Turning on players, berating referees and admitting life is 'a disaster': The surefire signs Jose Mourinho is on brink of meltdown 

Turns on one of his own players

Iker Casillas, Juan Mata, Pepe - there's a long list of individuals who Mourinho has rebuked in public, and it did not take him long to round on his Manchester United team this season. 

After only the fifth game of his reign at United, Mourinho was already publically criticising some of his players, having pointedly taking off Jesse Lingard and Henrikh Mkhitaryan at half-time in the 2-1 defeat to Manchester City. 

In his post-match interview, Mourinho said: "I'm clearly disappointed with the the first-half. Disappointed with some really poor individual performances that affected the level of the team.

"We didn't have a tactical problem, we had problems with poor performances, we lost the ball very, very easy. Even now our central defenders today they lost easy balls, bad passes, first station passes from Bailly to Fellaini and Blind to Pogba. 

"I made a couple of decisions that I thought individual qualities of certain players would give me what I know that I I want and I didn't get it." 

A week later and Mourinho was at it again, chastising Luke Shaw's defending in the 3-1 defeat at Watford. 

"I knew I had a task. But the first Man City goal and this second goal, you can find incredible similarity," Mourinho said at Vicarage Road. 

"Kolarov has the ball in a difficult situation in the corner and my player instead of going up and pressing decides to give him space. Today for the second goal, (Nordin) Amrabat on the right side, our left back is 25 metres distance from him, instead of five metres. 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. In a couple of weeks, everything like this becomes perfect. That's my job."

It emerged after the match that Shaw was suffering with a groin problem, and reportedly some of his team-mates confronted Mourinho about what they felt was unfair criticism of the defender, whose career has been littered with injury problems. 

Offers expert medical opinion

The confrontation with Dr Eva Carneiro over her treatment of an injured Eden Hazard last season was one of the most undignified moments of Mourinho's reign at Chelsea. 

He also has previous history with falling out with medical staff, dating back to 2006 when Mourinho claimed Petr Cech had to wait 30 minutes for an ambulance after being knocked out by Stephen Hunt . The ambulance service responded by saying his version of events contained "serious factual inaccuracies".

Then last year Mourinho's decision to keep Oscar on the pitch against Arsenal after the Brazilian had suffered concussion was branded "completely unacceptable" by Dr Willie Stewart of the FA concussion panel. 

This season Mourinho reacted tetchily when it was put to him that Anthony Martial had suffered concussion against Watford. Martial played on for eight minutes despite looking dazed after suffering what looked like a head injury, and was ruled out of United's next match against Leicester. "Martial is not available," Mourinho said tersely. "He is out because of the contusion in the calf and ankle area. I think you know when that happened." 

Falls out with referees

Mourinho has launched some explosive tirades at referees before - not least at Jon Moss at Upton Park last season, which earned him a stadium ban - and he was at it once more against Burnley at home last Saturday. 

The Portuguese was enraged when Matteo Darmian was denied a penalty, and sent to the stands for the second half after angrily confronting Mark Clattenburg during the interval. 

Mourinho was promptly given a one-game touchline ban and £50,000 fine after accepting two FA misconduct charges regarding his behaviour towards match officials. The first charge was for the comments he made about referee Anthony Taylor in the build-up to the Liverpool match.  

Finds issue with opposition manager

Not necessarily always an indication of an imminent meltdown, given Mourinho has feuded with fellow coaches throughout his career, but his dispute with Antonio Conte last month suggested this was a man on the edge. 

Having just seen his team beaten 4-0 by Chelsea, Mourinho took umbrage at Conte trying to rouse the Stamford Bridge crowd and whispered his discontent into the Italian's ear at the end of the match.

Mourinho refused to divulge what was said at the end of the match, but it spoke of a man desperately looking for something to distract from his team's abject performance.  

Personal problems

Perhaps the most surefire sign of Mourinho's meltdown this season has been the bizarre interview he gave with Sky Sports last month when he claimed his life in Manchester was 'a disaster'. 

Discussing his life as a resident at the Lowry Hotel in Salford, Mourinho said: “You know the history of the paparazzi, for the hotel and the brand that sponsors me, the clothes brand, [it] is amazing because they are there every day.

“Everybody knows the name of the hotel. Everybody knows the last arrivals of that brand. So for them, it is amazing.

“For me it’s a bit of a disaster because I want sometimes to walk a little bit and I can’t. I just want to cross the bridge and go for a restaurant. I can’t, so it is really bad. But I have my apps and I can ask for food to also be delivered.”

It was a bizarre insight into the life of one of the world's most highly-paid football managers, and presented Mourinho in a tragicomic light alone in his hotel room.

Lays into the whole team

The aftermath of Thursday night's defeat at Fenerbahce carried eerie echoes of Mourinho's last game in charge of Chelsea, when he accused the team of not carrying out his orders in the 2-1 defeat at Leicester. 

 On that night Mourinho claimed his players had "betrayed his work", while on Thursday he said:  “I passed all my experience to the players. If you play against them [Turkish teams] in our home, it’s easy, always 2-0, 3-0 4-0, but you come to Turkey and it is completely different story.

“I told them to wait for that, to be focused on that and not to be focused on the easy game against them at Old Trafford last week, but we start the game as though we are asleep and they start at 100mph.

“For me football is from the first second, they played an emotional game and they deserved  to win. We are fragile, I know we are. We have to be stronger mentally and start the game better than we did."

What's next?

There hasn't been a public referee rant as yet (partly because Mourinho sent assistant Rui Faria to do the post-match interview following the Burnley draw) and Mourinho is still to question the board for not making the signings he wanted. 

A few more bad results though and they can't be far away.