With rumours abounding that Mourinho is fed up of the obstacles being placed in his way when requesting that players be signed, we wondered where he would actually go if he did decide to leave.

There would be no shortage of suitors but who would he choose?

At the moment, this appears to be a rhetorical question because Mourinho has, more or less, scotched any rumours by pledging his immediate and medium-term future to United and saying that he has no intention of quitting.

Many players have said that when leaving Manchester United the only way is down. Even those who went from Old Trafford to Real Madrid did so reluctantly. Neither David Beckham nor Ruud van Nistelrooy wanted to leave.

Is it the same for managers? If it is then Mourinho has already managed at big clubs in Spain and Italy so where would he go?

The obvious answer at present is PSG. He likes big cities, he likes a club with plenty of money and he likes a challenge. The challenge at United however, is much greater than the one at PSG.

Winning the French Ligue 1 is not considered a remarkable achievement when you are one of the richest clubs in the world and have no competition. The only real challenge there would be winning the Champion’s League and even that is probably only a matter of time.

When a club can spend €200 million on one player, then they can afford to buy as many as are required along with a great manager and will, eventually, win Europe’s top competition.

Does Mourinho really see that as a challenge and, consequently, when winning it, does he consider that to be a great achievement?

Unlikely, so it would appear that his time spent talking up the PSG job really was to remind Ed Woodward that there is another world outside of Old Trafford and he is quite capable of rejoining it whenever necessary.

Whether or not this ploy worked is yet to be seen as the words were, reportedly, said after Woodward had failed to buy Ivan Perišić from Inter Milan and hinted that players needed to be sold before more could be bought.

We may be about to find out but the spectre of PSG doesn’t seem to be re-appearing this time around.

If United buy Danny Rose and one or two others then Mourinho really can have no cause for complaint. The January window is notoriously tricky and it is certainly true that there are players at United who shouldn’t be at United.

It must be very frustrating for Woodward to be continually signing off on salaries he doesn’t think are merited and he would surely be quite happy to see some of that money go to new players and maybe even some of it stay in the bank!

Whatever happens, José Mourinho has stated that he is there for the long haul. That assumes, of course, that he doesn’t suffer the same problems in his third season as he has at most of his previous clubs.

We have to hope not because Pep Guardiola has bought an apartment in Manchester, suggesting that he is also going to be around for a while and United need a big personality at Old Trafford just to compete with the noisy neighbours, a task which even Mourinho is finding difficult at present!

Hopefully, now he knows where he wants to be, his third season with United will have a different outcome and he will be challenging Pep for the top honours, which is surely what he wants to be doing.

It beats eating snails and listening to Sacha Distel records anytime!