Was the manager's post-match analysis coming out like a GCSE poetry assignment the first sign that the balance had tipped fatally away from Mourinho's Spurs salvage job?
Or was it further back than that, perhaps the 1-0 loss to Southampton on January 1st when the team dropped to eighth in the Premier League table and the manager publically, childishly branded the Saints' goalkeeping coach 'an idiot'? Or was it more recent, maybe last Saturday's 1-1 draw against Burnley, when he made a clinical, bullying example out of Tanguy Ndombele? When did the doom-mongering about Jose Mourinho's Spurs appointment finally come unequivocally to fruition?
It's still only March, but Tottenham's season is coasting to its end. Knocked out of Europe and the FA Cup, the team are winless in three games in the league and find themselves again in eighth. There are eight points to be made up to Chelsea and the final guaranteed Champions League place, though surely Spurs know within themselves that they've bid farewell to this tournament for at least a season.
Marcel Sabitzer: RB Leipzig star celebrates his second strike against Tottenham in the Champions League
Mourinho was supposed to have used what was left of the season after replacing Mauricio Pochettino to get Spurs' house in order; clear out the wantaways, re-energize the team's idling stars, make a plan and press on next term. Instead, the slide has worsened. The defeat to Leipzig on Tuesday as they crashed out of Europe was littered with errors, both individual and collective. There was none of the power or precession that was shown by their far superior opponents, no grit or steel to grab a sorry situation by the scruff and shake the game to life by sheer force of character.
Instead, there was just a listless self-pity for the grimness of their circumstances. Indeed the only noticeable difference between this and the last days of Pochettino seems to be that the atmosphere is now coloured by that Shakespearean theatricality that accompanies Mourinho's war with the world around him.
The manager was a problem-solver, once. He was the theoretician that masterminded Inter Milan's suffocating antidote to Pep Guardiola's Barcelona in 2010 en route to the Champions League final. His footballing science stopped Arsenal's Invincibles too, and took the LaLiga title away from brilliant Barca in 2012. His self-admiration didn't seem noxious then. There was so much about his teams to admire.
All the same vanity is still there. Except instead of peacocking, now it is there only for self-preservation. For all the pitfalls and failures he has suffered during the last four long years of management across three different clubs, it still feels weird on an intuitive level to see Mourinho lose. No one finds it more difficult to process than the manager himself.
Steven Bergwijn was missing for Tottenham on Tuesday night
His analysis after defeat in Leipzig was repetitive and brittle. "Imagine Leipzig without [Marcel] Sabitzer, [Patrik] Schick and [Timo] Werner" he postulated, the dynamic trio that had downed his team in the Red Bull Arena. How would Liverpool or Barcelona fare deprived of their best players, he wondered aloud, as Tottenham have been deprived of Harry Kane, Son Heung-min, Steven Bergwijn and Davison Sanchez?
Except plenty of Spurs' recent struggles have come against teams depleted by injury too. Chelsea were without half their first-choice XI when they beat Mourinho's side 2-0 at Stamford Bridge in February. N'Golo Kante, Christian Pulisic, Tammy Abraham, Jorginho; all missing. Yet Frank Lampard's Blues cruised past Tottenham with little more energy than Leipzig expended on Tuesday.
As for Liverpool, Jurgen Klopp's team pulled off their most famous win in a generation without Mohamed Salah or Roberto Firmino in their team when they beat Barcelona 4-0 at Anfield in last season's Champions League semi-final. Arsenal lost PFA Player of the Year Robert Pires in March for the rest of the 2001/02 season and carried on to win the Double. Manchester United won the Champions League final against Bayern Munich in 1999 with Nicky Butt and Jesper Blomqvist deputizing for Roy Keane and Paul Scholes. It's almost as if the players on the pitch are more important than the ones who are missing.
Jan Vertonghen: Defender reacts to being subbed in Tottenham's FA Cup win over Southampton
"All the players on the Leipzig bench would play at this moment in my team," said Mourinho on Tuesday. That's probably true. So why is it that the likes of Dele Alli, Harry Winks, Lucas Moura and Erik Lamela were such little match for a team that Spurs should have been equal to? Toby Alderweireld, seemingly the season's great coup when he penned a new deal just a few months ago, looked aged and clumsy in Germany. Why are Spurs playing with a weight around their neck?
Underinvestment in the squad? Certainly; it augers of an austere future, and it's affecting the club's established stars. The manager's stale, grinding negativity? That is surely a factor too. Because what Mourinho seems to be saying in his embittered chuntering about injuries is 'yes, it's bad – but it's beyond my power to change it.'
Because the worst thing about Spurs' slump is that looks hellishly stubborn. They've been drifting towards this point for too long, the habits it has brought already too deeply engrained.
They need a lion to haul the donkeys out of the hole. All they've got is another ageing mule.
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