Well, you cannot say it wasn’t coming. Jose Mourinho is soon to be announced as the new manager of Manchester United, even an FA Cup triumph wasn’t enough to save the job of Louis Van Gaal. It’s the obvious choice for the Red Devils but it may not be the best choice, not that Ed Woodward and his cronies will care too much about that. Here is a big name, the biggest available name in football management and with City swooping in for Pep Guardiola it’ll mean that those Manchester Derbies are going to have a little extra spice to them next season.

There are so many bits and pieces to this story. To get this out of the way first, the whole way it has unfolded is just ridiculous. The team (and the current/former manager) just won the FA Cup and instead of celebrating that achievement – their first trophy since Sir Alex Ferguson left – all the media hype has been about how Van Gaal is about to be replaced by Mourinho. That little storyline had been doing the rounds since about seven seconds after he was fired by Chelsea but now, finally, it seemed to have some legitimacy to it.

How about keeping it quiet for a week though, even just a few days, out of fairness to Mr Van Gaal? Let him celebrate his trophy. Especially since none of it could be confirmed for a few days anyway given that the club is a publically traded company and any significant change like this needs to follow a bit of heads up with the stock exchange. Can’t have those Wall Street wolves cheating the system, of course. Or, hey, how about this drastic and revolutionary idea… why don’t you actually tell the man you’re already hiring a replacement for that he’s being sacked before it becomes headline news? This is the same thing that happened to David Moyes. That’s completely disgraceful from the club hierarchy. Mourinho’s (‘super’) agent Jorge Mendes deserves a lot of blame too, having started this whole thing with his massively public campaign to get his client in Manchester. Mourinho has never discussed the job out of respect to a colleague, sure. Except that while he was chilling in a vow of silence his agent was out planting stories in every paper in the land.

But the decision to let Van Gaal go… that’s not so controversial. Whether they chose to keep him or not the fact was they were justified, after a poor attacking season and a step back in the league table costing them Champions League football, in dumping him. Last year he got them fourth. In a rebuilding year that was fine, it wasn’t always the prettiest football but the club was trending upwards again. Yet this time around the style only got more rigid and oppressive and the results dropped off slightly. Only slightly, they were four points off their 2014-15 total, but 49 league goals represented their worst return since 1989–90 (a year in which they also beat Crystal Palace for the FA Cup trophy). Their Champions League exit was hardly ingratiating either. They weren’t improving and there were no signs that things would get better soon.

And frankly once David de Gea was reportedly considering leaving if LVG stayed then something had to change. None of the players were much happy. Early in the season Wayne Rooney and Michael Carrick spoke privately to Van Gaal about the team’s disconnect with some of his managerial schemes and while their message was openly acknowledged, there was no real change. Some of the reports about the distance between the squad and the manager are incredible, including personal emails of critique that eventually included tracking data so he could check if the players were reading them or junking them, players incredulous about the new positions they were asked to play and a general stifling of any creative spirit. Oh, and one story about an unnamed player* who asked the team chef to hard-boil a couple of eggs for him to take home because he couldn’t do it himself.

The fact that multiple such expose pieces have come out these last couple of days is interesting in itself. This suggests that either the players/staff finally feel comfortable with anonymously dropping a few juicy details about the experience or that the club is deliberately undermining the man themselves. Let’s be generous and say a couple of staff members have been waiting to spill the goss. On a purely speculative note, several of the stories seem to include Wayne Rooney when you cross examine them.

* (in The Sun’s piece they named Matteo Darmian, but you can never fully trust an article written entirely in one-sentence paragraphs. That is an insult to you, dear reader, and thus that one is not linked)

Plus very few of Van Gaal’s signings really did anything. The best players of his time there were those that came from the youth team (Marcus Rashford) or those that predated him (David De Gea, Chris Smalling, Michael Carrick). The Luke Shaw and Ander Herrera transfers were already in the works when LVG took over while Radamel Falcao and Angel Di Maria were disasters (albeit not as costly as they could have been given what they recouped there for ADM). Daley Blind has been very good but the rest of them have struggled to make an impact – which is even worse given how guys like Memphis Depay and Herrera look so out of place in what he’s asking them to do. The one exception has been Anthony Martial, who you’d imagine would be terrific on any team in the world. Bastian Schweinsteiger’s move has been copping all sorts of speculation. Meanwhile he sold at least a dozen first team members.

So yeah, off he goes. Slightly harsh to come on the back of an FA Cup final win but the writing was on the wall as soon as they missed the Champions League. Where it gets dramatic is in the decision to replace him with Jose Mourinho. Ryan Giggs was the other candidate, supposedly, after he’d impressed the team with his opposition analytics and connection to the club but Giggs would not be a power play. Mourinho is a power play. It is a thumping shot at goal in response to the similar power play of Manchester City appointing his old Clasico rival Pep Guardiola. As to how much forethought goes into a responsive power move, that’s another pondering. As are the feelings of every other manager in the world who didn’t even get considered.

Leicester City won the Premier League this season on the back of a perfect alignment of many things. One of those things was the fact that every major team regressed with the exception of Tottenham – who were the least likely title contender. That magnificent story marks one of the great miracles in modern sport but now comes the response from those traditional powers. In a world of record profits and global relevance, those responses are not going to be all that patient and considered.

Liverpool have the jump on most of them with Jurgen Klopp taking over earlier in the season. They’re already set up towards the future and now Klopp finally gets to mould the squad. The Manchesters and Chelsea have all appointed new managers (or will have soon). Arsenal, radically, have not. Next comes the enormous compensatory transfer business.

Which is the most ill-fitting thing about the Mourinho appointment. The idea that he plays defensive football is a myth, some of those Chelsea teams were as flowing as they get. He’s just not afraid to park the odd bus when he needs to. That he doesn’t rate/trust young players is more of a worry but one that he’d probably be willing to bend on. Certainly, he won’t be leaving Martial out of teams. Marcus Rashford maybe but he can’t be expected to be first choice next season at his age, they’re gonna sign another striker. Probably Zlatan Ibrahimovic by the sounds of it.

Those things are supposedly the cornerstones of the so-called ‘United Way’ but that’s a weak excuse. The same fans calling for that stuff on the Stretford End are the same that accuse Liverpool fans of living in the past. But that’s not the most ill-fitting thing. That would be the idea of giving the reins of the club to a hands-on squad builder after two years of another such manager. United last won the Premier League in 2012-13. Not that long ago but of the 25 players that featured in the league that season, only De Gea, Jones, Valencia, Rooney, Smalling, Carrick, Young and Powell remain. Yes, Nick Powell, who probably won’t play another game for them (but did come off the bench in a must-win Champions League game despite not having featured for a couple years). Another, Michael Carrick, is off contract and his status was looking increasingly pessimistic. John Terry managed to publically push Chelsea to keep him on but Carrick appeared quietly reserved to leaving, which seemed crazy that even at 34 years old they’d not try milk another year or two out of the man who was still their most consistent midfielder this campaign. But then Carrick might not have wanted to stay with things as they were, this might have been his choice after all. That could all change now.

So take this dramatically rebuilt squad and dramatically rebuild it again. What are you left with? It might not be a problem in the short term given there are still some damn fine players there already, plus Mourinho is a name that will attract the world’s best, but if he leaves after three years then… well, Chelsea’s team doesn’t look that flash all of a sudden either. Short term success is awesome. Short term success will please plenty of Manchester United fans. Just know that there’ll be another messy baton pass coming in a few years.

Which is almost ironic because all of these problems at Man United stem from how they tried to make it an easy transition post-Fergie and failed. And for Mourinho it takes him full circle from the result 12 years ago that put him on the footballing map when he knocked Manchester United out of the Champions League with Porto (on the way to winning the whole thing).

Needless to say, whatever happens next will not happen quietly.