Jose Mourinho

[Maureen]

I believe we took on a manager like Jose with our eyes wide open. In as much as we knew he’d want money to spend. And we had a big shiny new money printer of a stadium to get us those extra tens of millions he’d want to get new players in.

I’ve no idea how much we are losing by not having fans in (seen reports of over £1m per match) plus no NFL, concerts, etc. But it’s obviously going to effect what we can spend. Looks like we aren’t alone, judging by the lack of action from the other clubs in this window.

I just can’t believe we would have hired Jose if we weren’t willing to really push the yacht out and give him cash. I also don’t believe we are going to get rid without giving him the chance to do what he came on board to do. He’ll have at least next season, hopefully after a busy window and then we’ll see where we are.

May be true but exactly where are we heading in anticipation of splashing the cash Jose requires? Can you see him building anything in terms style / pattern of play other than Pulis mark1? If we give him cash is he all of a sudden going to turn into a modern digger t type of coach? I see no eveidence of this happening ? We will play the same shite dishwasher water full football but with a much more expensively assembled squad. As others have allude a good coach will improve players and get them passing and moving regardless of how talented the players are caveat being they may miss one or two top quality players. However you see the method in the coaching leading to a style of play that is directed more to attacking and creating chances rather than risk averse play not to lose shite.

 

[AberdeenYid]

May be true but exactly where are we heading in anticipation of splashing the cash Jose requires? Can you see him building anything in terms style / pattern of play other than Pulis mark1? If we give him cash is he all of a sudden going to turn into a modern digger t type of coach? I see no eveidence of this happening ? We will play the same shite dishwasher water full football but with a much more expensively assembled squad. As others have allude a good coach will improve players and get them passing and moving regardless of how talented the players are caveat being they may miss one or two top quality players. However you see the method in the coaching leading to a style of play that is directed more to attacking and creating chances rather than risk averse play not to lose shite.

Think it was mentioned on here that Jose doesn’t improve players per se, but improves teams as a whole. That’s what I’m looking for. I was seeing a plan of building confidence in the defence until very recently, but yes, the last couple of matches have shown that to be fragile at best.

I’m sure that when we have a settled defence that’s playing well, we’ll see more focus on the midfield and attack. Maybe rose tinted glasses, but often hope is all we have!

 

[Team Tanguy]

I think its a lot of stubborn people not wanting to admit they were wrong in saying jose would be a great appointment. It's made them do a 180 on their view of our players. From saying we have the players, its just the manager letting us down. To the exact opposite. It's hard keeping up.

It's really embarrassing because they think we don't notice

 

[Team Tanguy]

There has been some fluke results this season , us scoring 6 at Utd was one of them,, Southampton committed suicide against us. Those results are as repeatable as Villa putting 7 past Liverpool again.
We are a negative team, or do you buy into some weird conspiracy theory that , every other fan, every pundit and a large percentage of Spurs fans are uniting in a falsehood. A conspiracy to say that a free flowing, attacking and entertaiNing Spurs are dull as dishwater
You enjoy the ride , for me it’s a car crash not a carousel

The denial is getting ridiculously absurd. Like they think if they gaslight hard enough it will work. Cultish behaviour.
Probably chant "3 ... 3 titles... respect..." to themselves as reminisce over Jose's achievements with past clubs who spent huge.

 

[Perryman]

Were you a supporter under George Graham? Do you think that league cup win in the worst final you're likely to see was worth 2.5 years of atrocious mid table football? As has been said before if you're playing boring football you have to be winning or seriously challenging for the title to justify it. If we're playing as we are to finish 6th or 7th then its not sustainable, its not like we're building anything or playing a load of youngsters. This season is reminding me more and more of 13/14, good start results wise but average performances that caught up with us eventually and we finished 6th. It cost 2 managers their job.

Only thing I remember about George graham is being at Wembley right across from Nielsen when he headed the winner. Awful game.
I hopeto see another awful game against City which ends with us winning the cup. I think that about the best it will get with Jose.
Just need to get through another 18 mos of Jose. Cannot see him lasting the extra year to the end of his contract.
Just as well no one is paying £70 plus to watch it.

 

[Distaste for scouse]

He picked Doherty, our standout worst player this season, who should never be in a Spurs shirt. and he played him out of position when he could have simply put Toby or Sanchez into the middle and Davies on the left.

Nobody can defend that decision and it was a decision born out of fear and negativity.

 

[Totti]

Only thing I remember about George graham is being at Wembley right across from Nielsen when he headed the winner. Awful game.
I hopeto see another awful game against City which ends with us winning the cup. I think that about the best it will get with Jose.
Just need to get through another 18 mos of Jose. Cannot see him lasting the extra year to the end of his contract.
Just as well no one is paying £70 plus to watch it.

But that's what football is all about.

Celebrating winning the League Cup for a few days before we go and draw with Sheff Utd at home.

Glory glory.

 

[Cranston]

From the Athletic.

The tension and frustration bubbled over on Thursday night as the Tottenham Hotspur players trudged back into the dressing room, 1-0 down to Liverpool at half-time.

Jose Mourinho was furious with the first-half defending, especially his team allowing Sadio Mane to run in behind and set up Roberto Firmino’s added-time tap-in, so Mourinho hauled off Serge Aurier, part of a double change designed to get Spurs back into the game.

Aurier himself was angry and hurt with Mourinho’s decision. He complained and the two men exchanged words. Things were heated. Aurier, pride wounded, stormed out of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and drove straight home.

Mourinho could have been forgiven for feeling frustrated that Tottenham’s crucial half-time break was wasted. This time was meant to prepare his team to switch from the 3-4-3 to a 4-2-3-1 system for the second half, to give them the best chance to get back into the game against the Premier League champions. Instead, half-time was dominated by this distracting row between the manager and one of his players.

As if to prove Mourinho’s point, Trent Alexander-Arnold scored Liverpool’s second goal two minutes after the resumption of the second half. Tottenham never truly got back into the match.

When Mourinho gave his press conference after the game, he was asked about the half-time row with Aurier. He confirmed that there was a sense of disappointment with how Tottenham were defending, without mentioning Aurier specifically.

“It is the mood of a team that is difficult to accept that you are losing,” Mourinho said. “It is difficult to accept the nature of the goal because the goal is, in some aspects, a replica of the first occasion that they had. So it is, of course, a mood where people are not happy. But then, we had to move.”

As the press conference went on, Mourinho made it increasingly clear who he has decided to blame for his team’s recent struggles. The same frustration that saw him replace Aurier at half-time was then turned on the rest of the defence in his comments to the media.

First, Mourinho had told BT Sport that it was “very, very hard to resist so many individual defensive mistakes”. Then, in his post-match press conference, he said it was a “performance totally affected by defensive individual mistakes”. The rest of the team was off the hook. He complimented them for being “totally in control”, he picked out Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and Tanguy Ndombele for praise, but the defence was another matter.

When Mourinho was asked whether his defenders were simply not good enough, he decided not to answer the question. “The reality is you don’t need me to comment,” he said. “You watch the game. You can give many directions to your analysis.”

While the row Mourinho had with Aurier was a new turn for this season’s Spurs, the broader story of Mourinho going to war with his own defence is itself nothing new.

Two weeks ago, he reacted to the 1-1 draw with Fulham by pinning it on what he called “the characteristics of the players”, specifically his defenders, for conceding so many soft goals. Seeing Davinson Sanchez and Eric Dier torn apart by Fulham, you could understand Mourinho’s frustration, even if you didn’t agree with him saying what he said.

With Mourinho, you always have to remember the strategy and politics behind the outbursts. There is always a purpose, a target he wants to provoke with his “confrontational leadership”, and sometimes, they still work: the transformation of Ndombele since last March is proof of the power Mourinho still has to reach into his players and find a level of performance they could not find for themselves.

But if Mourinho hammering his own defence had really worked out, he would not have had to do it again late on Thursday evening. The fact that Mourinho has had to follow his post-Fulham criticisms with another set of stronger criticisms just two weeks later suggests that the first dose of medicine simply did not work. And it leaves Mourinho in a position familiar from his struggles at Chelsea and Manchester United in recent years: reaching for ever more powerful gestures and statements, hoping that the next one will have the shock impact that the last one missed out on.

The reality is that, whatever Mourinho’s frustrations with his defenders, they are not a bad set of players. The quartet of Toby Alderweireld, Dier, Sanchez and Joe Rodon is a good selection of senior centre-backs. Sergio Reguilon, Ben Davies, Aurier and Matt Doherty are a good stable of full-backs. These players have all achieved plenty in the game in recent years.

What Spurs need, clearly, is a defensive retrenchment in the next few weeks. This has been a pattern of Mourinho’s tenure so far: responding to bad results with solid defensive performances, going back to basics.

Last season, after the infamous 3-1 loss at Sheffield United in July, Spurs went back on the back foot to see out the end of the season. The 1-0 win over Everton and 0-0 draw at Bournemouth were almost unwatchable, but they were still clean sheets. Spurs won four and drew two of their last six games, conceding just three goals, securing sixth place in the league.

This season, after the disastrous 3-3 draw with West Ham in October, Spurs responded with a run of nine wins in 12 in all competitions, including eight clean sheets. They sat deeper, brought Alderweireld back in as a regular starter, and started to do the basics again.

All of this was achieved with the same defensive players that Mourinho has at his disposal now, and yet now the team only has one clean sheet in their last eight league games, a run dating from their exasperating 1-1 draw at Selhurst Park on December 13.

Maybe now is the time, going to Brighton on Sunday then hosting Chelsea next Thursday, for another defensive withdrawal, playing football more like what we saw earlier in the season, with Alderweireld at centre-back and Moussa Sissoko in midfield.

But it remains to be seen if and when Aurier will come back into the picture, and whether Spurs will have to stick with the struggling Doherty at right-back for the foreseeable future. On the other side, Reguilon has started well but is out for another three or four weeks, meaning that the overworked Davies will have to keep playing.

At centre-back, the one man guaranteed to face Brighton is Rodon, who made a mistake for the third Liverpool goal but still earned Mourinho’s praise. “The next game, he plays for sure,” Mourinho pointedly said on Thursday night. “He showed good personality, good concentration, and was good on the ball. He is not a coward. He is a brave boy to go for every duel, even against a difficult opponent.”

But Mourinho will have to do all of this, rebuilding a shaky defence, while also rebalancing the team in such a way to make up for the loss of Harry Kane, Spurs’ best and most important player, for the next few games. Suddenly, it feels like the biggest challenge of his Tottenham tenure to date.

That style of management simply won’t work anymore. He can’t just alienate players and piss them off. He’ll lose the dressing room. He’s probably *already* lost the dressing g room.

Is this the sort of atmosphere that will help secure Son’s signature?

 

[MouraThat]

That style of management simply won’t work anymore. He can’t just alienate players and piss them off. He’ll lose the dressing room. He’s probably *already* lost the dressing g room.

Is this the sort of atmosphere that will help secure Son’s signature?

That's what I'm scared of too.
Don't mind if he pisses of the likes of Aurier

But if he drives Kane/Son out he's fucked up our team.

That was always my worry with Mourinho its the mess he leaves behind when he eventually leaves.

 

[Distaste for scouse]

That style of management simply won’t work anymore. He can’t just alienate players and piss them off. He’ll lose the dressing room. He’s probably *already* lost the dressing g room.

Is this the sort of atmosphere that will help secure Son’s signature?

It's never him is it?

He doesn't take any responsibility for playing a player short on form out of position.

I've had enough now, get rid.

 

[Cranston]

It's never him is it?

He doesn't take any responsibility for playing a player short on form out of position.

I've had enough now, get rid.

I’m not at that stage.

It’s an odd season. We are where we are. We could end the season with trophies. Levy won’t get rid of him anyway.

But I want to see him integrate Vinicius and Bale. And wouldn’t it be nice if we could have Dele back now. Of course, Jose’s thrown him under the bus....

 

[Team Tanguy]

The players appear to be losing faith if they haven't fully lost it already.

All the opposition needs to do is have 1 or 2 players come short from mf/attack and our 1 or 2 man press is broken as they ain't getting no support with these coward tactics.
You can visibly see the players look frustrated and annoyed at being neutered by this Portuguese Pulis. Apologies to Pulis, at least he can park a bus without needing millions.

 

[Fattynomates]

Question. If fans were in stadiums would Mourinho still be in charge?

I’m still a firm believer that if fans were in stadiums then the league would be looking a lot different this year! Having no fans and empty stadiums is making it a crazy season , So I don’t think you can really make that comparison.

 

[Smogz]

I think these stunts are possibly for Levy's benefit. I think it's his way of trying to gain leverage over our transfer business.

I'm not sure not playing the new players that he got and instead put Lamela and Winks on at half time would convince me if I hade made that big investment last summer. If Mourinho plays mind games with the boss instead of communicating with him is time for the boss to show Mourinho where the door is.

 

[Team Tanguy]

Question. If fans were in stadiums would Mourinho still be in charge?

At the very least we'd be close to hearing

"You don't know what you're doing"

"Fuck off Mourinhooo"

 

[Guido 🇺🇦]

Stupid decision to start with that defence, but it seems he had little choice but to start the second half with Doherty still out there, due to Aurier having a strop. Overall an experimental line up that I assume we’ll never see again.

The way it's reported is that he hooked Aurier, then row broke out, Jose almost confirms this in his post-match comments. So the choice to sub him was made by Jose, not that he had no choice. Also, why would a manager sub off a player because they disagreed with something at half-time? That would be bonkers, no?

 

[Team Tanguy]

Wana tackle one more myth I've seen in this thread too.
"Jose doesn't improve players, he improves teams".
No. He doesn't even do that. What he does is buy more players and then has the new squad shithouse with elite level players.

I'm annoyed to even have to remind people. We saw it last fucking season! He joined this club with this squad he loves (perhaps should say "loved" now), his new manager bounce lasted like 3 games. Then we were AWFUL. Shocking football against fodder. The excuses were out. Covid saved us, the lockdown when football stopped is the only reason we scraped Europa. Are people's memories really that short or just selective? Jose was brought in to salvage top 4 and maybe win a cup. He failed miserably. When lockdown returned we still looked shit. Jose did not improve the team nor the players.

This season started shit. So bad that Levy opened his wallet. We got excited and thought we were serious contenders. Now what? Chequebook manager who needs the biggest juiciest cheques going.

 

[Just Someone]

I’m still a firm believer that if fans were in stadiums then the league would be looking a lot different this year! Having no fans and empty stadiums is making it a crazy season , So I don’t think you can really make that comparison.

If fans were in the stadium, and we played the way we had, agaist the teams we've played, they would be throwing Tomatoes at Mourinho!

 

[Fattynomates]

If fans were in the stadium, and we played the way we had, agaist the teams we've played, they would be throwing Tomatoes at Mourinho!

But if there were fans in the stadium I don’t think any team would be playing the way they have been

 

[Totti]

I’m still a firm believer that if fans were in stadiums then the league would be looking a lot different this year! Having no fans and empty stadiums is making it a crazy season , So I don’t think you can really make that comparison.

I think we'd be worse off if fans were allowed in to be honest.

I think we are one of a few clubs that have probably benefited by having no fans in stadiums. Imagine the boos that would have thundered out at the Lane after some of the results we've had as well as the groans and murmurs every time we've passed it back to our defence or hoofed it long. The fact the players haven't had to deal with that means they've probably felt less pressure for a start.

We couldn't even handle Palace fans pushing their team on at Selhurst Park.