Manchester United exposed at Wembley as a club stuck in neutral … and the past

One of the funniest things José Mourinho did in his early days at Chelsea, back when his toxic vibe still felt light and fun and only slightly vicious and mean, was to stand at the entrance to the Old Trafford pitch before a Carling Cup quarter-final and make a point of energetically shaking hands with every Manchester United player as they walked on to their own pitch.

United’s players looked bemused but went through with it all the same, submitting to the full routine of neck-cuffs and cheek-pinches, albeit with a weirdly emasculating sense of being ambushed, permitted to take part in a game at their own house by the grace of Mourinho’s hand.

Chelsea won 2-1. Nobody has really done anything like it in the years since. But it was hard not to feel an echo, a sense of United doing it to themselves this time, an act of self-handshake, in the sight of Sir Alex Ferguson on the pitch greeting every United player as they walked past pre-match at Saturday’s FA Cup final, out there like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, a vision of the glorious, disappointed past.

Really? Someone thought this was a good idea? As opposed to, say, a terrible one? The entire last decade at Old Trafford has been spent wrestling with visions of the past, trying and failing to shake that terrifying oedipal image, the unmatchable glories of Sir Alex, who was better than you who gave you all this, and now you’re ruining it. And now, oh look, there he is, literally standing there in the flesh allowing you to touch his hand before the most legacy-ridden game of the season. Daddy’s here. And he’s really, really disappointed.

There is at least some information to be taken from this spectacle. Never mind the self-immolating instincts of everyone involved in