Manchester United Champions League draw: Jose Mourinho's side intimidated no-one, especially not PSG

There was one team the group winners wanted to draw in Nyon on Monday. Unfortunately, Schalke 04, who finished second in the weakest of this year’s Champions League groups and are suffering something of underwhelming season domestically, were pulled out of the hat first. They will play Manchester City.

The next best option? Roma have not enjoyed the best of starts in Serie A but cannot be underestimated as semi-finalists last year. Olympique Lyonnais and Ajax are making their first appearances in the knock-out stages for some time, but their young squads are filled with talent to fear.

It is therefore quite easy to argue that once a trip to Gelsenkirchen in February was out of the question, the rest of the group winners wanted Manchester United. Jose Mourinho’s side were the third runners-up to be drawn and will play Paris Saint-Germain.

That United should be considered one of the more ‘preferable’ opponents in these draws says everything about the current state of the club and their group stage performance, which was entirely unremarkable save one famous, face-saving victory in Turin.

Mourinho’s shrinking band of loyalists will point to the 2-1 turnaround against Juventus as evidence that, on any given day and in any given game, this United side is capable of securing a result against the odds. In a cup competition, this is a useful knack which cannot be ignored.

Could the same happen in Paris though? That French saying about how you cannot rewrite a love story comes to mind. Certainly, anyone who witnessed United’s surrender to Liverpool – themselves comfortably beaten at the Parc des Princes just a few weeks ago – would consider it unlikely.

PSG, after all, topped arguably the most difficult group, having successfully recovered from a horrendously disjointed and dispiriting performance in defeat at Anfield in their opening game. Their aimlessness that night contrasted with the drive and direction in the reverse fixture, which they won 2-1 to all but qualify for the knockout stages.

Under Thomas Tuchel, Ligue 1’s runaway leaders finally appear psychologically ready to shake the perception that they are perennial chokers in this competition and match their owners’ lofty expectations. Since Qatar Sports Investments’ takeover in 2011, the club is still waiting to progress beyond the quarter-finals.

While this will be the first meeting between United and PSG in European competition, the Parisians have recent history to draw on with Mourinho, losing to his Chelsea in the 2014 quarter-finals then overcoming them in the round of 16 a year later. They have only improved in the years since and will not be intimidated.

Mourinho, meanwhile, cannot claim to be in charge of a team as strong as his 2015 Chelsea champions-in-waiting. He will already be worried whether his “permanently injured” United players, whose heart and desire he has regularly questioned this year, have the fundamental ability to beat Kylian Mbappé, Edinson Cavani, Neymar and the rest over two legs.

If they do not, there could be grave consequences. It is widely understood that, like David Moyes and Louis van Gaal before him, Mourinho’s position will only come under any sort of threat once qualifying for next season’s Champions League is impossible, but a top-four domestic finish appears increasingly out of reach.

By February, it may be that lifting a fourth European Cup is United’s only viable route to next year’s competition and lifting a third is Mourinho’s only route to staying in gainful employment. The United manager believes, from the quarter-final onwards, teams begin to “smell” the trophy. From there onwards, anyone can win it.

To get to that point, United must now overcome the second-favourites to win outright, subvert all expectations and prove that this storied club, steeped in European history, was not such a plum draw after all.