MANCHESTER, England — José Mourinho was almost out of time. He had only a few hours before Manchester United’s power brokers would begin to discuss, in private, the prospect of drawing the curtain on his reign as the club’s manager. He had less than two days before it would all be over. He did not know that, not for certain, as he sat in front of the news media at Anfield on Sunday evening. He has been around for long enough to have had an inkling of what was coming, though. To have had a sense that defeat at Liverpool may have been one defeat too many, that the gap between United, sixth in the Premier League, and its old rival, perched at the top, had grown too wide. Mourinho looked, then, a man in need of comfort, and solace. There has been precious little of it in these last few months, as Manchester United’s season has lurched from disappointment into despair. There has always been a crisis around the corner: that is the way it is, at a club this size, and it is the way Mourinho makes it, too. On Tuesday, the club ended that crisis and released…