Sunday's lame defeat was as bad as anything that has gone before and if Jose Mourinho's appointment as United manager signified a rebuild, surely that process must be accelerated now.

Watford's victory on Sunday was their first over United for 30 years and only the third time Mourinho has lost three consecutive games as a manager. On their own, statistics do not always mean much -- but when the negative figures rack up together it tends to suggest something is amiss and the overriding sense is that Mourinho may never have faced a challenge like this.

Not that you would know it from his comments in the postmatch news conference -- at least without a little reading between the lines.

"Individually, collectively, we have to improve, and that's my job," he said, but not before pointing out who else was to blame. Chief among his frustrations was the Miguel Britos challenge on Anthony Martial that led to Watford's first goal ("You don't ask me about that if you think nothing happened," he said, claiming a foul) and, just as there had been after last weekend's 2-1 defeat to Manchester City, there was a specific focus on individuals' failure to implement his game plan.

Mourinho provided a detailed breakdown of Watford's second -- effectively decisive -- goal, describing it as "a mistake that goes against our plan and our training," later explaining specifically that his left-back, Luke Shaw, should have pressed higher up on Nordin Amrabat in the buildup.

"It's tactical, but also a mental attitude," he said.

Mourinho, who also repeated his assertion of eight days ago that some of his players do not handle pressure situations well, appears well attuned to the fact that something fundamental needs to change in United's mentality -- but that is far from the whole story.

The natural question, upon hearing Mourinho so willingly pick apart an error like Shaw's, is why he does not address the more glaringly obvious. It does not take a frame-by-frame replay to understand that United, just as last season, are painfully sluggish going forwards and lack the most basic fluidity. There are no partnerships across the pitch, no real relationships being formed, and there seems little prospect of that being remedied until difficult decisions are taken.

Wayne Rooney sometimes seems an easy target but can rarely have been less effective in a United shirt than here. One second half cross, delivered straight into the stands under no pressure, was quickly glossed over by Marcus Rashford's equaliser to make it 1-1. By the end, though, Rooney's frustrated figure was very much to the fore, lashing wildly over from 30 yards and receiving a booking for a rash challenge after Camilo Zuniga's goal made it 2-1. There is never any shortage of effort from Rooney; the things that lack, these days, are speed, invention and confidence. Too many moves broke down at his feet and the sense, increasingly, is of a player needing to be put out of his misery.

That might have a galvanising effect on Paul Pogba, who was as bad as Rooney here but must feel on a hiding to nothing shuttling between an out-of-form captain and the figure of Marouane Fellaini, whose late concession of a penalty was clumsy. No matter how hard United work to perfect it, Pogba's partnership with the ponderous Fellaini feels nothing better than temporary -- and that is the impression given by much of what happens ahead of them, too.

"I think that at 1-1, everyone thinks we'll win the game," Mourinho said. "We were showing complete control, intensity and creation. The game was there to win, never to lose."

United had certainly enjoyed their best period of the match prior to Zuniga's goal, testing Heurelho Gomes through Zlatan Ibrahimovic's header, yet even then there was nothing to get you off your seat -- no quick passes to carve open the home defence or spring into a counter-attack. United are blessed with speed on the flanks but too often find themselves playing in front of well-organised opponents, and that owes plenty to the absence of dynamism in the team's spine.

There may be worse to come for Mourinho and United. Leicester lie in wait at Old Trafford in the league next, while visits to Liverpool and Chelsea are among their October assignments. It would take an uncharitable observer to suggest that Mourinho, who said back in August that change would not happen overnight at United, is blind to the job he faces; you wonder, though, whether the demands for success at United are so high that they breed caution in the form of an unwillingness to experiment, to gamble, to make the clean break.

Is Mourinho, having landed the job that had bordered on an obsession for him for so long, pulling his punches? It would be uncharacteristic hesitancy from so strident a figure, but United need change to drag them out of this enduring stasis and his short reign so far has arguably been defined by what he has not done.

For now, every small positive -- like that close-range Rashford finish and the ensuing spell of pressure -- still feels like salve for a wound that needs major surgery.