It's fair to say there won't be too many feeling much sympathy for Jose Mourinho after the suggestion, paraphrased in a Daily Record headline, that the Manchester United squad is "broken" and may take two transfer windows to fix. United did, after all, spend the best part of 150 million in the summer on three players, one of whom Mourinho has barely used.However, the chutzpah of making the complaint shouldn't disguise its basic truth: this is a desperately unbalanced United squad that seems to have been hastily patched together from the sparkliest things in the shop with little thought to the overall effect.The comments about the squad, it should be said, did not come from the manager but from "a source close to Mourinho" who spoke to the Record. But it may be assumed that they reflect his views reasonably accurately.It's no secret around Old Trafford that Mourinho feels the squad lacks pace and creativity, and it is widely expected that United will look to bring in Antoine Griezmann next summer, per John Richardson of the Daily Mirror. The Daily Record story suggests he may be one of four or five signings over the next two windows.This shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Before the second season of his second stint at Chelsea, Mourinho brought in Diego Costa and Cesc Fabregas (and Filipe Luis and Loic Remy) to answer specific needs in his squad.With Chelsea leading the league the previous Februaryalthough Manchester City, the eventual champions, had games in handhe had described his side as a "little horse" who couldn't possibly be expected to drive on to the line.In that he was proved right, with a series of unexpected games in which they dropped pointsto Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, Sunderland and Norwich Cityundermining their title challenge.What they lacked, he knew, was creativity in midfield and a striker with the edge and ingenuity to conjure goals from scraps. Fabregas and Costa answered those needs so perfectly that from beating Burnley on the opening weekend of 2014-15, it seemed probable that Chelsea would win the league. Mourinho is good at isolating those problem areas, which is why, since joining FC Porto in January 2002, he has always won the league in his second season at a club.That's why he should be afforded some slack this season. There may be some substance to his claims that United have been implausibly unfortunatecertainly they could easily have beaten all three of Stoke, Burnley and Arsenal, home games they ended up drawingbut United have also been poor on occasions.His own comments have seemed bewildering at times. Publicly attacking specific players is always risky and all the more so when it turns outas it did in the case of Chris Smalling and the broken bone in his footthat he was simply wrong.At the same time, though, it must be recognised that this is a Premier League like no other, packed with quality and high-class managers, and that means a first season of reconnaissance may not, as it has for the super clubs in the past, still end in UEFA Champions League qualification.And this squad is a mess. It seems slightly baffling now that the widespread feeling when Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013 was that he had left David Moyes with a gifted squad, although it was a reasonable enough assumption at the time. It had, after all, just won the league by 11 points and was loaded with young players who seemed ready to explode.What has followed has been disappointment and confusion as young playersRafael, Danny Welbeck, Phil Jonesdidn't quite develop as anticipated, while the club's transfer policy became increasingly scattergun, something that continued this summer.Which other club would have signed Zlatan Ibrahimovic, an expensive (in terms of wages) 34-year-old whose legs have begun to go' None of the sides who could afford him, United excepted, would have made such an investment on a player whose value is largely totemic.The Swede could yet be a useful squad player, an idiosyncratic threat from the bench or a bully of the Premier League's lesser lights, but he is no longer somebody to intimidate the best. Was the plan really for him to be the main striker' Or had Wayne Rooney's decline somehow gone unnoticed' Was it thought that Anthony Martial or Marcus Rashford might bear the striking burden'And what was the thinking behind signing Paul Pogba' Of course he is a profoundly gifted player, but where was it thought he might play' The European Championship confirmed what had long been suspected, that he is neither a No. 10 nor a holding player, but an old-fashioned box-to-box man. As such, it would make most sense to play him as he was used at Juventus, on the left of a central midfield three. The rest of United's squad, though, if it is set up for any system, seems geared to a 4-2-3-1.Henrikh Mkhitaryan has been left out of the Manchester United matchday squad once again #FreeMkhitaryan pic.twitter.com/dLpdcjuQeD Bleacher Report UK (@br_uk) October 29, 2016And what of poor Henrikh Mkhitaryan' Was one poor half against Manchester City really enough to condemn him in perpetuity' The suspicion must be that Mourinho never wanted him in the first place, and he risks joining the ever-growing band of talents mysteriously discarded by the PortugueseKevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku, Juan Cuadrado, Mohamed Salah...But management isn't just about signings. Mourinho's greatest asset at Porto and in his first stint at Chelsea, was his capacity to get the best out of his side, tactically and temperamentally. He forged ferocious team spirit. Talk to his former Porto players and it's like talking to members of a cult.He didn't need the best players; he needed hunger. Perhaps that's never a recipe that's going to work at a club like Manchester Unitedor Real Madridbut it does show how much he has changed. Once he was on the training ground but now players reportedly find him "distant," per the Times' Paul Hirst.Is that evidence of the growing divide Mourinho feels with younger players' Is it perhaps a result of the sense of betrayal he felt by the end at both Madrid and Chelsea'And that, really, is the crux of the matter. United's squad is not coherent, but equally that is not the only problem.The old Mourinho crafted players; he didn't demand shop-bought perfection. And ask yourself this: Would the old Mourinho have blamed the draw against Arsenal on bad luck, or would he have asked why Rashford was left isolated against Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and set about fixing the problem
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