Did Man United hire wrong man in Mourinho?

It's official, or it reportedly will be made official on Friday: Jose Mourinho has agreed to a deal with Manchester United to become its new manager.

Choosing Mourinho to replace Louis van Gaal makes a certain amount of sense. All of the game's other top managers have already been snapped up for next season. Pep Guardiola is joining crosstown rival Manchester City from Bayern Munich, which will, in turn, replace him with Carlo Ancelotti. Jurgen Klopp is already working at Liverpool. Chelsea has secured Antonio Conte as its permanent manager.

So why not tie down the only proven and elite manager available right now, after his dismissal from Chelsea in December?

That's how United presumably rationalized it. Except the club's thinking is flawed.

United, no matter how it currently views itself, isn't in a position to compete. In either the Premier League or the Champions League. There is talent in its squad, but it's generally a shambles. It has promising young players like Anthony Martial, Marcus Rashford, Jesse Lingard, Memphis Depay and Luke Shaw. But the disparate pieces surrounding them don't line up to make a cohesive puzzle.

The Red Devils are in need of a thorough rebuilding and have been for a few years now. But that isn't where Mourinho's strengths lie. What he does well is taking a team that already has the raw material and some experience and putting it over the top. He finishes construction jobs started and mostly completed by others. He's really the interior decorator.

There's immense value in that. Mourinho figures out the right tactics – often negative ones – and motivates and inspires. And if his bloated trophy case is probably a reflection on his predecessors in various jobs as much it is his own doing and making, he has nevertheless had astonishing success. But he has garnered it by taking what was already there, perhaps adding a few pieces, and figuring out how to make it function to the outer limits of its capabilities.

But the thing about Mourinho is he wins by antagonizing and dramatizing. He trolls and prods. He starts feuds and inflames simmering rivalries. He's very good at it. And he'll win a bunch of things before he's eventually and invariably run out of town.

It's just that none of these qualities would serve United particularly well right now. What the club needs is a builder. Somebody who can take all of that talent and give it structure and purpose. Who can, over the span of a few years, bend promise into performance. The Red Devils need, ironically, someone like van Gaal, who built champions at Ajax, Barcelona, AZ and Bayern Munich. Only they need a version of van Gaal who is untainted by his own recent failings and whose difficult character the players and fans aren't already totally sick of.

The difficulty inherent in all of this is that such builders are even rarer than the finishers of Mourinho's caliber. Klopp springs to mind. Atletico Madrid's Diego Simeone. Marcelo Bielsa. Ajax's Frank de Boer. And perhaps Southampton's Ronald Koeman. Men who build and rebuild. Sir Alex Ferguson was one of those. That's the sort of man that United needs if it is ever going to get back to being England's dominant club.

That man isn't Mourinho. That man is anyone but Mourinho.

Hiring Jose Mourinho will only set Manchester United further adrift from solid ground.