Whatsa Mata you? Hey, gotta no respect!

"Leave it, bruv, he ain't worth it"

This time last year I was promising myself that I wouldn't blog so much about José Mourinho and would concentrate more on his then-team's defence of the Premier League title. How wrong I was.

Inevitably, however, Chelsea's Community Shield encounter with Arsenal became all about Mourinho, or rather his mindgames with Arsène Wenger and the handshake that wasn't. But, hey, it was only a friendly and Eden Hazard's fluffed shot in front of recently transferred teammate Petr Čech meant nothing for the season about to unfold. Except that Chelsea's next game, against Swansea in the season's first league fixture (exactly a year ago today...), saw the Portuguese's ridiculous meltdown over Dr. Eva Carneiro. This subsequently led to a mental collapse within the team which ultimately resulted in Chelsea dropping to 16th place by December 17, followed by the manager's by-now predictable departure under "mutual consent".

There was, however, something of 'suicide-by-cop' about it all. Many were suspicious about Mourinho coming back to Chelsea in the first place, suggesting that it was only because the Manchester United job he so coveted was not available. Whether this is true, we can only now speculate, but certainly within a matter of days of Mourinho getting the heave-ho from Stamford Bridge, his PR machine was doing a sterling job in keeping him visible, with no shortage of hints that he would finally be on his way to Old Trafford (despite the hapless Louis van Gaal actually being in the job).

It didn't take people - and I single out Twitter people in particular here - many days, either, to start ringing the bell of doom for Juan Mata, the intelligent midfielder who'd won Chelsea's Player Of The Year award two seasons running before Mourinho packaged him off to Manchester citing spurious claims about the player's defensive ability. Poor thing, the Twitter wags snarked, no sooner has he settled at United than the man who unceremoniously sent him there comes after him.

So, fast-forward 12 months from my original vow. Mourinho is back at Wembley for the Community Shield but this time as manager of Manchester United, finally. He has just beaten defending Premier League champions Leicester with a 2-1 win secured by Zlatan Ibrahimovic - a classic Mourinho signing: inconsistent centre forward, getting on a bit, but deadly when the chance arises (viz Didier Drogba). To add to his hubris, he is on the cusp of signing Paul Pogba from Juventus for a fee reported to be £89 million or more. So, The Special One returns, with a special team at his disposal. Amongst it is Juan Mata.

At Wembley, the Spaniard sits patiently on the bench. Twitter notices his slightly forlorn look, the No.8 emblazoned on the left thigh of his shorts. In a forest of vanity squad numbers (first team players at AC Milan have shirt numbers in the 90s...), 8 remains the number of central midfield authority. At United it represents the legacy of Nicky Butt and Paul Ince and their presence, while at Chelsea, it is Frank Lampard and his imperious record of 211 goals from the position.

Jesse Lingard had, arguably, played the pivotal part in Manchester United returning to Wembley in the first place, substituting Mata in the FA Cup Final in May and scoring the winning goal that brought the curtain down on the van Gaal era with something of a wry smile. So, perhaps it was fitting - a reward, even - that the 23-year-old winger got the nod ahead of Mata for the 2016-17 curtain raiser. Mata, smart man that he is, probably saw this for what it was, too, but when Lingard came off injured in the 63rd minute, he was on. Exactly 30 minutes later he was off again...and looked furious.

Surprisingly, player petulance doesn't happen often as often as the back pages might suggest, but when it does, it usually shows more than intended. When a disgusted Diego Costa threw his training bib in Mourinho's direction last November after a touchline warm-up came to nothing at White Hart Lane, it was clear how bad the "palpable" disconnect was between manager and players. Mourinho was gone within a fortnight. The sight, then, of Mata being apparently restrained by United coach Ricardo Formosinho while shooting a look at his manager that definitely could kill underlined the precarious state of Mourinho's man management techniques, which failed him so dismally at Chelsea last season.

"I needed to take off the smallest player [Mata] because we were expecting a lot of long balls," Mourinho said, unconvincingly after the match, which ended just two minutes after the substitution. Now, some might see this as simply Mourinho shoring up his defence, a position consistent with his notorious 'win-at-any-cost' bus parking. Others might see this as Mourinho at his most insensitive and vindictive. "You don't do that unless you are trying to send a message," said pundit Danny Murphy on the BBC's Match Of The Day. "[Mourinho and Mata] have a lot of history at Chelsea and he has embarrassed him in front of his supporters and his family. He is basically saying to him you are not important and he has done it publicly. I can't see him still being at the club at the end of August."

Nor, probably, would Mata himself, who joins the likes of Bastian Schweinsteiger, Daley Blind and Marcos Rojo as casualities of the new United manager's apparently ruthless trimming of a squad he inherited from van Gaal. Mata, for the record, has remained remarkably sanguine and professional, posting pictures of himself with the Community Shield trophy on Facebook and Twitter.

There are arguments, however, that Mata never recovered the form he had at Chelsea since his-then club record £37.1 million transfer to Old Trafford in January 2014. He has, since then, only started 75 Premier League games for United, with suggestions coming out of Old Trafford that van Gaal shared Mourinho's concerns about the midfielder's pace and defensive contribution.

That, however, won't wash with Chelsea fans, who saw in Mata a clever, creative player who thoroughly deserved his consecutive player of the year awards, and whose intellect and articulate, cultural interest endeared him so. Before Mourinho's return to Chelsea in June 2013, Mata had been Chelsea's creative heart under André Villas-Boas, Roberto Di Matteo and Rafa Benitez, contributing goals and some vital assists. As "@BlueTaintedNick" put it on Twitter yesterday, "How many players left at peak and retained the affection like Mata?". The answer is not many, but they'd be led by Lampard, Drogba, Gianfranco Zola, Eidur Gudjohnsen and, without hesitation, Mata.

For all our affection for Mata, his relationship with Mourinho may simply be down to preference and chemistry. In Mourinho's case, Mata isn't his preference and, it is patently clear, there is no chemistry. But while Mourinho may have his tactical reasons for not favouring Spaniard, the way he has gone about expressing them - now twice - leaves much to be desired. Over three-and-a-bit and two-and-a-bit seasons, we sang the Special One's praises from the rafters of Stamford Bridge, on trains and planes to European destinations, and in the face of overwhelming evidence of his sociopathic tendencies. We defended him - rightly - from the massed ranks of envious trolls as we watched the silverware come tumbling in.

But now he's at Manchester United, do we turn on him, and especially over his treatment of a much-loved former Chelsea player? Probably, but that shouldn't come as any surprise. It's what the tribality of football demands.