Jose Mourinho: Not a single Manchester United player has posted a social media message about sacked manager

Only Paul Pogba’s deleted posts and Ander Herrera’s happy birthday message to Iker Muniain have appeared on Twitter and Instagram since Mourinho was sacked

Jose Mourinho’s sudden dismissal as Manchester United manager must have come as a huge shock to the squad given that not a single player has posted a message on social media to pay tribute to him or thank him for his time at Old Trafford.

The 55-year-old was sacked on Tuesday morning after two-and-a-half years at Old Trafford, with Sunday’s 3-1 defeat by Premier League leaders Liverpool dropping them 19 points off the top of the table and 11 points behind the top four.

It proved to be the final nail in Mourinho’s coffin, with executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward informing the Portuguese manager on Tuesday morning at their Carrington training base that he was being relieved of his duties.

However, it was not a decision simply made on the loss at Anfield. In what has proven to be a stereotypical Mourinho third-season, a rift has developed between the manager and a large portion of the squad, with Paul Pogba and Anthony Martial at the front of the queue. They are not alone though, with the likes of Luke Shaw, Marcus Rashford, Chris Smalling and Romelu Lukaku all being metaphorically ‘thrown under the bus’ by Mourinho at some point of the last three seasons.

It's understood that a section of the squad were still loyal to Mourinho to the very end, although they had accepted that change was more than likely imminent, yet despite all this it is a big surprise that not one of United’s 26-man first-team squad as acknowledged the change of manager on their Twitter or Instagram accounts.

In fact, the only player who has posted anything on social media since Mourinho was sacked is midfielder Ander Herrera, one of those who appeared to still be playing for the manager to the very end. Yet his Instagram story, posted on Wednesday morning, wished his former Atletic Bilbao teammate Iker Muniain a happy birthday and made no reference to Mourinho whatsoever.

Herrera is the only United player to have posted a message since Tuesday (Instagram/anderherrera)

Some players tend not to spend much time on social media, such as goalkeepers Sergio Romero and Lee grant who don’t even have accounts on either platform, or Phil Jones who has not posted anything on Twitter for the last two-and-a-half months and on Instagram since July 2017.

But the likes of Jesse Lingard, Rashford and Alexis Sanchez who are all regulars on social media have been suspiciously quiet since Mourinho was axed, perhaps displaying either a club-policy to stay hush on the matter or a true reflection of how bad the relationship with the manager had really become.

Of course, it’s not completely true to say that not a single player has posted anything on social media since Mourinho’s dismissal.

Pogba landed himself in hot water within an hour of United announcing that Mourinho had been sacked after messages were posted in his Twitter and Instagram accounts, displaying an image of him smirking with “Caption this” accompanying it.

Paul Pogba deleted this Instagram post shortly after Jose Mourinho had been sacked (Instagram/@paulpogba)

The posts were deleted within 10 minutes but the Instagram message was liked more than 64,000 times by the time it was removed, and while Adidas attempted to explain that it was a mistaken post that was pre-scheduled before news of Mourinho’s exit breaking, Pogba still received fierce criticism from former United defender Gary Neville as he accused the World Cup winner of “dancing on Mourinho’s grave” and giving a “garbage” excuse.

The complete lack of messages for Mourinho was made all the more startling given that within minutes of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s appointment as his replacement in an interim capacity, a number of past United players had all used social media to wish the best to their former teammate in his new role.

(Instagram/@davidbeckham (Instagram/@davidbeckham)

Neville and his brother, Phil, David Beckham and Louis Saha were all among those to post messages on Instagram, which while they appeared to have been posted with the best intentions, only went to highlight the eye-opening silence from the current squad.