Why Jose Mourinho has to take the FA Cup seriously with Manchester United this season

Trophies have provided Mourinho with his main defence against criticism and the FA Cup is his most realistic chance of silverware this season

The FA Cup is Mourinho's best chance of silverware this season (Getty)

Jose Mourinho’s first season in charge of Manchester United was one of mixed success but, as he is always eager to remind us, he ended it with three trophies.

Three trophies? Yes, three trophies. If you have counted as far as the EFL Cup and the Europa League but come up stuck, let us remind you: the third is the Community Shield, won in Mourinho’s first United game of moderate significance, against a Leicester City side still drunk on the greatest story ever told.

This trophy was not deemed prestigious enough to be included alongside the others in United’s squad photo at the start of the current campaign but it was deemed worthy a mention by Mourinho on Thursday, following the announcement that he had renewed his contract with the club until 2020.

“We have set very high standards - winning three trophies in one season,” Mourinho once again reminded us. “Those are the standards I expect my teams to aim for.”

Unfortunately, in this second year of his management, it is a standard that United will not meet. Though they are currently competing in three competitions, most neutral observers would agree they only have a decent chance of winning one. With Manchester City’s Premier League lead still in double digits and bigger beasts favoured in the Champions League, United’s most realistic chance of silverware is now the FA Cup.

That is why, despite a long fourth round trip to Huish Park on Friday night, there is no reason to expect a heavily-rotated United side to start against League Two strugglers Yeovil Town.

It will be “a very strong team”, Mourinho insisted at his pre-match press conference, just as it was in the previous round against Derby County at Old Trafford. Alexis Sanchez has not stepped on a football pitch in over a fortnight but United’s pricey new signing will nevertheless be called on to help defeat the fourth-worst team in the fourth tier.

The United manager will give the world’s oldest football competition the respect it is due, as he often does, but in a way, he has to.

Trophies have provided Mourinho with his main line of defence against all the criticisms of his approach this season. In fairness, when he does not crowbar the Community Shield into his argument, it is a credible one. Silverware is still football’s traditional measure of success.

His decision to prioritise winning competitions in his first season was brave too as, for a usually cautious coach, it involved accepting an awful lot of risk. Mourinho placed all his chips on the Europa League once it became his most practical route to the Champions League and were it not for John Guidetti’s wayward finishing, United's season would have been bust. Instead, Mourinho came out of it as a winner.

A sixth-place league finish may have been less than perfect, but it had been a difficult debut year for other managers in Manchester too. At its culmination, he led the major trophy count 2-0.

This season, United do not have as much to lose but there is the spectre of City. Pep Guardiola will almost certainly get off the mark in terms of trophies this season and he will probably end the year with at least significant triumph.

But so long as Mourinho wins a trophy, he will still have a tangible, credible symbol of progress to point to, and with it an answer to all the questions that will surely still dog his tenure in its third year.