Firstly, Perisic is not at the level of those players.
Secondly those players were signed for the first time at a younger age: Drogba (26), Essien (22), Sneijder (25), Ozil (21), Di Maria (22), Varane (18), Ferreira 923), Willian (25), Zouma (19), Quaresma (25), and Salah (22). Mourinho wanted Carvalho but inter werent ready to meet Chelsea's demand and the forced Lucio on Mourinho which Mourinho himself admitted he was reluctant to accept but was pleasantly suprised when he started working with him. Diego Lopez was a GK returning to his former club. Carvalho was a youth product at Porto.
Mourinho is limited in coaching offensive schemes and he tends to rely on the individual brilliance of his attacking players which is why he tends to sign creative and 'auto functioning' wingers like Di Maria and Willian. He does not use his wingers for width and prefers they play narrow and the full back overlaps for width, so all the talk about Mourinho wanting a winger that hugs the line is inconsistent with his history and expressed philosophy.
Also, Mourinho admits he loves Rashford, but he is not going to play Rashford as the starting CF, which (coupled with the arrival of Griezmann) means Rashford will likely spend most of next season as a LWF with occasional minutes as CF. Buying Perisic will likely drop Rashford from the starting 11, and I doubt Mourinho will do that.
The only way I can see him use Perisic is if he believe he can convert him to LB similar to Marcelo. At Madrid (under Mourinho), while Marcelo was LB, he spent most the time in the opposition half playing like a winger, particularly against weaker opposition while his defending left much to be desired. If that is the plan, then its a big gamble, which is not worth it given the guys age.
Given that Inter needs to sell, if we are genuinely interested, one would have expected us to put in our offer earlier before other variable change things. That we havent made a formal offer to me signal our lack of genuine interest at this point. Even Icardi would be a tough sell at the rumored numbers.
I didn't say Perisic is at their level. I said those guys were not super stars when Jose bought them. I was trying to explain why the idea that he mainly buys super stars is wrong. The similarity of the examples is that he has bought many players that only became super stars under him. Nothing says Perisic cannot belong to such a group. Not even his age because there are so many examples of late boomers in football. It's not as if Perisic is a newbie.
Also, the idea that Jose is limited in coaching attacking schemes is a myth. His wins, trophies and the goalscoring records of his teams totally contradicts this. What I will agree with is he hardly ever sets up his attacks to play eye catching football and he plays conservatively against the big teams. He is bigger on effectiveness and efficiency. His best teams at Portugal, England, Spain and Italy, have blown teams away. Do not be deceived by this season. If his boys had buried their chances, United would have been way up there on the goalscoring table.
I think the problem here is that people mix differences in style with ability to attack. For some, once a team is not attacking the Barcelona way, it is not properly set up to attack. So called individual brilliance can only take a team so far. If a team wins consistently by outscoring the opponent time and time again, how can it be down to mere individual brilliances especially if it is repeated at different times in different countries?
I just watched the Inter vs Bayern CL final again recently. How can anyone say the manager of that inter team is limited when it comes to setting up a team to attack? It was classic counter attacking football. Bayern had much of the possession but Inter was deadly on counters and absolutely efficient in the opposition box.
About your point on whether or not United is genuinely interested, I'll have to concur to the extent that during the transfer season, until we get official confirmations, no one is really sure. It might all be a smokescreen. A few things we know here for sure though:
-Jose is a big fan of Perisic (check out his statements about him during the last Euros)
-Perisic's advisor/agent is Jose's good friend
-Jose made an unusual trip to Zagreb earlier in the year.
-Jose is looking for a winger
-Jose likes wingers who are more of grafters than artists.
-Jose is ex inter Milan
-Some credible journalists have linked United to Perisic.
-Inter's president has claimed that United is keen on signing Perisic.
Of course, these mean little until we have an official confirmation so you have every reason to doubt United's interest in Perisic.
I didn't realize we were talking 5 player swaps