Jose Mourinho - SACKED

[Bishop]

If that argument stands tactically that’s another thing, human psychology is fixed, that was the main thing at Porto/Chelsea/Inter, even Madrid, getting the players there to realise that Messi could be beaten, it’s the mindset change Spurs needs.

I think I've said this to you previously but he's never managed a comparable side to Spurs. Every other team he has managed beyond Leriera at the very beginning of his career had already acquired the experience of winning things. He has never had to truly build that mentality hiimself. Sometimes the club itself is a winning institution, (Porto, Real Madrid, Man Utd, Chelsea the second time) and just needed a bit of reorientation to achieve. Sometimes they had won some of the smaller prizes already and were on the cusp of winning bigger things (1st Chelsea and Inter). Every time he had the biggest budget in that league and the time he didn't his budget was still enormous and that is the time he started to falter.

He's never had a magic panacea that's cures all mental weakness and creates winners out of everyone. He has always brought players in who match his requirements and that profile of player is usually at the top end of the market. He's also always inherited good situations where yes he has been able to add the finishing touch but that isn't the context he has at Spurs. To think he would be able to do it here because in very different circumstances he was previously successful is very much just wishful thinking.

Mourinho has never turned mice into men he turned chiseled men into granite.

 

[thfcsteff]

Your phrase ‘...by the grace of others’ feels relevant. For which top six side, aside from perhaps Emirates Marketing Project, have things ‘panned out’ over these past, highly unusual, 15 months?

Are Liverpool consistently playing with a definable style and identity at present? United? Arsenal? Chelsea?

I’m ambivalent about Mourinho at this point really. However, I hesitate to make too full a judgement given the highly unusual circumstances; the fact that he is still working with a core squad who have consistently failed at important hurdles under two managers now; there is no obvious replacement; and sacking him at this point (unlikely to happen in almost every circumstance until November of this year imo) will lead us into another season in which Dier, Winks, Sissoko, Sanchez etc will all still be here as a new manager seeks to ‘give them a chance’ - and Levy has the perfect excuse not to spend any money.

Emirates Marketing Project/EMP have grown tenfold, Leicester have continued to defy critics and play the Brenton way, Man Utd have established a style of play based around having the balls to sign Bruno Fernandes whilst integrating the likes of Greenwood, and Moyes has proven us all (well, me for sure) wrong with what he is doing at West Ham. You ask whether Liverpool are playing consistently with a "definable style" and I'd counter they are exactly where we were as we limped through early 2019, injuries, over-played and exhausted squad (remember we had 9 players in the 2018 World Cup semi-finals), they don't have the stadium excuse, and I think it will be telling to see how they address the current malaise. FWIW, I'd put your money on them taking 4th. Chelski? Tuchel is new, so finding his feet. Arsenal? The club is a mess but we left them behind a few years ago and I don't see them as peers (critically, however, Arteta ponced the FA Cup last season and is still in poncing range of the Europa, which would bring them CL).

As for your second point(s), indeed, I agree with the latter sentiments but the former? Well worth reading some of the early interviews he gave. He has my sympathy for the covid situation, awful. Having said that, you could also theorize that covid saved from an earlier dismissal as I don't think full stadiums would've been forgiving.

 

[thfcsteff]

All of this has happened before and will happen again...

View attachment 11552

I think there is next to no comparison with how each manager has dealt with such matters personally. We got our highest ever points total the following season (if this frame is from the post-Saudi Sportswashing Machine debacle).

I think some here are consistency keen to beat Poch with a stick for something (not saying you necessarily, it is a more general observation) and the stick which could be used on him is never raised. Because for me, when he published his book, it was a massive misstep which could quite possibly have undermined him in a fundamental way as it is not the sort of thing you do when working with the people who appear in your pages. I could never quite fathom the sheer naivety of doing it TBH.

 

[thfcsteff]

I think I've said this to you previously but he's never managed a comparable side to Spurs. Every other team he has managed beyond Leriera at the very beginning of his career had already acquired the experience of winning things. He has never had to truly build that meteorology hiimself. Sometimes the club itself is a winning institution, (Porto, Real Madrid, Man Utd, Chelsea the second time) and just needed a bit of reorientation to achieve. Sometimes they had won some of the smaller prizes already and were on the cusp of winning bigger things (1st Chelsea and Inter). Every time he had the biggest budget in that league and the time he didn't his budget was still enormous and that is the time he started to falter.

He's never had a magic panacea that's cures all mental weakness and creates winners out of everyone. He has always brought players in who match his requirements and that profile of player is usually at the top end of the market. He's also always inherited good situations where yes he has been able to add the finishing touch but that isn't the context he has at Spurs. To think he would be able to do it here because in very different circumstances he was previously successful is very much just wishful thinking.

Mourinho has never turned mice into men he turned chiseled men into granite.

Excellently articulated!

 

[DubSpur]

Your phrase ‘...by the grace of others’ feels relevant. For which top six side, aside from perhaps Emirates Marketing Project, have things ‘panned out’ over these past, highly unusual, 15 months?

Are Liverpool consistently playing with a definable style and identity at present? United? Arsenal? Chelsea?

I’m ambivalent about Mourinho at this point really. However, I hesitate to make too full a judgement given the highly unusual circumstances; the fact that he is still working with a core squad who have consistently failed at important hurdles under two managers now; there is no obvious replacement; and sacking him at this point (unlikely to happen in almost every circumstance until November of this year imo) will lead us into another season in which Dier, Winks, Sissoko, Sanchez etc will all still be here as a new manager seeks to ‘give them a chance’ - and Levy has the perfect excuse not to spend any money.

Tuchel is there a little over 10 games and already they have a definable style. Mourinho 18 months in and still waiting to see what ours is.

 

[Mr Gogolak]

What is our current identity?
Can you explain to me what identity Tottenham Hotspur has as a football team under Jose Mourinho?
That's a genuine question BTW, not me trying to be argumentative. I see a collection of good players, a few poor ones and a few brilliant ones but they all have one thing in common; they don't appear to be playing with a philosophy or identity beyond the binary "don't make mistakes and score more than the other lot"...which is certainly "an" approach, but I'd suggest that football (and the needs of supporters) have changed, developed even, beyond that simple metric.
I won't go any further on this before reading your answer mate; you're a careful and articulate writer and I enjoy your perspectives even if I don't always agree.

As for being allowed to "speak your mind" in the press, absolutely. If they are for the good of the club. Otherwise I'd rather he kept it in-house, because this divisive tomfoolery is unhelpful IMO, self-protective at best, and ultimately, counter-productive. And given that I'd rather he focussed on doing his job than delivering prime-time media soundbites, I'd take the platitudes all day long. Because for me, giving good "media" in that sense is not an important part of his job. Indeed, giving "smart" media is a part of his job IMO.

Having said that, he knows exactly what he's doing. He is no fool.

I think you're being a tad unfair, here. We had one (that pretty much nobody liked) until December: we played with a very low block, moved the ball forward quickly and played on Kane's and Son's excellent partnership to score a lot of goals. Then we went through a patch of very poor form, Kane got injured and Mourinho (in my opinion, to his credit) tried a lot of different things to get us out of our predicament: we played with a higher defensive line (which is probably why Alderwereild is out of the team), we tried to integrate Bale, he played with more defence-minded full-backs, etc.

I agree that, at the moment, we don't have a clear identity but remember that, when we had one, you weren't very happy with it either. For that reason, I think Mourinho, this season, is doing a better job than Klopp, for instance.

Looking a little bit further than that, I think Mourinho's approach has always been a flexible one. He's more focused on countering the opposition's strengths than imposing his own team's. Considering that football's all about patterns and set-up plays worked in traning over and over again, I feel, maybe the times have passed him by. I don't know if he could make it at the top level.

On the other hand, I disagree with Bishop's comments. I haven't seen much of his Manchester United team, but all his other teams were absolutely cynical and despicable and a) that's something he introduced to these teams and b) that's something I wished he'd bring with him at Spurs. His teams were the kind of teams you hated to play. His Chelsea side was very different from Ranieri's, his Inter players were a bunch of bastards that had nothing in common with Mancini's and the same goes for Real Madrid (Pellegrini was even considered 'naive').

I agree that he never worked with losers or also-rans before but I think if you look at his previous teams before and after he took over, you'll see a clear difference in attitude. Eto'o played as a right-back at Inter and he was happy to do so. I've never seen that kind of mindset during his time here.

 

[Mikey10]

Tuchel is there a little over 10 games and already they have a definable style.

Big Sam says hello.

 

[StephenH]

Mourinho should be nowhere near any future recruitment.
His time is up. Nice try Daniel shame it didn’t work.
Shame we can’t get an Allardyce type in to see season out!

PS I honestly didn’t see your above post @Mikey10 till I posted.

 

[Daisuk]

Tuchel is there a little over 10 games and already they have a definable style. Mourinho 18 months in and still waiting to see what ours is.

This is exactly it. It took a while for us to see it with Poch, but after a few months, you could easily see that he had made a mark on our game. You can see with it other teams, look at Potter's Brighton compared to how they were with the old one - a completely different style. Klopp, Guardiola, Rogers and even Ancelotti has something looking like a team style. With Mourinho, it's just not there. That's why it's easy to imagine someone coming in with a different philosophy having way more of an impact on these players than simply wanting to sack the entire team.

 

[thfcsteff]

I think you're being a tad unfair, here. We had one (that pretty much nobody liked) until December: we played with a very low block, moved the ball forward quickly and played on Kane's and Son's excellent partnership to score a lot of goals. Then we went through a patch of very poor form, Kane got injured and Mourinho (in my opinion, to his credit) tried a lot of different things to get us out of our predicament: we played with a higher defensive line (which is probably why Alderwereild is out of the team), we tried to integrate Bale, he played with more defence-minded full-backs, etc.

I agree that, at the moment, we don't have a clear identity but remember that, when we had one, you weren't very happy with it either. For that reason, I think Mourinho, this season, is doing a better job than Klopp, for instance.

Looking a little bit further than that, I think Mourinho's approach has always been a flexible one. He's more focused on countering the opposition's strengths than imposing his own team's. Considering that football's all about patterns and set-up plays worked in traning over and over again, I feel, maybe the times have passed him by. I don't know if he could make it at the top level.

On the other hand, I disagree with Bishop's comments. I haven't seen much of his Manchester United team, but all his other teams were absolutely cynical and despicable and a) that's something he introduced to these teams and b) that's something I wished he'd bring with him at Spurs. His teams were the kind of teams you hated to play. His Chelsea side was very different from Ranieri's, his Inter players were a bunch of bastards that had nothing in common with Mancini's and the same goes for Real Madrid (Pellegrini was even considered 'naive').

I agree that he never worked with losers or also-rans before but I think if you look at his previous teams before and after he took over, you'll see a clear difference in attitude. Eto'o played as a right-back at Inter and he was happy to do so. I've never seen that kind of mindset during his time here.

I think you're being over-generous. Low-block is not an identity it is part of a philosophy, in this case one that relies heavily on blue chip talent to bring rewards. I wasn't delighted BUT I accepted it as we were getting results. What now?

 

[Baleforce]

I think I've said this to you previously but he's never managed a comparable side to Spurs. Every other team he has managed beyond Leriera at the very beginning of his career had already acquired the experience of winning things. He has never had to truly build that meteorology hiimself. Sometimes the club itself is a winning institution, (Porto, Real Madrid, Man Utd, Chelsea the second time) and just needed a bit of reorientation to achieve. Sometimes they had won some of the smaller prizes already and were on the cusp of winning bigger things (1st Chelsea and Inter). Every time he had the biggest budget in that league and the time he didn't his budget was still enormous and that is the time he started to falter.

He's never had a magic panacea that's cures all mental weakness and creates winners out of everyone. He has always brought players in who match his requirements and that profile of player is usually at the top end of the market. He's also always inherited good situations where yes he has been able to add the finishing touch but that isn't the context he has at Spurs. To think he would be able to do it here because in very different circumstances he was previously successful is very much just wishful thinking.

Mourinho has never turned mice into men he turned chiseled men into granite.

You might have done, my reading of the situations at Porto and Inter is different to yours.

If you look at the squad he quickly built at Porto it was not full of winners, nor expensively assembled, his granite like CB Costa had previously been clowning around at Charlton Athletic. He really did pull a rabbit out of a hat there.

At Inter he got performances out of Quaresma and Sneijder, players who had bounced around due to perceived failure elsewhere.

Yes, neither club has the culture of failure that we do, no organisation in history can touch us there, but I still expected more from him.

It’s also an interesting statistical anomaly that for all of the great clubs he’s managed, we were the first team he took over who had recently cont... (lol, I almost wrote contested there) had... er... appeared in a CL final.

 

[Diamond Lights]

something i dont know if spoken about, can someone explain our recent formation change please? with Vinnie up top, i just don't see any real benefits to it? Is Jose looking to play expansive, is he looking to bring Vinnie in, or is he looking to get sacked with a big pay off?

It seems to have stunted Ndombele's influence, Moura who lets face it, has been a revelation back in the middle has been shunted out wide and ineffective, and Lo Celso on the other side. Also, just don't think Vinnie has done very well in that role (despite a goal in previous game).

thoughts?

 

[Bedfordspurs]

something i dont know if spoken about, can someone explain our recent formation change please? with Vinnie up top, i just don't see any real benefits to it? Is Jose looking to play expansive, is he looking to bring Vinnie in, or is he looking to get sacked with a big pay off?

It seems to have stunted Ndombele's influence, Moura who lets face it, has been a revelation back in the middle has been shunted out wide and ineffective, and Lo Celso on the other side. Also, just don't think Vinnie has done very well in that role (despite a goal in previous game).

thoughts?

It’s odd
Almost as if a shop window type move for Vinny which would make no sense as we don’t own him
Hasn’t made us more effective

 

[Baleforce]

We were better with Vini on than Son at the weekend.

 

[AdamB]

something i dont know if spoken about, can someone explain our recent formation change please? with Vinnie up top, i just don't see any real benefits to it? Is Jose looking to play expansive, is he looking to bring Vinnie in, or is he looking to get sacked with a big pay off?

It seems to have stunted Ndombele's influence, Moura who lets face it, has been a revelation back in the middle has been shunted out wide and ineffective, and Lo Celso on the other side. Also, just don't think Vinnie has done very well in that role (despite a goal in previous game).

thoughts?

Agreed, I dont think it makes sense. Moura has been effective recently but he's pshed out wide, Vinnie tries but has limited impact, GLC ends up playing wider

Our best formation is 4-2-3-1 with Son, Moura and AN Other behind Kane, and PEH and Ndombele in CM

 

[StephenH]

We were better with Vini on than Son at the weekend.

There wasn't much difference last weekend.
Vini is much slower.
Son looks like he's going through a rough spell.

 

[DubSpur]

Agreed, I dont think it makes sense. Moura has been effective recently but he's pshed out wide, Vinnie tries but has limited impact, GLC ends up playing wider

Our best formation is 4-2-3-1 with Son, Moura and AN Other behind Kane, and PEH and Ndombele in CM

I'd like to see PEH and Lo Celso in CM with Ndombele in the 10 role.
Lo Celso gives a lot more energy and tackling in CM than Ndombele and Ndombele's ability to beat a player
and thread through balls in will hopefully give a lot more creativity than we currently have if used further forward.

Saying that I do see the argument for Ndombele in CM.

 

[LutonSpurs]

Still think this clown is picking a very low experience back 4 to prove a point to protect his own image and say the team is not good enough. He also flimflams to the press regularly and has been caught out. We still have no discernible style of play. Cannot wait to see the back of him.

 

[StephenH]

Still think this clown is picking a very low experience back 4 to prove a point to protect his own image and say the team is not good enough. He also flimflams to the press regularly and has been caught out. We still have no discernible style of play. Cannot wait to see the back of him.

What tinkles me off is I stupidly thought last season he had changed and it will be fine, what a fechwit am I.
Leopard and spots comes to mind.

 

[Baleforce]

Not having a discernible style is a discernible style.

Random factor weave your spell.