This article is part of Football FanCast’s Opinion series, which provides analysis, insight and opinion on any issue within the beautiful game, from Paul Pogba’s haircuts to League Two relegation battles…

Jose Mourinho has been appointed Tottenham Hotspur manager.

It is a bold appointment by Spurs chairman Daniel Levy, not least due to the credit that previous manager, Mauricio Pochettino, had in the bank.

He built a side capable of challenging for the Premier League title on two separate occasions and also guided them to the Champions League final.

Yet, on Tuesday, he was mercilessly sacked, with Mourinho appointed less than 12 hours later.

The former Manchester United and Chelsea boss is a serial winner and has won trophies at every club he has been at since Porto, but there is one question: How will he work within the financial constraints at Spurs?

Indeed, in his second spell at Chelsea, which began in 2013, Mourinho spent heavily throughout.

In the summer of 2013, nine players arrived at Stamford Bridge, for a combined fee of £63.7m. That was followed up, in January, by four more arrivals – Nemanja Matic, Mohamed Salah and Kurt Zouma and Bertrand Traore – for £45.5m.

A massive £87.7m was then lavished on the likes of Diego Costa, Cesc Fabregas and Filipe Luis the following summer, prior to a £27m investment in Juan Cuadrado in the winter transfer window. In summer 2015, £77.3m was spent on the likes of Pedro, Baba Rahman and a loan deal for Radamel Falcao but it proved to be his last window at the club.

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At United, Mourinho spent heavily again.

His arrival in 2016 preceded the signings of Eric Bailly, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Paul Pogba in the same summer. Those three signings came to £166.5m, with Pogba becoming the most expensive player in world football.

No money was spent the following January by United but Mourinho again spent heavily in the summer of 2017, splashing just under £150m on the likes of Romelu Lukaku and Matic. They then spent over £30m on Alexis Sanchez in that ill-fated January move leading to, in 2018/19, the summer purchases of Fred and Diogo Dalot for around £74m, prior to Mourinho’s sacking.

Now, compare that to Spurs.

Spurs have never broken such a record as Pogba’s fee and their most expensive purchase stands at just over £50m, with the capture of Tanguy Ndombele.

They have outspent one of Mourinho’s clubs in the transfer window just once, back in 2013/14, when they spent £109m. The catch? Those deals came after the world-record sale of Gareth Bale to Real Madrid.

Since then, the closest they have come to outspending Mourinho was either in 15/16 – with their £63.9m investment compared to Chelsea’s £77.2m – or in January of 17/18, when they spent just over £25m on Lucas Moura while United splashed out on Alexis.

Spurs went almost 18 months without signing any new players under Pochettino.

Fundamentally, the two clubs have been operating in different stratospheres of the transfer market. The cost of Spurs’ most expensive player could easily be that of a squad addition during Mourinho’s Chelsea and United spells.

But perhaps the bigger concern, other than the numbers, is how fateful transfer windows have been in Mourinho’s self-combusting departures from his prior clubs.

His first Chelsea exit in 2007  – just two months into the new season – came after disagreements with Roman Abramovich over a lack of spending in the summer, the purchase of Andriy Shevchenko and the hiring of Avram Grant as Director of Football.

When the Blues dismissed him again almost a decade later, BBC Sport’s Phil McNulty once again pointed to the club’s limited summer spending as a route cause of the then-champions’ implosion as Mourinho struggled to work with what he already had.

It was reported that Chelsea had been linked with the likes of Pogba, John Stones and Real Madrid’s Raphael Varane but none arrived, with Manchester City usurping them with the signings of Kevin De Bruyne and Raheem Sterling. That appears to be where many of Chelsea’s problems that season started.

And again, at the end of his last summer window at United, Mourinho publicly criticised the club’s lack of investment despite his previous outlays being more than well endowed. Before Christmas, the Portuguese was parted with.

These two parties, then, a chairman who gave the best manager of his reign very little support in the transfer market, and a manager who has never really survived an underwhelming summer transfer window, just don’t seem naturally compatible.

Interestingly, Pochettino also openly criticised the club’s transfer policy in the summer, pretty much for the first time, and has now suffered a similar end to Mourinho’s last three spells in the Premier League. The similarity is certainly foreboding.

It remains to be seen how this will work, especially as we are just over a month away from the January transfer window. Will Mourinho bite his lip or work with what he has, or will the issue of transfers once again make his position untenable?

One can imagine Mourinho stomaching it in the next transfer window – after all, he will only have been at Spurs for around six weeks. But it could force open some early cracks, leaving next summer as the real test of whether Levy and his new hire can work together effectively.

It’s only early days at Spurs, but it already feels like Levy and Mourinho are on a collision course, with transfers at its epicentre.