Mourinho sent to stands as Fenerbahce thwart United

Jose Mourinho’s red cards are usually considered acts of deflection, but last night’s probably served that purpose for Erik ten Hag.

- MIGUEL DELANEY

A raucous game with a lot of sub-plots offered perhaps the most entertaining shows in Europe this season, if not all for good reasons or with any real pay-off.

That’s Manchester United on the pitch, and Mourinho off it. The Portuguese failed to get proper “revenge” on his old club, but then United have now failed to maximise a lead in every single Europa League game this season. This raucous 1-1 at Fenerbahce was the third draw in three, any positives again offset by obvious flaws. Youssef En-Nesyri, who ended Ten Hag’s first United European campaign when at Sevilla in 202223, here ended any sense of momentum after the win over Brentford.

There was also the theatre of Mourinho being somewhat harshly sent off for complaining about how a penalty claim was dismissed. The cuts to Ten Hag’s predecessor on a step here meant there wasn’t the same scrutiny on Ten Hag’s present problems. United can’t seem to get any form going. This was actually a regression to another issue.

After so many recent games where they have struggled to score and matches have often been boring, United did step it up in attack. The issue, as we have seen before, is that they can’t seem to play well going forward without simultaneously being so porous at the back. They here had Andre Onana and Manuel Ugarte to thank for this otherwise solid result not being worse.

Some of it was admittedly better, but not all of it. It is fitting of the kind of limbo that United are in. They have obviously never got so bad that the new football hierarchy felt they should sack Ten Hag, but it’s still not like there’s proper progress.