The reason I do not believe Mourinho is realistic any more is that he is out of work, we have no manager, so there would be no real need to hold it up too long, unless of course he was waiting on man u and we are his second choice. At which point, I have to ask myself do we want a manager coming in disgruntled that he did not get the united job, and the answer is no.
Wouldn't mind being proven wrong, but just cannot see it.
Any manager in the world given the choice betwen us and United would have us at second choice mate
Fact is Mourinho is one of the ones who is good enough that United could want him and who may be still interested in us should they decide nottom get him
Old phrase of not cutting your nose off to spite your face comes to mind
The only important thing for us to do in this is to not keep waiting indefinitely
I am certain we have a list of targets - Mourinho being at the top of that list, should we be kept dangling and the other people on are list start being approached then we will either give him a deadline to make a decision re us, or we wil just switch our attention to second/third on our list
Right now from the people i 'suspect' or have heard rumours from more reliabble sources we have on our list
Mourinho - no movement until United make their decision - after cup final at the earliest
Emre - No movement until after Sevillas cup final against Barca at the earliest
Koeman - No movement until after his meeting with the Saints board etc - at the earliest
Favre/De Boer/Bielsa/Pelligrini- No movment on these unless they are appraoched with concrete offers from other clubs
As long as we have contact with their agents etc and know the current situation as it changes with all of these then it's just a matter of waiting for certain events to unfold and seeing what other clubs interested in them will offer in comparision to what we have - wages and 'project selling'