about it all, regardless of what that does to morale and relationships.

There are people at Old Trafford who concluded some time ago that Mourinho could be granted his every wish and would still find something to carp about. But while some subscribe to the view that they knew what they were signing up to when they appointed him in May 2016, it is not so much the number of fights he is picking as the identity of the targets and the ferocity of his anger and frustration that is causing the most consternation at United.