The stats make the glummest of reading. This is Manchester United’s poorest league start for 26 years. They have not won a Premier League game at home since September 24. After 14 games they are nine points adrift of the Champions League qualification places. Pep Guardiola, the manager of their crosstown rivals, may well have got it right when he said that in a season as competitive as this, United are so far off the pace they are effectively already out of contention for the Premier League title.

And yet, this morning’s newspapers are filled with reports from sources at Old Trafford suggesting that the club’s hierarchy are more than happy with what Jose Mourinho is doing behind the scenes. They claim to see the green shoots of recovery. Their champagne flutes are definitely half full. Optimism is the governing emotion; they are not unduly worried about the bleak current circumstances.

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Given the table never lies, it might appear that the United suits have been partaking a little too enthusiastically of their prawn sandwiches. Mourinho’s team, after all, seem to be doing little of substance beyond making a habit of letting leads slip in the league.

But anyone who was at Goodison Park on Sunday, or indeed was there when United drew with Burnley, Stoke, Arsenal and West Ham, will concede that those making the decisions might have a point. There were signs, even in those performances, that Mourinho is on the brink of developing something impressive at the club.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic scores with a long range lob for Manchester United Image credit: Reuters

Take, for instance, a moment in the second half at Everton, when United unleashed a sequence of first time passes, pinging the ball around with genuine fizz. As passes span with training ground precision from Anthony Martial to Michael Carrick to Ander Herrera to Henrikh Mkhitaryan, it was possible to see exactly what Mourinho is trying to achieve with his team. Then the ball landed at the feet of Zlatan Ibrahimovic on the edge of the Everton area. And the Swede, normally so deft of touch, normally so intelligent in his reading of the game, completely over hit his attempt to play in Paul Pogba, dashing unchecked towards the penalty spot.

United tried that kind of thing more than once. Each time they did so they carved through a static, flat-footed Everton midfield in which poor Tom Cleverley was giving the kind of performance against his old team which will have had precisely no-one regretting letting him go. And then each time they failed to deliver the critical, telling final pass. So instead of producing a performance of silk and ease, they continued in their frustrating habit of plucking parity from the very jaws of victory.

Yet in each failed attempt was evidence that Mourinho might be justified in his claim that he is close to producing a team in the proper traditions of Manchester United. These were kind of passages of play which, when things are going well and confidence is billowing, come off and make spectators purr. Critically, they were passages of play entirely absent under the grim stewardship of Louis Van Gaal, when adventure and progress were regarded as subversive and the ball was required to go slowly sideways at all times. It was as much the grim prospect of another season of negativity as his failure to qualify for the Champions League that led to the Dutchman’s removal last May, even though he had delivered the first piece of silverware of the post-Ferguson era. By contrast Mourinho appears to have embraced the proper United way, the kind of thing that has thrilled generations.

Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho Image credit: Reuters

Thus far, it is only in the cup competitions that there has been delivery of the end product. Against Feyenoord in the Europa League and West Ham in the Capital One Cup, the smooth, quick-fire passing paid off. And you could see, as the strategy bore fruit, a surge of confidence fed into the ability to deliver incisive passing. It is the benevolent circle that comes with victory.

To Mourinho’s evident frustration (something, after all, is making him permanently grumpy) that ease on the ball has yet properly to be seen in league ties. What bewilders him is that he somehow cannot find the key to unlock the talent in his side, to make it all come together in smooth consistency. Hints are not the same as mastery, particularly in a season when there are so many teams vying for the top prize.

Though Sir Alex Ferguson always used to reckon the season only properly began in the New Year it may already be too late for Mourinho to achieve success. But even if the title is beyond him, if he can transfer his cup form into league matches, if he can create a mood in which those final passes find their mark rather than going long, if he can emerge from tricky forthcoming engagements with Tottenham and West Brom clutching something more than two points, then the suits at United might have a point: things really could be getting better. At least United will be on the up. Which is not something anyone ever imagined happening when Van Gaal was casting his wearisome shadow over proceedings.

Mind, there is one thing Mourinho could do to help accelerate the process: end his infatuation with Marouane Fellaini. The sooner he appreciates that the Belgian does not belong anywhere near a Manchester United team worthy of the name, the closer he will come to achieving success.

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