The Warm-Up: Mourinho shown up by old friends, and How To Send a Post-Match Tweet

For once, the respective technical-area behaviour of the two managers was of some significance. Antonio Conte’s relentless energy and crowd-pleasing gesticulations, and Jose Mourinho’s half-stunned-half-resigned statue, rather accurately reflected the performances of their respective charges.

Mourinho’s final-whistle whispering into Conte’s ear – “….cuatro-zero, no….” – revealed his irritation with the Chelsea manager’s whipping-up of the home crowd as the game wound down with United fans still in fine voice. Conte insisted this wasn’t showboating – and he doesn’t seem the type to get carried away with one impressive scoreline – but that his team simply deserved a Stamford Bridge ovation for a job well done.

In any case, as has already been politely and impolitely pointed out in the Super Sunday post mortem, Mourinho (with his recent penchant for premature handshakes and head-pats) is somewhere towards the back of the queue of managers who have the right to make that particular accusation.

Pep Guardiola knew he was about to face some renewed queries about his methods after Manchester City were held to a 1-1 draw by Southampton, but the fact is that he is simply not accustomed to those methods not working five times in a row.

As every manager does in such situations, Guardiola was adamant that he wouldn’t publicly focus on any individual mistakes. However, such is his barely-disguised weariness of press-conference interrogations of his philosophy, he simply couldn’t help it.

John Stones was the latest to be exposed by City’s adaptation to the strict demands of their new manager – a teething problem that Guardiola surely will have accounted for – but the City manager is rarely one for dwelling on the negatives.

The prospect of a midweek cup tie against the distracting combination of enemies – Jose Mourinho and Manchester United – wouldn’t have seemed before 4pm like the ideal opportunity to restore some order. Suddenly, City’s stuttering doesn’t seem all that bad.

It’s a well-established modern post-match ritual: quick shower, get some carbohydrates on board, headphones on, tweet something about the “result”, “the fans” and where humanity goes from here. It keeps that vital connection between supporters and players intact, boosts morale, that sort of thing.

Victor Anichebe, however, appears to have someone to do all that for him. Apart from the crucial last bit of actually sending it, which was placed in his safe hands. And thus:

Plenty have use this as the latest stick to beat The Modern Footballer with, but scuttling for cowardly cover in the meantime are 1) whatever PR clowns are employed to propagate this skin-deep insincerity and 2) the creeping assumption that fans need to be comforted with how “magnificent”, “great” and “unbelievable” they were despite a poor result.

Yes, they pay their money and, yes, some of that money pays the players’ wages, but nobody should be attending a football match in the hope that an unused substitute tweets them indirectly to offer some vague thanks for doing so. There are plenty of losers here, but Anichebe is unlikely to be losing sleep over it and nor should he.

Only Caen supporters and keen-eyed superscout Steve Walsh can honestly claim to have witnessed the early work of N’Golo Kante but, now that Leicester’s secret weapon has become Chelsea’s weapon of mass consumption, it’s unquestionably time to place him among the Premier League’s elite performers.

For £32m – roughly enough to buy the carpet on Roman Abramovich’s yacht – Kante was a no-brainer of a signing for Chelsea. The 25-year-old’s arrival and immediate settling-in has solved several post-Mourinho issues in one fell swoop: the stifling lack of mobility in midfield, the desperate lack of assistance for Nemanja Matic, and the general spinelessness of their 2015/16 season.

His tireless work rate is already famous, but Kante’s sheer speed of thought and execution has turned the Chelsea midfield into something approaching their formidable machine of c.2005. His goal – carved out with a darting run, killer body-swerve and decisive finish – was a delightful bonus for Antonio Conte, who appreciates a good central midfielder when he sees one.

Inevitably (and it was sorely tempting to do so here), every sub-par Paul Pogba display is viewed through an £89m prism. At Stamford Bridge, though, his transfer fee was barely relevant: he simply wasn’t good enough.

Some laissez-faire defensive work, one notably desperate blocked shot from 35 yards and a frustration-fuelled yellow card was the sum total of Pogba’s contribution in the heart of a disjointed and directionless United midfield.

Once again, an astronomical amount of money completely out of his control is not the issue here. His range of attributes – virtually unrivalled at the top level – will almost certainly see him right before too long, but Jose Mourinho and Manchester United are geared towards the here and now. Some EFL Cup heroic against Manchester City would be an ideal time to make his considerable presence felt.

Rory Smith of the New York Times wades into the murky moral maze that is a Premier League technical area, and come out looking rather good indeed.

YouTube’s great, isn’t it? All that old football just being uploaded by generous, nostalgic hoarders who want everyone else to enjoy it too. And enjoy this you very well might: here’s England’s Under-18s thrashing Spain on the way to winning the 1993 European Championship on home soil.

The cast? An already embarrassingly mature Gary Neville, a snarling Nicky Butt, a peak-gingerness Paul Scholes, Sol Campbell when he was merely the size of a wardrobe rather than a two-bed maisonette, an electric Julian Joachim absolutely running the show and, finally, a Robbie Fowler hat-trick.

What on earth keeps happening to these cocky youngsters once they pull on a Size L senior shirt for their country?

Enjoy your quiet Monday – unless Bury vs Bolton is your thing – because the rest of the week is loaded with potential talking points, fallings-out and potential mini-crises.