Wherefore art thou Mourinho?

Dear Rui

Did you see it? The way Jon Moss, that most owl-y of Premier League referees, strutted so owl-ily over to his fourth official. The subtle flourish (that patented Mark Clattenburg toe point) he added to his dismissal. Jose Mourinho, muted, brittle.

We’ve been here before, of course. And recently. This was the second time in three home matches Mourinho has been sent to the stands. But something about this one felt different. There was no sense of ceremony as Moss was called over by his fourth official. In commentary, Arlo White tried to add a hint of drama, but his heart wasn’t really in it either. And, strangest of all, once Mourinho left, he was gone.

There were no lingering camera shots of his sitting grumpily in the Old Trafford stands. There wasn’t even really much mention of his name. He was simply gone, vanished, perhaps vanquished. Not heard of again until his assistant, Rui Faria, deflected a few questions about him during the post-match press conference.

I have an image now of Mourinho, walking sadly through the bowels of Old Trafford, dragging his feet, avoiding eye contact, mumbling to himself. He stops eventually and takes a seat, opposite one of those large, obnoxious images that tend adorn the inner walls of famous stadiums, maybe of Sir Alex Ferguson lifting one of the many, many trophies he won, or of Roy Keane verbally abusing one of his teammates.

There is a TV somewhere, too, because Mourinho has to be able at least to pretend he watched the match taking place above him. He looks at it for a few minutes, before eventually taking out a pen and paper from deep in his overcoat and beginning to write.

Rui,

I suppose you should bring on Fellaini for Mata in the 85th minute or something. 

Jose

Full disclosure: I’ve always liked Mourinho, despite the extensive (and mounting) evidence that suggests he’s a world class ass hat. Perhaps at this point it’s just stubbornness, my unwillingness to accept I was wrong about him. But it is what it is: I like Mourinho.

And so it is with a heavy heart I wonder whether this is it for him. He’ll soldier on at United, because he doesn’t have a choice, and in truth they’re really not that bad.

But Mourinho himself looks spent. Maybe that shouldn’t come as any real surprise after a decade’s worth of raging at every perceived slight, every minor provocation. Still, it’s strange to see him like this, as inevitable as hindsight might make his demise, if this is to be his demise, appear.

There is of course no small pleasure to be found in watching Manchester United flounder, but to watch them flounder so uninterestingly, as their manager, once the most compelling in the sport, refuses so stubbornly to take a break, to try on a different character, to do something, anything, new — it’s bizarre.

Mourinho can never be entirely counted out — he’s achieved too much — but I’ve never been less confident in his ability to prove everyone wrong.

Paul Robinson comes back from the dead

The big story (or the best story, anyway, which should be the same thing) this weekend didn’t come at Old Trafford, where Jose Mourinho kicked his way into the stands, or Anfield, where Liverpool overcame the loss of their best player to win again, or Stamford Bridge, where Chelsea’s 3-4-3 gave the most compelling evidence yet of its title credentials. It didn’t even come at the Liberty, where Swansea and Crystal Palace put their differences aside for 20 minutes to engage in an idiot-swinging contest of truly rare vintage.

No, the big/best story of the weekend came at Turf Moor, where Paul Robinson, formerly of Blackburn and Tottenham and Leeds and, most traumatically, England, was named in Burnley’s starting XI against Manchester City on Saturday, a month and a half after his 37th birthday and two years after his last competitive match.

Robinson has had something of a harrowing career, which tends to be what happens when you’re an England goalkeeper. And the way he slipped out of view — first in the way you’d expect a player relegated with Blackburn to slip out of view, and then in the way hindsight suggests is fitting for a man whose name is as profoundly un-notable as Paul Robinson’s — well, to say I didn’t expect to ever think about Robinson again would suggest I had, in fact, thought about Robinson again. It would be more accurate to say he had, as far as I was concerned, ceased to exist entirely. And yet there he was, proud, defiant, between the Burnley sticks.

That Tom Heaton, who has emerged as a regular in the England squad over the past couple seasons, missed his first match in three years to hand Robinson the start only made the whole thing more remarkable. (Although it also helps to explain why Robinson, who looks these days very much like a man who stared for too long directly into the sun, is Burnley’s second choice keeper. He (a) can offer Heaton plenty of advice about why it’s probably in his best interests never to make the jump from England No. 3 to England No. 1 and (b) was quite obviously never expected to play.)

I have rarely cared so much about something I care so little about as I cared about Robinson’s performance on Saturday. And he delivered.

In the first half, he not only kept Burnley in the match with two exquisite saves, first from Nolito and then from Sergio Aguero, but also played a major hand in giving them the lead, taking the free-kick from which Dean Marney opened the scoring (via a not great Nicolas Otamendi clearance). He was just flat out good — solid, reliable, unflashy, everything a keeper is supposed to be.

Robinson’s defenders cost him in the end, two of them knocking each other over just in time to allow Fernandinho space to cross for Aguero, who scored the winner, his second of the match. But Robinson did it. In his 496th club game as a professional, he served up a reminder I never thought I needed: That once upon a time Paul Robinson was the best keeper in the entire country.

No one deserves the indignity that comes with an England career, especially an England career that ended the way Robinson’s did. But if this was his last game as a top flight professional, as it well could be, he may take some small comfort knowing he went out at his best, in a most wonderfully unexpected blaze of glory.

Weekly Awards

The Not Fidel Castro Award for Global Capitalism Running Amok: Leicester

Leicester have not been much of a spectacle in the Premier League this season, about as dull as they were interesting last campaign. In an attempt to spruce things up, they did what any self-respecting team in need of some pre-match entertainment would do and invited some monks from Thailand to offer spiritual support to the players. The Foxes owner, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, is from Thailand, which goes some of the way to explaining this, but only a very small some of the way. Anyway, it all added up to the weirdest tweet of the Premier League season so far:

The Sunderland vs. Hull award for worst match of the season: Hull vs. West Brom

I used to think, last week, that Sunderland vs. Hull was the most depressing match the Premier League could possibly offer. Not based on the match itself, which was a perfectly fine 3-0 victory for Sunderland, but based on the general concept of the two sides involved. That same week also offered us West Brom vs. Burnley, which was slightly less awful in prospect, and ended in an equally perfectly fine 4-0 win for the Baggies. This week, the fixture list gods offered us a timely reminder that no matter how bad you think things are, they can always get worse. Enter Hull vs. West Brom, conceptually the most depressing match of the season so far. Tony Pulis may somehow have inspired his side to score four goals last week (for the second time this season, no less), but there are still few things more generally abysmal than the thought of watching West Brom play. Except, perhaps, for the thought of watching West Brom play against Hull, whose death spiral gets sadder by the week. They never really had a chance, the poor Tigers, but it doesn’t make them any better to watch.

The Lee Dixon Award for Back Passes: Cesar Azpilicueta

It is a truth, occasionally acknowledged, that the ultimate sign of confidence in any team is the willingness of its players to attempt elaborate back passes. To watch Cesar Azpilicueta, under pressure from Harry Kane and Heung-min Son with the score level at 1-1, bend down onto one knee to shovel an awkward-looking header back to Thibaut Courtois was in that moment to know with absolute certainty that Chelsea are top of the league, winners of seven in a row, conceders of one in seven and the best team in the country. To watch Antonio Conte stalk the touchline, like a suaver, Italian uncle Fester (something, I think, about the way his neck seems to recede further into his body with every new gesticulation), was to know exactly why.

The Portsmouth 7-4 Reading Award for This Is Getting Silly: Swansea 5-4 Crystal Palace

There’s an argument (maybe not a particularly good argument, but an argument nonetheless) that the relegation battle this season is more interesting than the title race, and the title race is shaping up to be the best in a long time. But the title race very emphatically hasn’t produced anything on a par with what Swansea and Crystal Palace served up at the Liberty on Saturday, a feast of defensive incompetence that built steadily to the most absurd crescendo of any game, in any league, I’ve seen this season. That it consigned Alan Pardew to his, and Palace’s, sixth loss in a row and handed Bob Bradley his first win only made it better. Although the fact the managers’ (non-)achievements have dominated the post-match discussion is a mite strange given how little either of them had to do with the result.

The Fillipo Inzaghi Award for A Goal That Never Was: Jesse Lingard

Manchester United have not produced much by way of free-flowing soccer this season, but they’ve had their moments. One of those moments came in the dying seconds of the first half against West Ham on Sunday, as Ander Herrera zipped a pass into Juan Mata, who flicked it onto Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who laid it back to Mata, who played in Jesse Lingard, who was denied only by an excellent Darren Randolph save. The margins are very fine in this game.