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Manchester United face a bill in the region of £24million after the English Premier League club elected to replace Jose Mourinho as manager before the end of the winter transfer window.

While the compensation package due to the 55-year-old will fall by 25 percent should Mourinho fail to secure qualification for next season's Champions League, United face a minimum liability of £18m to dismiss the coach who has led them to two major trophies and their highest Premier League finish of the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era.

A 3-1 defeat at Liverpool on Sunday saw United fall 19 points behind the leaders after 17 Premier League fixtures – and remain 11 adrift of fourth-place Chelsea. In a post-match interview Mourinho stated that as far as Manchester United 's league campaign was concerned “the better we can get is the fourth position”.

The nature of the defeat – Liverpool finishing the game with large statistical advantages over an injury-hit United in shots, pass completion, possession and territory – accentuated calls for the Glazer family to dispense with Mourinho's services ahead of a January transfer window that is again a point of contention between the Portuguese and his employers.

(Image: Action Images via Reuters)

The improved contract United agreed with Mourinho 11 months ago runs until the end of the 2019-20 season, with an option of a further season.

Record Sport has been told that the deal includes a severance package equivalent to one year's salary. With 25 percent of Mourinho's pay conditional on qualification for Europe's premier club competition, United would remain liable for the Champions League “top-up” were they to dismiss their manager while he was still in this season's competition or in contention for fourth place in the Premier League.

The Glazers sacked both of Mourinho's predecessors only after each of them had failed to achieve Champions League qualification, with the intention of saving similar sums on their pay-offs.

David Moyes went in April 2014 with four league games remaining. Louis van Gaal was dismissed on the day of United's 2016 FA Cup Final win. Neither was informed of their imminent departures by executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward.

(Image: Sky Sports)

Although Mourinho stated that "the owners and the board...are showing me also their ambition, their commitment, their desire to go in the right direction" upon extending his contract, there have been problems between manager and chief executive for many months, with last summer's transfer window descending into a major point of conflict.

Asked last week how far the current United team was from being built in his image Mourinho twice used the word "far".

"It’s not just about football players,” he added. "A football team is a little bit like a house. A house is not just about buying the furniture, you have to do work on the house, and when the house is ready then you buy the furniture, you spend money on the best possible furniture. And then you are ready to live in an amazing house.”

Following Sunday's defeat Mourinho contrasted the athletic intensity of Liverpool's play with the levels a United squad that has been particularly handicapped by medical problems this season were able to reach, arguing that such physical limitations restricted his strategic options on the pitch.

Mourinho said: "First of all, we have lots of problems related with physicality. We have lots of players that I could consider injury-prones, because some of our players they are always injured. And it’s not with me, it was before me.

"If you look to the stats with Mr Van Gaal, and before Mr Van Gaal, with David, if you look to that period we have players that are permanently injured. When you are permanently injured physicality is very difficult to get. Then there are qualities that a player has or doesn’t have. You cannot improve, you cannot make them have.

"I give you an example: [Andy] Robertson, [Sadio] Mane, [Mohamed] Salah, [Georginio] Wijnaldum, [Naby] Keita, Fabinho, they are physical players. On the top of that, they are good players technically. I also have lots of good players technically, but we don’t have many players with that intensity, with that physicality. So when the game has high levels of intensity it is difficult for us.

"Our first 20 minutes was difficult for us. Then when we had the ball, when the tension went down, when the intensity went down, was easier for us to be in the game. We managed to have the ball and to bring the game into, I would say, our side - in the sense that now we are playing the way we can. And these are our qualities.

"And I think you like to say sometimes that it’s the manager’s choice. You can compare my Porto team with Liverpool. You can compare, because the qualities of the players are there. It was my best team in defensive transition - we lose the ball we bite, we bite like mad dogs and we recover the ball after two seconds.

"In Real Madrid I had my best team in direct counter-attack, because I had young [Angel] Di Maria, young [Cristiano] Ronaldo, young [Gonzalo] Higuain and young [Karim] Benzema. We killed everybody in offensive transition. And in Inter I had my best team in a defensive low block where people like [Marco] Matarazzi, [Walter] Samuel, Lucio, [Ivan] Cordoba in a low block you can be there five hours and you don’t concede a goal. So players make teams play in a certain way."