Jose Mourinho always looked a little bit out of place during those months he spent in the Sky Sports studio following his sacking by Manchester United and before he found work again at Tottenham.
He was a good on TV, making concise observations and giving us little insights that only a man who has seen and done what he has done would be able to provide, but it didn't seem natural to him.
He admitted so himself, saying that his place was out on the training pitch and not behind the camera. The PR exercise to show people that he was refreshed and ready following his United experience worked, and sure enough Daniel Levy made his move when Spurs axed Mauricio Pochettino in November 2019.
We didn't get to see a lot of Jose the pundit then, but you can almost certainly have imagined which way it would have gone if he'd have become as consumed by that job as he has done all his others in the past seven years.
Some players were about to get picked on.
Because the latter day Mourinho, now into the muck and bullets at Roma, has always turned on players when things aren't going as he likes.
With his side down in seventh place in Serie A - the same position Spurs were in in the Premier League when they sacked him last year, by the way - it is the mentality of his squad which is to blame according to the Portuguese boss.
"A psychological complex," said Mourinho after his side turned a 3-1 lead over Juventus into a 4-3 defeat last week.
"It’s not a problem for me having 3-2, it’s a problem for them. For my team.
“At the end of the day, when you’re in the s**t, you get back on your feet and find your character.
"But there are people in this locker room who are a bit too nice, a bit too weak."
If words like that seem familiar then that is because he was uttering something like them when things came to an end for him at Chelsea.
And at Manchester United.
And at Spurs.
"My guys were not strong enough to cope with it psychologically," was the take when his Tottenham side saw a 3-0 lead against West Ham evaporate in October 2020, and two years before that there was the "mental pressure" his Manchester United were feeling which led to a 3-1 derby defeat at Manchester City, shortly before his sacking.
Perhaps most memorably of all was his final act as Chelsea manager, when he threw his players under the bus he used to make them park after a 2-1 defeat at Leicester which resulted in his sacking.
Mourinho said they had "betrayed" him with their actions on the pitch, again making this an issue that was simply happening to him and not something that he had the ability to do anything about.
It is a familiar trope of the Portuguese in his later years, and one that just doesn't seem to cut it when dealing with modern footballers.
As his old adversary Rafael Benitez has found out to his cost, footballers have changed in the last 20 years.
Give them the freedom to express themselves and be who they are on the football pitch and they will reward you, but caging them in a psychological cell just doesn't work. Then blaming that very cell for underperformance is just reductive.
Mourinho has had his moments at Roma, but his season in the Italian capital has largely been a messy one.
The 6-1 defeat Norwegian side Bodo/Glimt in the Europa Conference League was perhaps the worst result in the club's history, and this for a side who were playing in the Champions League semi-finals three-and-a-half years ago.
That seventh place doesn't look too promising either, and shows that no real progress has been made despite a large turnover of players and the appointment of Mourinho.
If he were at a Premier League club - and it was interesting to see him linked with Everton this week - then there is every chance that he would be coming under more pressure, but Mourinho does still garner plenty of support in Rome, and in Italy in general.
His 2010 Champions League with Inter remains Italy's last success in that competition, and his tactics are still largely revered in Serie A when they come off.
It is his off-field approach which seems to be slipping now though, and once he starts getting out the psychological references then things only start to go one way.
