Manchester United, Manchester City and all that jazz.

Manchester United, Manchester City and all that jazz.

We may be only over a month into the new Premier League season but things are quite literally kicking off in the salubrious city of Manchester. The fires are burning, tongues are wagging feverishly and the football clubs who comprise Manchester City and United are expressing themselves in entirely different ways.

Of course the current Premier League champions Manchester City are back up and running in their chase for their second consecutive Premier League title while across the road at Old Trafford things are imploding and exploding simultaneously for Manchester United. It only seems like yesterday since United were the governors, the bosses, the management team with a superior air about them, permanent residents at the top of the Premier League because City were staggering around like drunken office workers at the Christmas party desperately seeking something to cling onto by way of consolation.

But now the landscape could hardly be more contrasting. Yesterday City continued their unbeaten ways with a regulation home victory against breezy Brighton while United were disconnected, lost, shapeless and disjointed, looking around themselves like men surrounded by a smouldering grenade hoping against hope that the whole building had just been evacuated. At the moment United remind you of one of those distinguished politicians who may have fallen on hard times. They glance around them and find nothing but a sniggering public who believe that what goes around comes around.

This morning Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho awoke to the deafening sound of criticism, character assassination and raucous laughter. Football managers of any description can never get it right because they're the ones in the firing line when cracks and deficiencies appear in their team. Mourinho is a particularly unique species among football managers in as much that he can never ever accept defeat graciously whereas others would seem to let it just go.

At the moment United, although starting the new season moderately well, will not, you feel sure, be the leading contenders for one of those elusive Champions League places. By the outrageously high standards that Manchester United have always set themselves this is not good. In fact it's wretchedly bad because managers and players are ripping each other's hair out, morale is barely above a tolerable level and you can only wonder what Mourinho's wonderful predecessor Sir Alex Ferguson must be making of this dreadful fiasco.

For the last week or so - perhaps even longer- Mourinho, all sullen moroseness and curmudgeonly grumpiness, did what seems to have come notoriously natural to him. He picked out one of his players World Cup winner Paul Pogba and decided to lay down the law to him. The words were apparently strong and emotional, passions were high and feelings were patently clear. The relationship was more or less at breaking point and it was hard to know who was the guilty party.

Suffice it to say Mourinho was at daggers drawn and threatening to kill, maim, blame, bludgeon or hit anybody who came even remotely close to him. The stand off between Mourinho and Pogba was an accident waiting to happen or an argy bargy altercation where swords were raised and pistols were drawn. The two men seemingly detest each other, can't stand to be in the same room as each other and if Pogba had his way he'd be on the first plane to Spain and Barcelona.

Yesterday Mourinho's Manchester United were unfairly beaten by West Ham at the London Stadium. United lost 3-1 but it was the wrong result, the wrong kind of grass on the pitch, the posts were the wrong height, the tunnel from which the players emerged was too narrow and the crossbar was much longer and wider than any other Premier League team's bar. You just can't please our Portuguese friend because he knows what's best for his team and that's final.

According to Mourinho none of West Ham's goals should have been allowed to stand, the referee was a member of the Mafia and the referee's assistants should have been running the line at a children's kick about in a local park. For Jose you simply can't get the staff and even if they were available they'd still be incompetent, useless, biased and narrow minded. Poor persecuted Mourinho. If somebody challenged him to a game of snap he'd still think he deserved to win every time.

But there he was yesterday at the London Stadium squinting in the autumn lunchtime sunshine, growling, muttering under his breath, snarling almost repeatedly, smiling almost sarcastically, cursing his technical area and looking for a thousand plausible excuses for defeat. The withering looks, the stern face, the barely concealed fury, the simmering sense of injustice, were a psychologist's dream. Oh a penny for your thoughts Jose Mourinho.

Then he realised that something was fractured, ill proportioned, badly misshapen, formations improperly devised and any game plan not executed in quite the way he was looking for. At the heart of the United defence Chris Smalling and Scott Mctominay had lost their walkie talkies, communication was at its most farcical and Manchester United were, geographically, all over the place. There was none of the glamour and free flowing fluidity of United's most recent past. The hip swaying, finger clicking pizzazz of Ferguson's young fledglings had now been replaced by a team with bad posture, dubious table manners at tea time and nothing that could ever be called stylish.

True, United are still motoring along at the right pace and tempo, the players still have unquestionable quality and the internal infrastructure of the club is in no immediate danger of just crumbling before our eyes. It's just that their manager seems wholly incapable of handling players whose egos are roughly the size of a shopping centre,whose wage packets are almost as large as the combined assets of a globally reputable oil company and whose sense of perspective may have been obscured by the millions that fall conveniently into their bank balances every year.

Still, Mourinho looks out from his ivory tower as if everything he does or says can never be challenged. In the world of Jose, Manchester United should win every single Premier League game for ever more without any goals being conceded. Every United player should be seen in the most favourable light, appearing in chat shows every night with twinkling eyes and perfect teeth, knighted by the Queen, paragons of virtue and model sportsmen.

And yet we are still left with Mourinho, sneering, miserable, begging for pity and completely wronged by society. His relationship with Paul Pogba is entirely different in much the way Sir Matt Busby could neither control or talk to George Best. When Best made up his mind to quit at the top, Sir Matt just threw in the towel and relented.

Pogba thankfully hasn't followed Best into the horrible world of alcohol and was never seen pouring champagne into a mountain of glasses or flouncing shamelessly around in a kaftan. These are sensible, disciplined and infinitely more restrained times. Footballers now drink the best Chablis wine, the finest cheeses and a smattering of caviar before bed time. Besides Pogba has just won a World Cup with France while  poor George had no chance at all with Northern Ireland. Admittedly he did win an unforgettable European Cup 50 years ago with Manchester United but a World Cup may have been even sweeter for Best.

Meanwhile across the city at Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola is still riding on the crest of a wave with a City side which, although held to a 1-1 draw by newly promoted Wolves, are still on course for a snug place in the history books. Yesterday City beat a Brighton side who seemed to be wearing the most bizarre green shirt of them all.

 Quite how Brighton came to be playing in a natty away strip of green is quite beyond us but they were and if it was a fashion statement then it hadn't succeeded. Essentially there is nothing wrong with a green shirt as worn by a Premier League team but you began to wonder what one of their former managers Brian Clough would have said on the subject. Maybe Cloughie would have sat down with his chairman and decided that green is no colour for a football team and he was always right.

City were once again graceful, gracious, artistic perfection, sweeping and suggestive, a beautiful physical manifestation, supernatural at times, stunning at others, virile and vigorous, impeccably balanced, full of romantic invention and the richest of pastel colours. Once again the City passing factory was functioning smoothly and remarkably skilfully. The passes are clean, tidy, well varnished and almost punctilious. There is an order, procedure and well thought out manifesto to their football. Their football has a clarity, honesty and integrity about it that has to be commended. It has a proper structure and brilliantly constructive intentions that have echoes of a modern Germany, France and Spain without ever overlooking Brazil.

Leroy Sane, who was weirdly left out of the German World Cup this team, conducted City's well tuned choir with another display of footballing eloquence and match winning footwork. Sane sways forward into his opponents, forever dropping shoulders, turning players superbly in tight spaces and then running like the wind for goal, deviousness and skulduggery permanently on his mind.

Then there was Fernandinho, a Brazilian blend of genuine craftsmanship, Raheem Sterling, brave and valiant for England during the World Cup and now delivering some of his finest wing play. Sterling was at his most unstoppable and Brighton had not a clue how to pin him down. With the ball at his feet Sterling of course has to be worth a fortune, dinking, jinking, teasing, luring his opponent into any number of complex cul de sacs.

So it was that Sergio Aguero, their Argentine goal scoring machine extraordinaire, completed perhaps the most spellbinding of goals to secure City's 2-0 victory against Brighton. City had once again demonstrated that they have to be the team to be respected, applauded and never dismissed as show ponies. The chances are though that the fortunes of both Manchester City and United may follow the most intriguingly diverse of paths.

The enduring image of the weekend would have to be of a football manager with all the troubles of the world heavily weighing down on him. Deep within the corridors of Old Trafford, there are rumblings of unrest and two very high profile footballing men who shouldn't be in the same room as each other. This could end in tears but without any of us knowing why.

Still, as the last day of September passes peacefully over the Manchester ship canal, it must be hoped that the life and times of Jose Mourinho will continue to be chronicled in the most eye catching way. Mourinho somehow defies categorisation as a football manager because very few of  his contemporaries would ever behave in the same way as he does. Then again when there is a press conference to be had and a microphone in front of him then football will always have something to get excited about. Over to you Jose.