Will Manchester United Be Jose Mourinho's Biggest Job Yet?

As Jose Mourinho's appointment as Manchester United boss draws near, Adam Bate wonders whether the Portuguese coach has ever taken on anything quite like it. Is this Mourinho's biggest job yet?

Porto might have been fifth when Jose Mourinho arrived in early 2002 but that was only ever going to be a temporary position for a team that had spent the past two decades in the top two. Every job that he has taken since has been at a team in the top three at the time.

Even Uniao de Leiria had finished fifth in the previous season when Mourinho arrived in July 2001. As a result, he's never taken on a club in a lower position than that which Manchester United find themselves in right now - out of the Champions League and playing catch up on their rivals.

He's inheriting a team that's endured a difficult three years, particularly in front of goal. The 2015/16 campaign was their worst scoring season in Premier League history and that was hardly unfortunate - United ranked in the bottom half for shots and chances created.

So there's work to do and changes to make. Louis van Gaal bowed out as an FA Cup winner, but it seems inconceivable that Mourinho can use the Dutchman's Wembley line-up as a template for success. Instead, it serves to highlight the scale of the rebuilding job ahead.

Daley Blind's efforts at centre-back have been commendable but will the new man really seek to keep him there? Wingers at full-back and centre forward? Surely not. As for the supremely gifted Juan Mata, a goalscorer for United on Saturday, the signs are little better.

"We had no relationship," said the Spaniard of their brief time playing under Mourinho at Chelsea. But it's the anticipated relationship with the youngest players in the squad that suggests he must approach his next job in a different way to his earlier appointments.

At Inter, Maicon was the third youngest player in Mourinho's Champions League winning starting line-up and he was almost 29 at the time. At United, some of the key figures are considerably greener. He must trust in talent he might have deemed not ready elsewhere.

Mourinho's instincts, therefore, will be to expect time. "We are a team in evolution," he said of his Chelsea team in February 2014. "The title race is between two horses and a little horse that needs milk and needs to learn how to jump. Maybe next season we can race."

Will United accept that approach? Perhaps they will after the missteps with Van Gaal and David Moyes. And yet, there's a sense in which, with the appointment of Mourinho, the club are playing a card they were most reluctant to play. That will only add to the expectation.

He was overlooked in the summer of 2013 and has been available since the winter, insisting that he required no break following his departure from Chelsea. Even so, United delayed. In finally acting, they surely do so on the understanding that Mourinho delivers on his remit.

After all, this is the master of the medium-term impact. Mourinho has delivered the title in his second season at Porto, Inter and Real Madrid as well as on two separate occasions with Chelsea. But how realistic is a repeat of that feat?

The problem for Mourinho is that the landscape does not look inviting. United are currently fourth favourites to win next season's Premier League. Pep Guardiola arrives at Manchester City with a superior squad at his disposal and the gap must be made up on others too.

Previously, Mourinho has been in charge of one of the three most likely winners of the crown at the start of every season since 2002. This is different. Neither his stock, nor that of his new club is at its highest. It all adds up to the biggest task he's taken on yet.

Credit: Skysports.com