“CHELSEA maybe think they had a good time from him in the past, but you will see the real Mourinho now. If he behaves like he did in Spain, it will only be an unhappy relationship. A disaster. And at his age, he is not going to change.”

Those were the words of Carles Villarubi, vice-president of Barcelona, in May 2013 when Jose Mourinho’s final, toxic season with Real Madrid was limping towards a merciful end.

Last term, as Chelsea regained the title, they could, perhaps, have been explained away as predictable criticism from the heart of Catalonia.

Right now, they are beginning to look rather prescient. Just as he was in his third campaign at the Santiago Bernabeu, having previously overcome Pep Guardiola's quite wondrous Barcelona side to become champions, Mourinho has become isolated from his dressing room and looks ever more likely to be cut loose from a recently-signed contract.

What’s more, this remarkable case of history repeating makes you wonder whether any major club with aspirations of building for the longer-term can possibly take a risk on him again.

Villarubi described Mourinho, with good reason, as a “scourge” prior to his departure from the Primera Division. Anyone who spent time in Spain during that fractious, bitter campaign could hardly have disagreed.

“The ambience he creates everywhere he goes, the relations with the players, with the press are absolutely terrible,” he said. “I am happy that he is leaving and so is everyone in Spanish football.”

Only a handful of people in England, that insular little land, seemed to pay much attention, though.

Coverage of The Special One’s glorious return to Stamford Bridge that summer was predictably breathless, surrounded in made-by-TV hype, rather like everything in the self-congratulatory bubble of the Barclays Premier League.

The unbridled chaos that had just unfolded in Madrid was pretty much left there, out of sight and out of mind. Until now. Until it has all turned so spectacularly sour for him again that you wonder whether there can be any way back at the very top level for a man once touted as the natural successor to Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United.

When he left Internazionale in 2010 having completed the magnificent haul of Scudetto, Coppa Italia and Champions League, he left a collection of footballers willing to run through brick walls for him. Who can forget the footage of him hugging Marco Materazzi, both men in tears, in the underground car park of the Bernabeu in the aftermath of winning European football’s most glittering prize?

Mourinho developed unbreakable bonds with his players back then. What on earth has happened since?

At Real Madrid, the seeds of his demise were sown long before that final, shambolic season. In the wake of the infamous brawl that broke out during a Super Cup tie with Barcelona in August 2011, when Mourinho stuck his finger in the eye of the late Tito Vilanova, his goalkeeper and captain, Iker Casillas, contacted the Barcelona midfielder, Xavi, to broker a truce between rival dressing-rooms.

He was never forgiven for that. Mourinho was also obsessed with rooting out ‘moles’ passing stories to the media. Casillas, whose wife was a TV presenter, was, naturally, in a difficult position.

Run-ins with Casillas and Sergio Ramos were seen, in some quarters, as an attempt to lessen the influence of certain players, but, by the end, even his Portuguese countrymen Pepe, his on-field enforcer, and Cristiano Ronaldo had lost faith.

Mourinho has often been described as running clubs like some kind of personality cult, in which everyone must commit to his ideology or, as Chelsea’s players did after losing at Leicester City last week, face allegations of betrayal.

Despite winning a league title and a League Cup in his second spell at Stamford Bridge, a frightening number of talented players have passed through the exit door. In hindsight, that can be seen as a verdict, of sorts, on his confrontational management style.

He has lost all control this term, though.

His treatment of the club doctor, Eva Carneiro, continues to cast a cloud. The player she treated the day she was castigated so publicly against Swansea, Eden Hazard, is just one of many who seems to have had enough as well.

Mourinho is a great manager of a winning team and, one can only conclude, incapable of re-energising one in the doldrums.

Ferguson, that true master of psychology, was renowned for administering the hairdryer treatment, but he could galvanise players in difficult times. Mourinho now seems capable only of bringing out the flamethrower when things aren’t going his way.

Sir Alex, he certainly isn’t.