Obviously all managers make mistakes but as the season draws to a close, it is worth drawing into focus just how spectacularly Jose Mourinho’s transfer blunders have affected this season’s Premier League title race.

After farming all three out on loan, the former Chelsea boss sold Romelu Lukaku to Everton, Mo Salah to Roma and Kevin de Bruyne to Wolfsburg during his second spell at Stamford Bridge.

Lukaku is the man Mourinho had to splash out £75m to capture in order to have a frontline striker in time for Mancheste United’s pre-season after the failed pursuit of Alvaro Morata, who, incidentally has endured a much tougher maiden season at Chelsea.

That would be a big enough failure were it not for the fact that Salah and de Bruyne have produced performances so good that the race for the PFA Player of the Year was the hottest it’s been for years, inspiring United’s bitterest rivals to the Champions League final and the Premier League title.

Mourinho has toiled and spent huge sums to keep pace with City and keep ahead of Liverpool this season but his exceptionally poor judgement has already made his task a great deal harder.

He is also in charge of a club that let Gerard Pique leave for just £4m in 2008, only for the Spaniard to win everything there is to win at club and international level and spent a world-record transfer fee for academy graduate Paul Pogba, let go for free.

So, you would think that Mourinho and United wouldn’t make such glaring errors yet again. Except for the fact that’s exactly what they’re set to do this summer – according to reports – by letting Anthony Martial depart Old Trafford.

Martial, just like Salah, de Bruyne and Lukaku were at Chelsea, is a young player with obvious talent, whose mentality, consistency and temperament have not sufficiently impressed Mourinho, who is fixated on success in the present, with little concern for the future.

He has been shunted down the pecking order by United’s abundance of attacking options. The arrival of Alexis Sanchez on bumper wages, aged 29, showed yet again that Mourinho is only concerned with the here and now.

That mentality saw Chelsea part with three men who went on to be star performers – Lukaku is comfortably the worst of the trio and has scored 27 goals in all competitions in his debut season at Old Trafford – for the Premier League’s best three clubs.

To make that mistake three times is beyond careless but to take the very real risk of making it a fourth time, when de Bruyne and Salah are providing weekly, magical reminders of Mourinho’s failings is staggering.

Martial - already valued at £58.5m by Transfermarkt - is showing more obvious signs of brilliance than Salah and de Bruyne were at his age, too. Mourinho has to learn from his mistakes and abandon his summer plans to sell Martial.

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