Louis van Gaal is a lame duck manager. And after a shock defeat to Midtjylland last night, he’s the lamest he’s ever been – which really takes some doing.

Indeed, Manchester United have been in talks with Jose Mourinho for weeks now. It’s even been reported by the BBC, who only publish the kind of speculative rumour-mongering you see from The Express or The Sun once they know it’s, at the very least, 99.9% accurate.

No doubt, they’ve got stories wrong before, but there’s such an obvious logic to this one (Great club – good results x Guardiola at City + Mourinho available = hire the Special One) that most would bet their life savings on its validity. United’s failure to make any signings during the January transfer window, despite needing reinforcements in every department and being six points of a Champions League spot, was alone rather telling.

But for whatever reason, the Old Trafford hierarchy are determined to hold the line until the end of the season. Perhaps they fear the chaos managerial upheaval could waft over an already underwhelming campaign. Perhaps they believe van Gaal deserves the respect of being allowed to see out the season.

Perhaps they’re hoping he’ll walk rather than be pushed, which should save them the net worth of a banana republic in compensation. Or perhaps they’re worried about how three managers in two years will reflect on a board that has sanctioned a £318m spend on players in that same time period. Three managers in four seasons does sound slightly better.

The whole club has lacked a unified direction since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement; a scattergun approach in the transfer market, a manager whose philosophy is as far removed from the Old Trafford traditions as possible, a chief executive who flies around the world striking up historic sponsorship deals without rhyme or reason, an academy now being overhauled after years of stagnation, remaining one of the few Premier League clubs without a women’s team or a screen at their home ground. There has been no real coherency in decision-making and resultantly, van Gaal isn’t the only one under pressure.

But the waiting game is an incredibly dangerous one, with obvious potential consequences. Right now, Manchester United could still qualify for the Champions League – either via the Premier League or the Europa League – and could still win the FA Cup. That would certainly gloss over a largely disastrous season and largely disastrous three years since Ferguson’s retirement.

That may not be the case in less than two weeks time, however, at which point the Red Devils will have faced Shrewsbury in the Fifth Round, Midtjylland in the second leg and Arsenal – a team they really need to beat to stand any chance of a top four finish – in the Premier League. The next ten days will go a long way to defining United’s season and the ramifications in the summer could be enormous.

No doubt, Manchester United are still one of the most prestigious clubs in world football and Jose Mourinho is still one of the most revered managers in the game today. But top class players want Champions League football and United have failed to provide it twice in the last three seasons. That’s a warning sign impossible to ignore for potential recruits – as is Chelsea’s spectacular implosion under the Special One last year.

And although van Gaal has endured the majority of the heat from the critical spotlight, the quality of player is an equal problem as the quality of manager for United. With the exception of David De Gea, none of their players are indisputably world-class or even near that level, and many of the arrivals over the last three seasons – Marouane Fellaini, Marcos Rojo, Morgan Schneiderlin and Memphis Depay, for example – simply haven’t proved fit for purpose.

Of course, Mourinho doesn’t have to completely assemble a new team over the course of a single transfer window. It took him three of heavy spending to reconfigure the Chelsea squad into title-winners and few would expect wonders during his first season at Old Trafford anyway – simply a top four finish.

But with Pep Guardiola arriving at Manchester City, the new TV deal coming into effect and Leicester and Spurs upsetting the established order at the Premier League’s summit, the coming window feels particularly pivotal for England’s top clubs. Guardiola will get first dibs on pretty much every player looking to move and the Premier League’s rank-and-file will have transfer budgets five or six times of their foreign counterparts. An established force could get left behind and right now, Manchester United are the strongest candidates.

Some may deem this article as simply scaremongering, but United are already struggling to attract the world’s top talents and surely that situation will only be further exacerbated without the incentive of Champions League football. Likewise, waiting until the summer to see whether my arguments prove true will be too little too late.

So when would I bring Mourinho in? As soon as possible. Preferably by the end of play today. He’s a former FA Cup winner, a master of the European double-leggers and Arsene Wenger’s ultimate nemesis, so United’s chances of Champions League football – and consequentially, their chances of genuinely competing with City during the summer transfer window – improve instantaneously upon the Portuguese’s long-awaited arrival.

But something tells me that if United were going to make a change before the end of the season, they would have done it already. After all, van Gaal has been a sitting duck for weeks now. Perhaps the real danger is United’s season getting so bad and the board taking so long to act that eventually, Mourinho ends up flocking somewhere else. Recent rumours have suggested Inter Milan.

Not only would United miss out on the world’s top talents for the third summer window in a row, but also fail to appoint a world-class manager at the third time of asking. Then what for the 13-time Champions?

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