The man­age­ment of Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, the world’s most pop­u­lar foot­ball club, could no longer af­ford the pain and fi­nan­cial dis­as­ter and the points of demise laid at the feet of Jose Mour­in­ho.

Yes, I un­der­stand the feel­ings of the fans who were pa­tri­ots to the core and idolised the fa­mous Por­tuguese for a con­sid­er­able pe­ri­od be­cause of some suc­cess­ful re­sults along the way.

To cry for joy when his team was pro­duc­ing beau­ti­ful foot­ball and not even on those mys­te­ri­ous­ly un­fa­mil­iar days of de­feat was af­fect­ed by the sup­port sys­tem of "Man U".

For quite a few years, I had wit­nessed the work of Mour­in­ho, es­pe­cial­ly when he was the shad­ow coach un­der the watch­ful eyes of the late, great Eng­lish team man­ag­er Bob­by Rob­son.

It took a few years to de­ter­mine whether his ear­ly suc­cess was due to the lessons of his men­tor or was he a mag­nif­i­cent learn­er to the point that he was ready to show the world of his as­tute ap­proach to the busi­ness of coach­ing.

As time went on, the con­sis­ten­cy was grad­u­al­ly step­ping and the qual­i­ty of many of the top teams in the Eng­lish Pre­mier League (EPL) was em­ploy­ing some ex­cel­lent coach­es.

Mour­in­ho had to con­vince the most ar­tic­u­late “Gaffer” in Eng­lish foot­ball, Sir Alex Fer­gu­son whose con­nec­tion with "Man U" al­most brought the fans in­to think­ing that man­agers can win match­es rather than the play­ers.

How­ev­er, Mour­in­ho was hard­ly ever chal­lenged for fail­ing to de­rail the chem­istry and co­he­sive­ness of star play­ers from the for­mer vet­er­ans such as George Best, Bob­by Charl­ton and De­nis Law, lead­ing that team to­wards some ex­tra­or­di­nary bril­liance from Robin Van Per­sie to Andy Cole, to Dwight Yorke, David Beck­ham and many oth­ers.

How­ev­er, in a flash, the up­lift in foot­ball ed­u­ca­tion brought to the fore some ex­cel­lent coach­es as Mour­in­ho had to deal with the mod­ern sci­ence of sys­tems, strate­gies, game chang­ers in the mid­dle of match­es, all of these fea­tures had the mak­ing of vic­to­ry. When it was not Ar­sene Wenger, it was Manuel Pel­le­gri­ni, Rober­to Manci­ni, Pepe Guardi­o­la, Mauri­cio Pochet­ti­no and Ju­r­gen Klopp.

Sud­den­ly, the loop­holes be­gan to show them­selves as Mour­in­ho, af­ter mov­ing from one top Club to an­oth­er rapid­ly, a fea­ture which spelt ei­ther bril­liance by the coach or fail­ure to turn the ta­bles of medi­oc­rity, to a cat­e­go­ry which the ar­tic­u­late but er­rat­ic Mour­in­ho, had been ex­posed.

Dur­ing that pe­ri­od, I fig­ured young coach­es across the world would have record­ed the var­i­ous forms of meth­ods by these coach­es, which in some cas­es, pro­duced some qual­i­ta­tive play from even mid­dle of the ta­ble clubs in the EPL.

Mour­in­ho’s first blun­der seemed to be his abil­i­ty to grasp the true qual­i­ty of the play­ers in his own team, failed to com­mu­ni­cate well with good play­ers who need­ed the ex­pe­ri­ence of a good coach­ing mind and ef­fec­tive coun­selling on and off the field.

His top­sy-turvy re­sults ex­posed his weak­ness­es, es­pe­cial­ly when he was able to pur­chase ex­cel­lent play­ers in Paul Pog­ba, Alex­is Sanchez, An­tho­ny Mar­tial, to join the likes of An­to­nio Va­len­cia, Ash­ley Young, Juan Ma­ta, and a goal poach­er in Romelu Lukaku, on­ly to see the stan­dard of the team’s per­for­mances de­te­ri­o­rat­ed against some of the mid­dle-or­der teams.

Just the time which Mour­in­ho had to show his worth, he failed mis­er­ably to con­vince these top play­ers that his phi­los­o­phy which brought him pre­vi­ous suc­cess had be­come dor­mant.

His out­ward re­sponse to ac­tions by play­ers on the field and be­fore the TV cam­eras af­ter match­es may well have been the fi­nal weak­ness of a once suc­cess­ful team man­ag­er.

It was then clear that his dis­ap­point­ment with play­ers dur­ing the match­es had at­tract­ed some un­usu­al be­hav­iour from the coach’s bench, ges­tic­u­la­tion filled with anger, which of­ten caused con­flict with the of­fi­cials.

Even a blind man could have sensed the bit­ter­ness among the man­age­ment and the play­ers while the re­sult was the ab­sence of key play­ers on the bench with­out good rea­son.

That sit­u­a­tion was clear­ly erod­ing the com­radery among the group and the com­mit­ment which was need­ed from pro­fes­sion­al play­ers was not forth­com­ing. Sus­pen­sions for the coach for ir­re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour on the bench, silent whis­pers about key play­ers seek­ing to move to oth­er clubs and some of the most dis­gust­ing in­ter­views by the for­ev­er an­gry man­ag­er, may well have been the fi­nal nail in the cof­fin for Mour­in­ho.

The re­place­ment at this junc­ture must have been a headache for the team and on­ly the fu­ture will be if some “ma­gi­cian” will turn this puz­zle in­to the team that was Man­ches­ter Unit­ed. Ac­tu­al­ly, a move which may have been help­ful could have been the use of a sports psy­chol­o­gist and a for­mer play­er, Ryan Gig­gs, who is most re­spect­ed.

A dras­tic en­gine room is need­ed in or­der to bring play­ers to their sens­es and re­mind them to re­spect their du­ty as em­ploy­ees of one of the great­est foot­ball in­sti­tu­tions in the world.