"Ask him."
"Ask him."
'AMORIM UPS MOLE HUNT SEARCH' screamed the Daily Mail's splash on Monday afternoon. That replaced another story on Manchester United's derby team news leak.
The fascination over United team news emerging into the public domain increases with every year. A BBC journalist asked Ruben Amorim about it at his post-match press conference.
Desks are demanding follow-ups. "Man Utd launch investigation into player responsible for leaking team news with TWO stars questioned by Ruben Amorim" was on the Sun's site at Monday lunchtime.
The BBC would never run a team-leak story. The Manchester Evening News technically didn't, either. This correspondent responsible for the United XI entering the public domain, as United teams have done innumerable times in the past.
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'Jose's mole hunt' was the back-page splash on the Mail in October 2018. That was a reference to the United team emerging the night before they played away at Chelsea. A colleague and I had been furnished with the team.
Mourinho had already asked me at the FA Cup final pre-match press conference in May whether I knew the team. In November, he outright outed me - with a smile.
One turned a shade beetroot when Mourinho let the cat out of the bag at the Fenerbahce training ground last month: "He (me) had an incredible talent when I was at Man United. Every match, he knew the team." Jose exaggerated a tad.
The current drip out of United pre-dates Mourinho's time. The MEN revealed that Memphis Depay had been omitted from the 2016 FA Cup final squad and that Wayne Rooney was ruled out of the home game against Liverpool in September 2015, as well as Rooney's demotion under Mourinho in September 2016.
Before my time on the patch, a colleague had a hot streak of obtaining United XIs midway through David Moyes's season. Moyes's assistant, Phil Neville, stormed through the mixed zone at Villa Park demanding to know the source of the leaks. On that occasion, it was a young player.
It is worth clarifying that neither Alejandro nor Roberto Garnacho sent me the United team when I got it on Saturday evening. I have never formally met or spoken to either sibling.
United have branded the speculation that Roberto is the source as "rubbish". They do not regard the team news leak as a new phenomenon and feel it would be illogical to pin it on an individual.
Even though the information was not obtained directly from a player or their relative, the source of the weekend team news seems to be well established. A contact who did not furnish me with the United XI was also aware that Marcus Rashford had been dropped on Saturday night. I was not informed until Sunday.
It is not a newsflash that players or their hangers-on have leaked teams. Mourinho never had an issue with a journalist doing their job. He did have an issue with a loose-lipped colleague. He surmised an analyst was responsible.
Gareth Southgate had to defuse an England team-news storm during the 2018 World Cup. His assistant, Steve Holland, was photographed holding a sheet with an apparent line-up scrawled onto it and journalists reported the news.
Southgate naively said "our media has to decide whether they want to help the team or not", as if the reporters following England were on the Football Association's payroll. He rowed back on those remarks and accepted "the media have a role to report news".
Kyle Walker weighed in with typical nuance: "You guys have to do your little bit, so if you could just please help us with that it would be polite."
The truth is that whenever one ascertains team news, it is through a middle man, rather than directly from a player. It is not as exciting as Bob Woodward going to meet Deep Throat in All the President's Men.
Amorim handled the query from the BBC journalist with similar humour to Mourinho. "I know that story," Amorim said. "I think it is impossible to fix, because you have a lot of people in the club, the players talk with agents, you can talk with friends, it's hard to know, it is not a good thing.
"But let's move on and go to the next one and I see if they find the next starting XI!"
When Mourinho got up to leave a pre-match press conference against Juventus six years ago, his parting words were, "Nobody wants to know the team, right?"
Neil Custis, of course, piped up: "Samuel is going to tell us."
"Samwell!" Mourinho laughed. "You are under pressure now. You have to deliver."
One has to be flattered. When myself and three colleagues were banned from a press conference last season, it was national news. When a few of us were denied questions at press conferences, it was deemed newsworthy by a junior Mail reporter. Now I have obtained a leaked team, the fascination trumps both of those incidents.
Recently, a couple of colleagues were denied questions at Amorim press conferences. It's happened before, we're grown up, no big deal. The Mail reporter did not flag it with his desk.
They had a different headline online.