Neil Humphreys: This is not the United way
Red Devils pay the price for Mourinho ordering a hatchet job on Hazard
Kick Eden Hazard into submission and hope for the best.
Bully, bruise, mark and maim, tag team and terrorise until the Belgian either withdraws or his teammates retaliate.
This is modern Manchester United under Jose Mourinho.
The house that Sir Matt Busby built, the school that produced the Class of '92, looked like a parody of a Sunday morning pub team yesterday morning (Singapore time).
Only a tubby guy on the muddy touchline was missing, nursing a hangover and an identity crisis, screaming at his amateurs to get stuck in, boots high, studs up.
UNDERDOGS
United were obviously the underdogs before the FA Cup encounter at Stamford Bridge and there's no shame in a slender 1-0 quarter-final defeat by Chelsea.
But, if clothes make the man, then Mourinho dressed his men to kill. So eager were his headless chickens to carry out his cynical instructions, they forgot to play football.
Their only agenda was to pummel Chelsea's wizard until he dropped the wand.
This was filibustering football, a long, tired exercise in obstructive tactics, seeking to stop their hosts from progressing at any cost.
Ander Herrera's red card was as foolish as it was deserved, but the blame belongs to his manager.
Hazard was hit five times in the first 40 minutes, forcing the perplexed referee, Michael Oliver, to tell captain Chris Smalling that the next United player to chop down the Belgian would be booked.
Herrera was the next man.
Naturally, Mourinho's exasperating reaction was to smile ruefully at the heavens, the eternally Persecuted One, shaking his head at the injustice of it all.
They're still out to get him, all of them. Whatever the club, competition or occasion, he is surrounded by enemies, rarely real but always imagined.
He stuck a target on Hazard's back. He ordered the most successful English football club of the last 30 years to foul endlessly and systematically, in a fashion reminiscent of Vinnie Jones' Wimbledon or Don Revie's Leeds United.
He left elegant, distinguished, refined footballers like Juan Mata and Michael Carrick on the bench for the entire 90 minutes and sent on the rudimentary Marouane Fellaini instead.
Mourinho spoke of striking shortages and fixture congestion, conveniently ignoring that Marcus Rashford isn't a teenage debutant but a full international.
There's also the small matter of the world's most expensive midfielder and a lavishly assembled squad to take into consideration.
United had options available beyond the tactics of a pub team.
In an era of fake news, United's manager continues to present alternative realities.
He claimed there were two very different games at Stamford Bridge, played either side of Herrera's red card.
In the first, he saw only a United victory.
HATCHET JOB
Others saw a hatchet job.
Phil Jones' clumsy attempts to hack down Hazard were so comically inept it was a wonder his teammates didn't gather around him to sing: "He's a Lumberjack and He's okay."
The Red Devils have always handled themselves on a pitch.
Busby had Nobby Stiles. Sir Alex Ferguson took off Roy Keane's leash in the tunnel, gave him a pair of Patrick Vieira's socks to sniff and released the beast.
But United always played.
Tempers frayed and games were lost, but United managers rarely, if ever, sent out a side to actively boot talented opponents at the expense of playing football.
At Stamford Bridge, United threatened Chelsea's goal just once, via Rashford.
The rest of the game was spent kicking, grabbing, fouling and complaining about perceived grievances.
Mourinho has achieved formidable success with his defensive caution and victim shtick, but he made Chelsea and Real Madrid the clubs that everyone loved to hate... a reputation that could only be repaired with his inevitable departure.
His United story will have the same ending.
There may be the odd triumph like the League Cup and even a top-four finish, but Mourinho's football will always come second to the ingrained cynicism.
And the Red Devils will become the club that everyone loves to hate once more, not because they are winning, but because their manager can't stop whining.
Only time will tell if that's a price the United faithful are willing to pay.
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