heart of Mourinho’s latest crankiness explosion is his belief that in some way Guardiola is defrauding him’.

Hearty congratulations to Manchester United. They might have left it late but they've managed to lift the prestigious Most Pathetic Complaint of the Year award for 2017. All that caterwauling about Manchester City celebrating with inappropriate vigour after winning the derby at Old Trafford clinched it for them.

Can you imagine any greater admission of competitive impotence than complaining that the opposition made too much of a fuss about beating you? It's like something a wounded teacher would come up with at the end of a primary schools blitz. It's hilarious.

The funniest thing of all is that the complaints are led by a man whose single most famous moment is perhaps his jubilant sprint down the touchline when Porto scored an unlikely win in the 2004 Champions League. Who were their opposition again? Manchester United. Where was the game played? Old Trafford.

And when Inter Milan beat Barcelona in the 2010 competition, The Guardian's Amy Lawrence wrote, "Mourinho scampered across the sacred turf of Camp Nou, then struck a pose, a gesture of rampant defiance, aimed at the pocket of Inter fans up in the gods. This was yet another milestone moment that this singular coach intended to milk to the full." Barcelona's manager that night? Pep Guardiola.

Mourinho has always loved rubbing it into the opposition. Yet if an opposing manager went on one of those runs he would probably try to rugby tackle him, or at least whine afterwards about the transgression of one of those 'unwritten rules' often invoked by sore losers in an effort to distract from their failursomething 

amour propre was offended by the sight of excessively jubilant Blues is a very different one from the lad who frolicked in the Nou Camp seven years ago. His Champions League triumph with Inter Milan was his greatest managerial achievement. But the years in Spain which followed increasingly seem like a watershed moment. He arrived at Real Madrid as the undisputed numero uno in world management. By the time he left the crown had been ceded to Pep Guardiola, something which the United manager has never been able to accept.

At the heart of Mourinho's latest crankiness explosion is his belief that in some way Guardiola is defrauding him. He's vague about the precise manner in which this underhand feat has been achieved but insistent that something is not quite kosher about the Manchester City manager. This is the dark side of Mourinho's enormous self-belief. If you really are The Special One, then anyone who does better than you must be cheating in some way.

That top managers hate to lose is a given, yet Mourinho's inability to accept defeat verges on the pathological. After a big loss he can resemble one of those Japanese soldiers sniping away in the jungles for decades after World War II ended, unwilling to believe that the conflict is over and their side lost.

You can praise him for this and say it displays a magnificent never-say-die spirit. But a manager who doesn't accept that he has been beaten fair and square is less likely to take the measures necessary to prevent future defeats by the same opposition. If there's something hooky about Guardiola's success, then Mourinho is absolved of all personal responsibility for being bested by him. It is up to other people to rid him of this turbulent Catalan.

Perhaps in private Mourinho is fully aware of the shortcomings of his approach compared to Guardiola's. But in public his preoccupation was with creating a smokescreen which would obscure the reality of what transpired during last Sunday's derby and what it said about the current disparity in performance between the two clubs.

The jibe at the City players for lacking education was presumably some kind of personal dig. It usually is with Mourinho. But its precise target remained unclear given that Mourinho's players don't resemble University Challenge contestants any more than Guardiola's do. Since we're on the subject of education, perhaps the most perceptive summing up of the controversy came from Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the Universities of Burnage and Charlestown, Dr Liam Gallagher, who observed, "People banging on about not being able to celebrate after the derby, sit down and shut the fuck up you beige c**ts." This is perhaps the level of analysis United's complaints deserve.

• To be continued............