The Marouane Fellaini experiment must end

One of the things Manchester United fans looked forward to when Jose Mourinho was appointed was an immediate uplift in the quality of the squad. Not just in the standard of those players he brought in – and Paul Pogba wasn’t a bad place to start - but in the purge of those he let go. After three seasons of watching the second rate and the inadequate, it was time for a revolution.

In short what many a United fan was hoping was that the arrival of the new manager meant they had seen the last of Marouane Fellaini in a red shirt.

Nothing personal. Fellaini seems a good sort: willing, hard working, uncomplaining. With his idiosyncratic style and striking barnet, he has all the makings of a fan favourite, a terrace cult hero. Except for this one thing: from the moment he became David Moyes’ marquee summer signing when he took over from Alex Ferguson in 2013, Fellaini has not looked like a United player. Awkward, clumsy, a foul waiting to happen, what he has been is an embarrassing symptom of how far things have fallen. After all this is someone occupying the same piece of turf as was so recently covered by Paul Scholes.

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Yet when Louis Van Gaal came in to replace Moyes, Fellaini remained central to the enterprise, often used an emergency centre forward. Not that many goals resulted from his Plan B excursions up field. The usual outcome when a ball was fired to the far post in the vain hope he might knock it down into the path of a colleague was that the opposition were awarded a free-kick as the Fellaini elbow flailed.

When Mourinho came the fond expectation was that after three long, long seasons, the Fellaini experiment would come to an end. At last here was a manager astute enough to see what everyone in the stands could see: the Belgian wasn’t up to the job.

The only problem is, Mourinho has long been an admirer of Fellaini. When United played Chelsea in the 2014-15 season he described the player as the most important in Van Gaal’s team. Stop Fellaini and you stop United he reckoned. What he liked about him were the very things that so frustrate the regulars in the Old Trafford stands. He believed his awkwardness, his sharp edges, his unique physical presence asked questions of an opposition manager that are not easily answered.

So it was that, instead of jettisoning the player as so many had hoped, Mourinho started with Fellaini in every one of his first few games in charge. Not that the new boss had encouraged any perceptible change in the way he played. He still lumbered around elbowing people, causing as much panic and confusion among his own supporters as he did amongst his opponents.

And then came Saturday’s derby, in which any questions Fellaini might have posed to the Manchester City midfield were quickly and easily answered. Fernandinho, Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva merely passed the ball round him, making his presence redundant by the simple expedient of being quicker, nimbler and subtler than he could ever be. Frankly, for the first half hour of the derby he resembled nothing more than a six foot three inch fuzzy-haired traffic cone, a static, confused and irrelevant obstruction.

What Pep Guardiola’s tactical approach demonstrated is that in the harum scarum whizzbang of a Premier League midfield a good little un is better than a good big un. And a good little un is on another plane altogether to an indifferent big un like Fellaini. As the ball fizzed around him, the poor chap looked bemused.

Now the same could be said of Paul Pogba, whose first 30 minutes of a Manchester derby were no compelling commercial for his status as history’s most expensive footballer. But at least, the Frenchman rallied. Fellaini, however, was abject throughout, his contribution across 90 minutes as close to pointless as anything imagined by Richard Osman.

What Guardiola exploited so shrewdly in the first half on Saturday was the problem of mobility that has afflicted United for the past few seasons. Playing Wayne Rooney, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Fellaini together means that half of the front six is slow to the point of leaden footed. As a system it absolutely requires the others within it – on Saturday Pogba, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Jesse Lingard – to supply the pace. When they are not at the races, then the lack of speed of the three central figures is horribly shown up. And while Ibrahimovic and - arguably – Rooney have sufficient guile to compensate for their lack of zip, the same cannot be said for Fellaini. With the whole system failing, he just looked redundant. Mourinho had played him with the instruction that he – along with Pogba and Ibrahimovic – should use his superior physicality to bully City. To do that, however, you have to get close to your opponent. He was nowhere near. Even in the limited ambition of being the team enforcer, Fellaini was found out.

Things improved for United and Mourinho after the second half introduction of Ander Herrera, Anthony Martial and particularly Marcus Rashford finally brought some competitive urgency to the side. Rashford, it is now apparent, really can no longer be left out. As the manager suggested after the game, he is so good it would be verging on the criminal to hold him back.

Of course, with Rashford in the team it is less likely that Mourinho’s system will again be as horribly wide-open as it was at Old Trafford. Fellaini’s unhappy lunchtime was partly the result of others’ shortcomings. But his abject failure to adapt, to improvise, to cover the inadequacies of his colleague’s performance was no more than evidence of what some have long known: he is not – and the never has been - the answer to United’s long-standing midfield deficiencies.