Tag: mourinho

There is no happy ending for this Mourinho marriage

Credit where it’s due. You would’ve left me incredulous had you told me on Monday that Tottenham’s next outing would be even more lifeless and uninspiring than it was against Everton. To that end, Mourinho and his team have pulled the rabbit out of the hat tonight. They’ve performed this miracle flying straight in the face of implausibility, maybe even impossibility. That’s where the praise, if you can call it that, ends.

I have now endured five Spurs games since the restart. Two wins, two draws and a loss. Goals scored: five. Goals conceded: four. Clean sheets: three. On the surface, this doesn’t paint that bad a picture. A solid effort if not slightly underwhelming. The problem is that I’d rather watch the paint on this fictitious picture dry than another ninety (or in today’s case, 102) minutes of this team playing football. These five games have been enough for me to (re)conclude that though I will always support this club through thick and thin, I am no fan of this manager.

Deciding to espouse José Mourinho was a risk, even if our playing style has since been nothing but risk-averse. But it seemed to make some sense. The best way to describe the arrangement would be a marriage of convenience. Here’s José, long time big shot, looking for a quick fling to boost his damaged ego and renew his reputation as a football equivalent of a ‘top shagger’. It wouldn’t require much effort. Champions League semi-final, a couple of domestic trophies, throw in a title challenge perhaps. Perfectly doable, given his track record, and what better club to do it with than…

Tottenham Hotspur. The other half of this arrangement. Very recently out of a long and emotionally-invested relationship, looking for some short-term satisfaction to fulfil the only need their previous partner couldn’t. It says a lot about Tottenham that they packed it in at the first bump in the road considering it was all going so smoothly. But all is fair in love and war. Mourinho is destined to provide the goods that Pochettino couldn’t.

Except he doesn’t. The marriage, after a promising start, hits a snag. Expectations don’t match the reality. It’s boring and frustrating. There’s this tension hanging in the air. The vows – trophies, new and improved tactics, maximising Harry Kane’s ability – are all broken within just a few months. Mourinho has moved in (quite literally, he has lodged at the training ground) and you realise he’s not what you expected. He’s created this horrible stench, stuck up some ugly portraits on the wall and jumbled up your record collection – don’t bet against him selling the best ones either (hang in there, Tanguy). It’s actually true what they say about his style of football. And his erratic press conference displays are in fact only amusing when he’s not your club’s manager. Hell, in times like these you’d be forgiven for indulging in some longing thoughts about that one-time affair with Tim Sherwood. Anything for a bit of fun!

So it turns out José is clearly not the catch he once was. But then neither are we. Tottenham are if anything a downgrade for Mourinho. This man has won the Champions League, whereas the best we’ve done is reach the final and instead of a home run, we’ve run home scared. It wasn’t long ago he was boasting about the number of titles he’s won (note, more than Tottenham) and holding his hand to his ear to aggravate Juventus fans. Now he’s tied down to a team heading for its worst league finish in a decade. The classic “it’s not you, it’s me” could be applied on both sides. If it’s not meant to be with him then who can be his replacement? All the best managers are taken. Eddie Howe might be available soon, but even he has greyed and wrinkled.

Some questions I considered during the match:

  1. What do they practice on the training ground? It can’t be passing, because we appear incapable of stringing together three in a row. It can’t be attacking either, because we don’t allow ourselves into our opponent’s final third. There are only two things that seem rehearsed: Lo Celso and Bergwijn’s two-man wall at set pieces, and Vertonghen’s passes back to the goalkeeper. I know club social media teams can only show snippets of light training. They can’t stick a camera inside the manager’s team talk (unless it’s an Amazon camera of course), but surely the players are doing more than just endless tournaments of Teqball?
  2. How awful must we be to not manage a single shot on target against the third worst team in the division? This question was answered, whether I wanted it to be or not, when I read on Twitter that Spurs had become the first team to fail to register a shot on target against Bournemouth since Middlesbrough in the Championship, March 2015. My voice had barely broken then.
  3. Is there any way I could cancel the North London Derby on Sunday?
  4. What time does The One Show start?

I feel like an idiot because back in November I allowed myself to think this appointment was a master stroke. This would be the final piece of the jigsaw, the ace to compose a royal flush. Prosperity, in the form of trophies, was around the corner. In fairness, I’d still sacrifice one of my kidneys for a bit of silverware. But I fear we’ve sacrificed more than that without a guaranteed return. Any sort of excitement, flair or creativity has been vacuumed out of this team. We used to embarrass defences, even if we were then in turn embarrassed by our own. Now it’s just clearances and Serge Aurier crosses, and Harry Kane defending the near post at corners. It’s so bloody dull.

There is no easy way out of this mess. Daniel Levy has already set a precedent and will happily replace a manager rather than an ailing squad. Whether it is during or at the end of next season, or perhaps – and god help us all in this instance – at the end of his contract in 2023, Mourinho will depart. Whenever the ending comes for this marriage of convenience, it won’t be a happy one. When is it ever a happy ending with him?

Until then we will have to limp on, putting off the thought of going through the divorce papers. But mark my words, one day soon Tottenham will be back in the market for a manager to a chorus of ‘told you so’ from onlookers. If we had any sense we’d get back with our ex, that handsome Argentine.

Parking the bus is the sort of ‘new normal’ Spurs fans may have to get used to

The phrase ‘new normal’ has been thrown around so much in recent weeks to the point where I cannot stand hearing it. But last night watching Tottenham retreat to their 6-yard box in the defence of a one-goal lead, I couldn’t help thinking this may just be our very own ‘new normal’.

This was a growing concern of mine way before the season was disrupted. At first it was the apparent lack of invention as Mourinho prepared for life after Christian Eriksen. Then came the onus on the long ball. This works when Bournemouth’s back four can’t form a straight horizontal line, but is stifled by a coherent defence or by VAR noticing someone’s shoulder being an inch offside. By the end of February, Tottenham were relying on moments of individual brilliance to scrape together points. Think Bergwijn versus City, Dele versus Brighton. The problem is there’s only a finite amount of individual brilliance in our squad, especially when none of our attacking players can avoid injury. This was a shambolic advance to Europe even Field Marshall Haig would have frowned upon.

So I should have known better than to think this was the start of something great when Stevie Bergwijn raced past the United defence to open the scoring last night. But who could blame me? After all, José and his number two, Joao Sacramento, had undoubtedly profited from these months to finally get to grips with this squad; watch hours and hours of past games, work out strengths and flaws, who should play where, how we can kill games off. All the players, with the exception of Dele Alli and Lucas Moura, were fit and available to play. Sure, United had plenty of pace up top, but didn’t we? We could make mince meat out of Lindelof and Maguire! Come on you Spurs!

Half-time. We’re a goal up and Roy Keane is so angry I can feel the heat from my television. This is going rather well. Defence solid. Attack dangerous. Lamela surely just one foul away from getting booked and winning me £38 from William Hill. We’ve got them on the ropes here. Just one more feeble shot past De Gea could secure the knockout.

Then came the bus. The dreaded bus, parked very clumsily in our eighteen yard box. And it was at around the 48th minute mark that I realised we would no longer win the game.

Before the match Roy Keane, in all his ferocious wisdom, mentioned an inherent weakness in the DNA of Tottenham teams past and present. I’m not convinced on the science here, or if weakness is the sort of trait stored in DNA, but he can’t be that far off the mark.

Luckily, I rarely enjoy watching my team for fear of total collapse (there is form there). So mustering only 39% possession on our home turf doesn’t affect me too much. Nonetheless, it was hard to watch as we dropped further back yard by yard, minute by minute. It’s no surprise Paul Pogba was at the byline when he earned his team a penalty.

Were it not for John Moss’ visual deficiencies being picked up on, we would have lost that match. It would have been another case – just like against Liverpool (twice) and Chelsea (twice) – of Tottenham trying and spectacularly failing to win a game by prioritising the evasion of defeat. Life seemed much easier when if we were to lose a big game, we would go down in flames. Not by conceding one in the 88th minute, but by conceding five in the first half. Parking the bus may prove fruitful against Manchester City once in a blue moon. But even that particular victory required a one-man advantage, a penalty save and about seven near-death experiences. In any case, we can’t keep playing with fire.

There are of course some positives to take and some excuses to make. That first-half performance was perhaps as good as I’ve seen all season. It would also be unfair to overly criticise a team on their first competitive game back in three months. We did lack attacking options off the bench. And most importantly, I am 99% sure if I bet on Lamela to be carded in the next game I’ll finally get the money I deserve. It’s not all doom and gloom – no, that’ll be when we lose to West Ham on Tuesday.

The reason I’m annoyed, perhaps excessively, is for the same reason you get most annoyed at the people you love. It’s because you care, and because you hate the Europa League. So José Mourinho, if you stumble across this, consider letting us play some decent football for a while longer in games. Don’t let parking the bus become the new normal.