Jose Mourinho is right and Manchester United might listen to him this time

Strange but true: a serial winner of a football manager is appointed at a club where, two progressive years in, an absentee owner who resides in the United States and a rugby enthusiast investment banker decide they know better than him.

It should concern those in situ at Manchester United that Jose Mourinho's comments last week are identical to what he said four-and-a-half years ago.

"There are still people at that club and when I say people, I say some players, but also some other people who aren't players, they're still there and after two months with these people, you are never going to do it," Mourinho said on the Obi One podcast.

In May 2019, Mourinho told L'Equipe: "The problems are there, you can say that these are the players, the organisation, the ambition."

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Of the current United squad, Victor Lindelof, Diogo Dalot, Luke Shaw, Scott McTominay, Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial played under Mourinho.

During his conversation with his old Chelsea enforcer John Obi Mikel, Mourinho scoffed at the memory that an agent of a United player accused him of bullying his client by substituting him at half-time. That player is believed to be Shaw.

Shaw got off on the wrong foot with Mourinho when he was a teenager at Southampton and met the Portuguese over a potential move to his boyhood club Chelsea. Mourinho questioned Shaw's salary demands after he joined United and rancour continued during their two-and-a-half year working relationship and beyond.

Mourinho was never going to use kid gloves with the immature Shaw, who was once late to training as his mother had overslept and did