Andy Gray

It was meant to be the match made in heaven but just recently Jose Mourinho and the Real Madrid hierarchy seem to have fallen out of love just a bit.

The big masterplan was of course to knock Barcelona off their perch at domestic level and win the Champions League sometime over the next two or three seasons. They still have a pretty decent chance of going all the way in Europe but as regards the race to the La Liga title, it will take a minor miracle to prevent Barcelona from defending their title.

In typical fashion Mourinho has very much done things his own way since arriving at the Bernabeu. He made the big call that so many other recent managers weren't prepared to make and told Raul that his time as a Galactico was up; he decided that Rafael van der Vaart wasn't his sort of player and brought in young, energetic talent like Sami Khedira, Mesut Ozil and Angel Di Maria. It would be absurd for him to leave at the end of this season. Building a team takes time and even though Real fans and Directors are notoriously impatient, they can't expect the Portuguese manager to get the team operating in perfect sync in his very first season. The players he's brought in are part of a three or four year strategy and as such it will take some time for Mourinho to be completely sure how best to employ them.

'The Special One' has never made any secret about the fact that the Premier League remains his greatest love. Manchester City may come calling if they decide Roberto Mancini isn't the man to take the club forward and a return to Chelsea shouldn't be ruled out either but I suspect he's actually got his eyes on another job. Sir Alex Ferguson can't keep going forever and I'm pretty sure he'll have a huge say in who eventually takes over from him. Mourinho is one of the few managers in the game who can say Ferguson's United haven't got the better of him and the United boss respects his dedication, attention to detail, confidence and ruthlessness. They'd be a good match those two and I'm clearly not the only one who thinks that because Mourinho is currently the 3.7 favourite in the next Manchester United manager market on Betfair.

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