Oh no. Oh no, please. Are we really going to do this again? Perhaps there is still a flicker of hope. Maybe this is just a minor outbreak, something that can be contained and extinguished by stern, space-suited men in governmental helicopters. Or just a brief resurfacing of the theory of Premier League orbital resonance, a school of thought which states that beneath everything that ever happens in English football, every goal, every red-card furore, there is a never ending conversation about José Mourinho going on all around us.

Allow everything else to fade away and you might just catch it, the hidden music of the sphere, an unceasing Mourinho waffle-feed just waiting to emerge into the briefest hiatus in the rolling Premier League news-gargle.

And yet it feels as though the battle is already lost, that the debate about whether Mourinho might be coming back to England is now basically over. Mainly because he's already here, hiding in plain sight, our own reptilian Illuminati overlord cranking levers and throwing switches behind his pleated curtain. In fact the only really surprising thing about all this is that pretty much everybody seems to think it's a good idea.

Witness, for example, the degree of outrage over ITV cutting short its broadcast of Mourinho's prepared self-promotional speech after Real Madrid's Champions League exit in midweek, the best part of which was the spectacle of his premature eviction from the screen, the look of shock on his face at finding himself led away by the wrist, suddenly meek and helpless, like a grandmother caught shoplifting. But you knew this wasn't over and Mourinho duly carried on where he'd left off in front of the English press, squeezed once again into his decade-old skinny-fit leather José-jeans, fluffing his chest hair, hosing the room with those saltily noxious José-pheromones.

And so the notion that we all love José has been bandied about unchallenged ever since. This despite the fact there are obvious reasons why Mourinho coming back to England is a terrible idea for everyone concerned. Not just because of the tedium of the ambient obsession, which feels a bit like being forced to nod along to a very dull piece of music that everybody else seems to think is absolutely brilliant. But more because it is a destructive relationship on both sides, an affair dominated above all by the vast, suffocating blanket of guff, that gumbo of inanity and extra-football intrigue that must inevitably accompany Mourinho wherever he goes.

This is, of course, non-negotiable. It is intrinsic to Mourinho's methods, an approach that demands he be placed magnetically centre stage, inserting himself into that yeasty nexus between fans, media and opposition, a man for whom a match kicks off with the pre-match press conference, the moment he can first start to dig his great scrabbling malevolent fingernails into the opposition cranium, redrawing the entire occasion in his capering shadow. Beyond any sense of a broader footballing philosophy, this is basically what Mourinho offers: a high-intensity infusion of distilled confrontational personality.

And frankly, too much. We cannot cope with such bounteous gifts. Already geared towards its own parping operetta of handshakes and mind games and who said what to whom, English football is simply overwhelmed by a manager who makes it part of his daily routine to toss this stuff our way. And so when José is in the room we all go to pieces. He is managerial strong lager, managerial cleavage, an entirely disorientating force, killing the conversation and feeding the Premier League's own worst vices of hungrily consumed celebrified piffle.

Chelsea supporters get themselves into a lather about the likely return of their former manager. Photograph: Imago / Barcroft Media

This is a mutual thing. Just as José brings out the worst in English football, so its slavering attention has also brought out the worst in him. This is not to attack the man himself at a time when some will sense a dwindling in his powers. Physically he will return a more frayed, less-well-groomed figure: shell-suited, glowering beneath his frazzled bouffant, stalking the touchline like a very cross middle-aged man about to spring through the porch doors to remonstrate with the binmen on collection day.

None of which matters much: Mourinho is too good not to be back on top in time. The issue is him attempting to do it in England. If he has become unlikable in recent years it is hard to avoid the sense this is somehow our fault, that during his time in England a single technique, one weapon in his armoury, became horribly enflamed, mushrooming out of all proportion until this oppositional quality is now basically his only quality. In the meantime other managerial flavours have emerged, the more austere and collegiate Bundesliga school of science, the inspirational-supply-teacher schtick of Jürgen Klopp, Europe's current junior it-boy.

And frankly the question of what kind of "love" English football – Chelsea fans aside – might harbour for Mourinho is open to question. Love sounds like something you might feel for David Moyes, who seems so priestly and concerned and who sits in his shed dreaming of the Bundesliga in the way men of a certain age sit very quietly tapping their feet to trad jazz records before eventually returning with a sigh to watering the tomatoes. I feel a degree of managerial man-love for Fatih Terim, a manager powered solely by bodily perspiration whose entire football philosophy revolves around the production and dissemination of great cleansing instructional draughts of bodily perspiration. I love Uwe Rösler because of his Hasselhoff-ish Euro bonhomie, his optimism, his tiny little cupboard of an office at Brentford where he seems entirely happy. I kind of love Michael Laudrup a bit even though you half expect to look a little closer and notice he's sitting on the Swansea bench in a white tuxedo, bowtie rakishly undone, smiling his rueful sideways smile at some bittersweet casino-floor affair of the heart.

Mourinho, though, is a more sickly affair. He remains English football's bad boyfriend, the guy who's simply no good for us: leaning against the bonnet of his car, chewing gum, baseball-jacket sleeves rolled up, the rebel with only one cause (the cause of José). And yet there is still a choice. We can party like it's 2004, allowing Mourinho to fill the skies with his haggard old personality schtick. Or we can decide we've had enough of the distractions of the periphery and for once maybe just try to talk about something else. It might just be best for everyone.