WHY SAY ANYTHING?

(Jose tells the team how many players he wants on the bus!)

If it is true that Jose Mourinho wants to stay in England as a manager, he may have to set his sights a little lower than he is used to.

It would appear that his first choice of club would be Manchester United, but the noises coming from Old Trafford are not encouraging for him. If we are to believe the press then Louis van Gaal had to win one of his last two games to keep his job. He failed to do so but remains in situ at United. This says one of two things. Either the press were wrong, (perish the thought!), or United don’t have a successor lined up. If the latter is the case, then Mourinho is not in the running for the job.

Further, more recent rumblings, supposedly emanating from Old Trafford, suggest that the players would like Diego Simeone from Atletico Madrid. I am not aware that Simeone has been consulted on this matter but I suggest it may be a job he could summon up some interest in, despite his lack of English. In actual fact, having no command of English never appeared to be a problem for the likes of Mauricio Pochettino or Harry Redknapp.

Next choice for Mourinho would probably have been Liverpool but the recent appointment of Jurgen Klopp has ruled that one out. Unless he has a disastrous second half to the season, Jose can forget the red half of Merseyside.

How about Manchester City? Very, very unlikely as they seem to have their sights firmly set on Pep Guardiola, even if they have to dismiss Manuel Pellegrini to get him. Guardiola will be a free agent at the end of the season so this is probably a done deal.

Tottenham are doing very nicely with Pochettino and Arsene Wenger shows no signs of retiring just yet. It is also hard to imagine Mourinho, as an ex-Chelsea manager, being welcomed with open arms at either of those two clubs.

Slightly lower down the ladder is Everton. Not normally a club you would mention in the same breath as Mourinho but, at present, there are some wealthy people looking to invest in an English club. If they chose Everton and invested the kind of money available at the top clubs, this may then become of interest to Mourinho. Currently though, this is not happening and anyway, Roberto Martinez hasn’t exactly done a lot wrong!

Would he be interested in taking a club such as Southampton and trying to emulate the likes of Brian Clough with Nottingham Forest? I doubt it very much. For the position to be available, Ronald Koeman would have to leave. The Dutchman has said he will leave if the club’s ambitions don’t match his own, so catch 22. Mourinho is hardly likely to go to a club who have lost a manager by not being ambitious enough.

Even lower down the scale is the England job. Jose has supposedly expressed an interest in this post but would have to wait a while to get it. Even assuming the FA were prepared to revert to hiring a foreign coach, he would certainly have to wait until England is knocked out of the Euros, which will be by the end of the group stage.

Having weighed up the options, it is difficult to see how Mourinho can stay in England and manage a club that he would consider worthy of him. Unless United have a change of heart the doors all seem firmly closed. Alternatively, he could take a sabbatical and see what turns up, similar to a certain Spaniard not so long ago.

If he doesn’t want to wait, which he says he doesn’t, there are not many options. He has ruled out a return to Real Madrid but not to Inter Milan so maybe that will have to be his next job but, again, they already have a successful manager in Roberto Mancini and it is unlikely they would fire him at present.

So Mourinho, like it or not, will have to wait and live by the premise that, “something will turn up”.

It usually does!