The uncomfortable question for Tottenham and their manager: What is Jose Mourinho for?
“He’s a specialist in failure,” Jose Mourinho said of Arsene Wenger in February 2014.
In seven years since, Mourinho has won fewer trophies than Wenger – if, as the Tottenham Hotspur manager likes to, you count the Community Shield – and his old adversary left the dugout three seasons ago.
For a coach who has defined himself by winning, these must be frightening times.
It isn’t just the success that has dried up for Mourinho, the essence of his best teams seems a distant memory.
Porto punched way above their weight. Inter Milan were never-say-die. They made the most of their talents and then some by refusing to accept defeat.
Mourinho’s teams increasingly resemble the opposite of those qualities.
Spurs seem to be less than the sum of their parts, as his Manchester United also did, and they are chronically feeble.
They have given up 18 points from winning positions in the Premier League this season, second only to Brighton, to go with a shocking Europa League capitulation at Dinamo Zagreb.
It has begun to feel like Mourinho won’t be at Spurs next season whatever happens now.
They have a chance to win a first trophy for 13 years in the EFL Cup final later this month, but even that wouldn’t mask this team’s direction of travel.
Champions League qualification looks less and less likely, and the toxic cloud that heralded the end of his most recent jobs, at United and Chelsea, looks to have descended.
Loyal servant Harry Kane is rumoured to be disillusioned, while even a club employee noted after Sunday’s surrender to United that Son Heung-Min had never looked so low.
Have players stopped listening to Mourinho?
Mourinho’s explanation, as it often was at United, is that his players aren’t good enough.
Perhaps there is some truth in the suggestion that Spurs have suffered from under-investment in the squad compared to their rivals for a top-four place.
Toby Alderweireld and Hugo Lloris have regressed, Dele Alli deemed disposable.
But where are the players in the squad who Mourinho has improved? Is it just Tanguy Ndombele?
Where is the esprit de corps so obvious in his Porto, early Chelsea and Inter teams?
Have players stopped listening to a man whose last Champions League triumph came when they were still teenagers, and has won just one league title since?
A few months out from his 60th year, Mourinho has some big questions to wrestle with.
What is he for? What is he good at?
Because it no longer seems to be creating a band-of-brothers mentality, nor improving players, nor being hard to beat or winning the biggest trophies.
While Tottenham face a period of soul-searching over the future of a man contracted for another two years on a reported salary of £15m, so does Mourinho himself.