Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has ripped up the Louis van Gaal rulebook... he's axed deadwood and overhauled training methods
* Manchester United's new boss Jose Mourinho has made impact at club
* His main objective was to change predecessor Louis van Gaal's methods
* He has conducted an obvious charm offensive since arriving at United
* Mourinho has removed video cameras from the club's training ground
* He has told his United players to go and express themselves this season
Jose Mourinho's main objective during his first weeks in charge at Manchester United has been to rip up the Louis van Gaal rulebook.
The new manager walked into Carrington and saw a club in desperate need of fresh impetus after two years of stagnation - and is already shaking it up to such a degree that they feel a title challenge is brewing.
Here, Sportsmail looks at key areas Mourinho is helping purge United of Van Gaal's outdated methods, tedious football and disappointing results.
Jose Mourinho delivers instructions to his Manchester United players at Bournemouth
DOWN AT CARRINGTON
Mourinho has conducted an obvious charm offensive since arriving at United and it has rubbed off on his players. 'They all love him,' said one dressing-room source. Another added 'he is getting his message across quickly.'
There are a number of things the new boss has done in order to win his new squad over. He has removed video cameras from the training ground, there to record sessions.
Players found that intrusive and loathed the knit-picking Van Gaal then embarked on when poring over footage, although it should be noted that videoing has done Pep Guardiola no harm throughout his career and he continues the practice at Manchester City.
Constant meetings have been abolished, Mourinho preferring to bring the squad together out on the Carrington pitches to address them at the end or halfway through sessions.
New boss Mourinho has conducted an obvious charm offensive since arriving at United
He is sharp about them, too, the debriefs lasting no longer than a couple of minutes as he prefers to interject in the middle of drills and rely on instinct. Van Gaal would often wait until the end, losing impact.
Mourinho is trying to keep the mood light for the most part and before the season started was chopping training up and walking players through a raft of Premier League rule changes to have come into force.
The Portuguese is even thought to have tailored one - the offside rule - so that the offence takes place from where the ball is kicked, rather than where an attacker runs off. The idea is to punish those who run offside more severely.
It all makes for a more harmonious atmosphere rather than the teacher and pupil regime under Van Gaal. United, meanwhile, are planning to further tighten security around the place this season.
ON THE PITCH
Mourinho, not exactly famed for attacking bravery, has told his players to go and express themselves in the wake of last season's snooze. He has backed that up with new faces, particularly Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who offers an arrogance up front previously lacking.
United's players wanted speed under Van Gaal but adhering to his rigidity plan was compulsory or their time in the side was up.
The full backs are being told to fly forward, as evidenced by Antonio Valencia's blistering start to life under Van Gaal's successor. It goes without saying that players are now allowed to shoot first time rather than take a touch, one of the more baffling ideas last year.
Mourinho is all too aware of the difficulties it will take to undo the damage done by Van Gaal, who has so far remained tight-lipped since his sacking owing to contract clauses.
Full backs are being told to fly forward, as shown by Antonio Valencia's start under boss
'If you are a full back and every time you have the ball you pass to a central defender and you repeat that for two years, it is not because I say get the ball and look for solutions in between the lines that they are going to do that [straight away],' Mourinho said.
'Sometimes we all feel that contradiction between what they are used to doing and what they want to do, and that from the mental point of view is not easy to adapt.
'We use every minute we have to improve the players and especially to improve the principles of how we play as a team.'
One of those principles is coming away from the idea of man-to-man marking. That is now gone with zonal back in vogue.
The Portuguese coach has a hard task on his hand to undo the damage done by Van Gaal
MOVING ON THE DEADWOOD
Bastian Schweinsteiger is the highest-profile character to have been told his future lies elsewhere by Mourinho, whose ruthlessness takes no heed of names.
The former Germany captain has been told Carrington is his to use but that he is no longer welcome in the first-team sessions. Indeed, he cleared his changing room locker, as Sportsmail revealed a fortnight ago.
But Mourinho has also made a point of picking off youngsters who neatly fitted into Van Gaal's tired rhetoric that he was engaging in United traditions by handing so many debuts.
The truth remains that a fraction of those 15 youngsters would have had the opportunity without injuries elsewhere, the lack of replacements boiling down to Van Gaal's haphazard planning last summer.
The Germany World Cup winner is no longer welcome in the first-team training sessions
Paddy McNair and Donald Love have both moved on to Sunderland under Mourinho. Guillermo Varela is on loan at Frankfurt. Cameron Borthwick-Jackson's future is somewhat uncertain, although he was in the Under 23s alongside Joe Riley, James Weir and Regan Poole this week.
Tyler Blackett is waiting to leave, while Tom Thorpe, Reece James and Saidy Janko are all out of the door.
Marcus Rashford has his first-team squad spot nailed down, but his emergence was pure accident, while Jesse Lingard is the only other to be starring for Mourinho immediately. Timothy Fosu-Mensah is highly thought of at United.
That is before looking at Adnan Januzaj, also with Sunderland. Nick Powell had already left and has since joined Wigan while Jimmy Dunne went to Burnley.
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