Why Jose Mourinho Can Guide Manchester United Back to the European Elite

Jose Mourinho is the manager of Manchester United, and his track record of success should mean the Red Devils are in good hands.

Given a three-year contract with an option for a fourth year, per the club's website, Mourinho's task is to take United back to the top of the game.

Following the Portuguese's appointment on Friday, executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward said: "Jose is quite simply the best manager in the game today. He has won trophies and inspired players in countries across Europe and, of course, he knows the Premier League very well, having won three titles here."

Of course, when Louis van Gaal succeeded David Moyes in 2014, there was similar cause for optimism, but in truth, Mourinho's record significantly betters the recently departed Dutchman's.

He has two UEFA Champions League trophies to Van Gaal's one and eight league titles to Van Gaal's seven, achieved in nine fewer years. Four of Van Gaal's titles were Eredivisie titles, whereas two-thirds of Mourinho's have been earned in England, Italy and Spain.

And five of Van Gaal's trophies were earned before Mourinho had his first, in what is a bygone era.

There are some questions around Mourinho as a fit for United. As has been widely discussed, he does not have much of a history of bringing through young players. Additionally, he has a reputation as a defence-first coach, though the facts don't quite bear that out, as pointed out by Michael Cox in the Guardian.

Perhaps more pertinent, though, is the suggestion the game has begun to move on from his peak and that his best days may also be behind him. Although not quite in the distant past, as many of Van Gaal's triumphs were, only of his two of his league titles have come since 2010.

That may prove true in time, but it is too soon for that accusation to carry much merit. After all, he spent that time either battling Pep Guardiola's once-in-a-lifetime Barcelona side—pipping them to the title in 2011/12, the only league title Real Madrid have won since 2007/08—or managing Chelsea, where rebuilding was clearly part of his remit.

Of course, that spell ended in ignominy in December 2015, and United fans will be dearly hoping it was a blip. After all, it was the Portuguese manager's first failure on that scale. For those who have read Carlo Ancelotti's account of working with Roman Abramovich, it is perhaps no surprise Mourinho could not make it work.

Ancelotti's book, Quiet Leadership: Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches, was recently serialised in the Times. He wrote: "Even [Silvio] Berlusconi [the owner at his former club, AC Milan] had not been so demanding."

At United, Mourinho will presumably have access to a huge budget and arrives at a club desperate for success. The three-year major-trophy drought of the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era ended with Van Gaal's FA Cup win this season, but seventh, fourth and fifth have been the Red Devils' last three finishing positions in the Premier League.

In Europe, they scraped past Olympiakos to reach the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League under Moyes, missed a season of European football as a consequence of Moyes' side's seventh-place finish and were deeply unimpressive as they failed to navigate the Champions League group stage on their return in 2015/16.

Mourinho's Champions League win with FC Porto remains one of his crowning achievements, and he ended Inter Milan's 45-year wait for a European Cup. He was unable to grant Madrid the Decima they so badly craved and only made it to the round of 16 in his most recent title-winning season with Chelsea, but it is a competition he knows how to win.

As is the Premier League, which must be United's primary objective.

With Antonio Conte arriving at Chelsea, Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool, a resurgent Tottenham Hotspur under Mauricio Pochettino, Arsenal under Arsene Wenger and the fresh hope that Claudio Ranieri's league win with Leicester City has given to the rest of the division, there is an enormous amount of competition.

In facing up to the challenges that lie ahead, United could hardly have hoped to be in better hands.