Luke Shaw has more reason to be regretful about Watford, who travel to Old Trafford this Saturday. Vicarage Road was the harrowing occasion of the full-back's last Premier League start for United, where he was the recipient of a very public rocket from his manager.

"Today for the second goal, [Nordin] Amrabat on the right side, our left-back is 25 metres distance from him, instead of five metres," Mourinho said, not sparing Shaw an iota of embarrassment. "But even at 25 metres, then you have to jump and go press. But no, we wait. This is a tactical but also a mental attitude."

These were barbs that burned, and the mask had slipped for Mourinho. While his opening months at United were not exactly chock-full of the chilled-out entertaining of the early days of both spells at Chelsea, he had been on something approaching his best behaviour.

Watford, though, saw his patience boil over, after a third consecutive defeat followed a 2-1 home loss in the Manchester derby and a 1-0 reverse and diabolical Europa League performance at Feyenoord.

Rooney and Shaw were, for him, problem players inherited from previous regimes. Neither David Moyes nor Louis van Gaal could fully repair a player Sir Alex Ferguson felt he had seen the best of, and Mourinho has now shattered Rooney's powerbase, rendering him a peripheral figure. Shaw, at 21, should still be at the beginning of his United journey, but Mourinho has been unsympathetic to repeated fitness problems following his double leg fracture in 2015.

"The players know what the manager wants from them," said Rooney in a GQ Magazine interview published this week. "He's strong in that sense but as long as you're doing what he wants, then I'm sure you'll be fine."

If not fine, United have been much the better for their manager's rethink of his team, if not yet quite worthy of some of the plaudits lavished on them.

"Jose's got us playing the way United should," proclaims a popular terrace chant, to the tune of "I'm Into Something Good," as made famous by 1960s Manchester group Herman's Hermits.

Mourinho's team are sixth in the table, 13 points behind leaders Chelsea, and it would be delusional to claim that United are playing a brand of football to match the Himalayan peaks of the Ferguson era, or in those 60s days when the Hermits were hitmakers and Sir Matt Busby had Denis Law, Bobby Charlton and George Best to call upon.

Nevertheless, a timeline of some improvement can be drawn since Watford. United have lost just one Premier League match since -- a 4-0 reverse, of all places, at Chelsea -- as well as a pair of 2-1 defeats to Fenerbahce in the Europa League in November and to Hull in the second leg of the EFL semifinal, while still booking a Wembley final trip.

Nine drawn league matches prevent United being anything like a realistic contender for the title, and may well endanger their participation in next season's Champions League but Mourinho has worked through at least some of the problems of a squad built by four different managers in him, Moyes, Van Gaal and Ferguson.

Managers tend to learn far more in defeat than victory, with this season's prime case study being the 3-0 loss at Arsenal in September for Chelsea which gave Antonio Conte the belief that a change of defensive formation and personnel was the way forward, the result being 13 consecutive victories and a runaway lead at the top.

Mourinho has not delivered anything approaching Conte's Chelsea revelation just yet, but has carved a fresh template by making an unlikely central defensive partnership of Phil Jones and Marcos Rojo, returning Michael Carrick to midfield and, after a lengthy hiatus that had many questioning the Armenian's whereabouts, giving Mkhitaryan license to be a key player.

There are signs a new rethink is in the offing. Last week's 3-0 win at fallen champions Leicester was preceded by successive disappointing Premier League draws with Liverpool (1-1), Stoke (1-1) and Hull (0-0). At the King Power Stadium, United began with an old-style 4-4-2 formation, with Marcus Rashford accompanying Ibrahimovic in attack, before a switch back to the usual 4-3-3 brought the best from Mkhitarayan,

Mourinho the cutthroat decision-maker of yore is revealing himself at Manchester United. Rooney and Shaw have plenty of company on the fringes. Anthony Martial, a star for Van Gaal, has had one league start in 2017. Chris Smalling has had to wait his turn to play at centre-back, and utility man Ashley Young was offered the door after asking to play more. Losing at Watford gave United's manager a taste for making the big calls.