Monday 12 September 2016 22:33, UK
Niall Quinn questions Jose Mourinho's criticism of his players and how it contrasts with Pep Guardiola's defence of Claudio Bravo and the approaches of Sir Alex Ferguson and Howard Kendall...
The Champions League proper starts up this week and suddenly, for last season's top four Premier League clubs, it seems like everything which has happened since mid-August was really just a clearing of their throats.
Now is the time to hit all the right notes.
Of those who start their campaigns over the next two weeks you would imagine that Leicester and Spurs will be extremely happy to get through to the group stages. Anything else will be a bonus. Arsenal's spending patterns haven't made a convincing case for them dominating the continent.
Manchester City, who kick-off against Borussia Monchengladbach on Tuesday night, might be a different story.
City's performance on Saturday at Old Trafford wasn't perfect for 90 minutes but there were times when you wondered how Pep Guardiola had brought such changes to a group of players whom he hasn't been working with for more than two months.
They were quick, confident, expressive and even without Sergio Aguero there were times when they just sliced United open. Guardiola's team deserved their win but his presence on the sideline also overshadowed Mourinho on a day when onlookers might have been expecting the Portuguese to strut like a peacock.
Guardiola was in constant contact with his players, micro managing the game. You could see that these guys who have been playing football all their lives suddenly find themselves starting out on a tough and intensive post-graduate course where they are going to have to learn a lot of new stuff.
I wouldn't exactly say that Mourinho threw his men under the bus with his post-match comments that included 'sometimes players disappoint managers' but he certainly gave a couple of them a bit of a shove out into the bus lane.
If there's frank talking planned at the training ground this week Mourinho might begin by explaining how he managed to put such a subdued looking team out and why it took him so long to figure out how to deal with David Silva and Kevin De Bruyne.
United had their moments in the second half when they changed the midfield system but it was an afternoon when Guardiola responded quicker to every tactical change.
Mourinho, for all his showmanship and managerial genius, must have been left with the wise old saying 'be careful what you wish for' ringing through his mind?
After the meltdown at Chelsea last season Jose disappeared for a little while and re-emerged to snatch the job that they said he had always dreamed of.
And he seemed to decide that if he was going to fail he was going to fail big. He went out and bought Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Paul Pogba and flaunted them like a man smoking two big cigars at once.
Ferguson would always then come out and talk to the cameras and the newspapers to defend his men to the hilt. Doing anything else is not the Manchester United way.
On Saturday though the harsh reality of life at Manchester United must have sunk in. During the game the TV cameras flicked up to the stands occasionally to show us what Sir Alex Ferguson's expression was saying.
At best it wasn't really saying very much but his presence at Old Trafford is so massive and his legacy is so great Mourinho must feel as if he has been put on probation by God himself.
And people would have been quick afterwards to remember Fergie's traditional post-match demeanour. It's widely said that if you walked past a defeated Manchester United dressing room after matches down the years you could hear him inside mowing lads down with words that sounded like they came from a machine gun, not a hairdryer.
But he would always then come out and talk to the cameras and the newspapers to defend his men to the hilt. Doing anything else is not the Manchester United way.
Guardiola on the other hand reminded me of an early experience I had when I played in a derby for Howard Kendall at Manchester City. It would be fair to say I stank the place out that day.
In my defence, when you are 6ft5ins and stuff isn't coming off it does look bad, but even allowing for that I knew I'd had a pretty bad day.
Kendall went into the press room though and told the scribes that my off-the-ball work-rate had been a shining example to the other players and if we had 10 more Niall Quinns he'd be the happiest manager in England.
The media bought it and instead of getting across the board three-out-of-10 marks in the papers the next day I got a few sevens.
I always admired Kendall from the time he signed me but after that I hung on his every word. He couldn't have found himself a more loyal follower if he had gone down to the dog rescue service. I'd run my legs to stumps for him.
I thought of that day when Guardiola announced that Claudio Bravo's nervy performance was one of the best he had ever seen. Everybody knows that Pep must have seen a bit more football than that and basically he was talking through his hat but Bravo will have loved him for it. That was the entire point.
And the race to be crowned the next Special One has hardly reached the first bend yet, but the field is beginning to stretch.
I was at Swansea versus Chelsea yesterday and again I thought of Mourinho. He will have been bruised by all the Pep 2-1 Jose style headlines on Sunday morning and he will also be acutely conscious of what Antonio Conte is doing at Chelsea.
Conte is great value. For 90 minutes it is like all the energy of the game is being channelled through his body in the form of electric shocks. He makes Jurgen Klopp look like he has bad arthritis.
He also seems to have given this Chelsea team new energy and new focus. They were unlucky with a bad refereeing decision for the second of Swansea's goals but generally when they were good they were very, very good.
When he landed the Chelsea job I read a quote from Italian legend Alessandro Costacurta where he said that for him the coach was the most important thing in football and that Conte was "the best coach in the world". I was sceptical but everything I have seen and read about him since has been in line with such high praise.
Jose will be looking around him this week as Manchester United get themselves ready for the drudgery of the Europa League. A good competition but not one that Mourinho or Manchester United or Pogba and Zlatan will be getting too excited about.
City will keep learning and keep getting better under their eminent professor. Chelsea, like Leicester last year, will take advantage of their blank European calendar and experience the jolt of energy a team gets when the electricity flows back out of a great manager.
It was one fascinating weekend in the white heat of the Premier League. On the crowded Mount Rushmore of current managerial greats, Jose, Jurgen, Pep, Antonio and Arsene, it is only Jose who looks to be perspiring.
