@GoonerReverend contemplates St Augustine’s advice to “Love the Sinner but Hate the Sin”- sort of.
It seems to be that wherever there is Mourinho and a football match there is drama. I don’t know what it is but the man and the headline just seem to morph in to one big soap opera right in front of our very eyes. Outwardly he is a fantastic coach & that cannot be denied. Whatever you think of his methods or his style of football in a result based industry he has the results to back up that argument but there is just something about him that makes you want to lash out irrationally. His long-standing rivalry with Wenger the ‘Mr Nice Guy’ of football is well known and even more widely reported on by the Jose loving media. Who can forget the day they squared up on the touch line. Everyone remembers that October day at Stamford Bridge in 2014 when their absolute dislike for each other boiled over into a shoving match on the touch line. The normally civil & urbane Wenger was ready to give as good as he got & his actions seem to scream “Ill F%#@in Ave You Son”. Mourinho gets under people’s skin. He coaches his players to get under opposing players skin, its his way of deflecting any scrutiny away from him or his team. His career to date has been either trophies or the sack. Virtually every club he’s been at has been asked to leave because his methods are toxic and ends up causing his club unwanted attention for the wrong reasons and it has been proven that it really does affect the moral and performance of his players eventually. His most famous and regrettable ‘Cause Celebre’ was the events that took place involving him and his team doctor Eve Carneiro during a game against Swansea in 2015. Even by Mourinho’s standards this debacle was off the Richter scale as far as damaging to both Chelsea and his reputation not to mention the absolute misery and insult he inflicted on the poor doctor just for doing her job.
This was Mourinho in full uncontrolled flight at his absolute worst. His team were playing poorly and had just conceded a penalty so he lashed out at the nearest person to come within his mounting rage. The poor team doctor.
Jose if only you had let it go at that & that being as bad as it gets when your Jose Mourinho but no he had to take it to the limit as a sign that he the ‘Special One’ whose authority was without question. He went on the offensive with even more diabolical behaviour against the good doctor turning the farce into a sexism row. This was in August and by December Chelsea had seen enough and the ‘Happy One’ was now the sacked one, Again. In 2016 Mourinho replaced Louis van Gael as the manager at Manchester Utd promising to bring back the Ferguson glory years while spending an obscene amount of money at the same time. To his credit he won the league Cup & the Europa League in his 1st season at the club but on the down side he finished 6th in the Premier League with the most expensive squad ever assembled. This season appears to be no different he has assembled a very expensive squad but the PL all but looks to be riding away over the hill to his noisy neighbour’s City.
He has publicly squared off with his City Rival Pep Guardiola a few times this season but yesterday’s incident outside the changing rooms after suffering a 1-2 loss at Old Trafford have Mourinho stamped all over it. Lukaku slinging a bottle at Guardiola’s deputy Arteta, Mourinho himself squaring up to City’s goalkeeper Everson and getting soaked in Milk and water for his trouble and a general melee was had by all if you believe the Press. It is Christmas folks so its pantomime season and there is no better panto villain than the MOU. What the FA will make of all this is anyone’s guess but the battle lines have clearly been drawn and you can be sure Pep won’t be on Jose’s Christmas card list anytime soon.
But if you take a closer look at yesterday’s events they bear a striking resemblance to his previous foibles* (steady on – there are children reading) and his need to deflect any closer inspection of what could be going wrong at Utd. Its hard to see him taking down Barcelona, PSG, City or Bayern in the CL and with his loss the PL possibly bit the dust yesterday so where does that leave Mourinho this season after all the cash that has gone to fill his Christmas stocking this season. When you are at a club with the stature of Utd you have to win something or your rivals will start circling and then you’re no longer the shark in the goldfish bowl but rather just another one of the goldfish. In this new world of social media scrutiny and tall-poppy bashing we all want to see Mou get sat on his arse this season and go home with nothing because it makes for great drama. But every drama needs a bad guy and this soap opera that is the English Premier League needs its serial bad guy Jose Mourinho and we need him too because our Mondays mornings would be that little bit duller without him.
Positively Arsenal 
Morning Phil,
What is slightly depressing about Jose is that he apparently has never learned anything, or at least that is the outward and paranoid and frequently objectionable persona he projects. I can understand at the start of a career that he is the hungry outsider, aggressive, touchy and that he feels the slights and barbs more keenly because of his thin skin. Arguably there may have been a logic in falling out with players inherited from a former manager and demonstrating as a new manager who was boss. I think Joe Cole was the first.
But Jose has not changed a bit in 13-14 seasons. H has fallen out with player after player at every club he has been at. He has insulted officials, other managers, coaches, owners, he has been responsible for Frisk receiving death threats and quitting the game. He is still the same insecure, emotionally labile, ever ready to be offended or to pick a fight as he ever was.
I blame his parents.
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I’d definitely rather him gone but ,yeah, it’s a tidy consolation while he’s here that his defeats are highly enjoyable.
It had the potential to be my ultimate nightmare, him being Utd boss, with the budget that brings and the prospect of him perhaps gaining the Ferguson hold there, after some success, over press and referees. A fucking nightmare.
But as this is a different time, thanks to City and Chelsea money, as well as us, Pool and Spurs with strengths of our own, since he began the beautiful prospect has been alive of him failing there, and in so doing hurting that reputation, leaving him with not too many further options, and with a bit of luck finishing his prem adventures.
No mistake,though, nothing is decided yet. There are good players there, he has some very real strengths as a manager, and that mega budget every year could always see him add an expensive piece or two to create an incredibly strong team.
The truth is this year we probably have to be thankful to City. Without them, he would be leading the league from the front, and his record of that is tremendous, partly because it liberates him to be as negative as he wants at all times and perhaps get his teams insanely focused and committed to his ways for each game.
For now though the tension is there. City should win it from here, and there could be some fun with Mou feeling the heat from that; from there, we’ll have to keep the fingers crossed that he doesn’t use that Utd loot too well. Bale seems a distinct possibility.
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Just seen Burnley can go above Spurs, us and Pool into 4th spot if they win at home vs Stoke tonight!
Got a feeling the headlines would be of them going above us, rather than the other two though.
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I don’t seeing him being there in 2019-20 if he does not win the PL. H will implode again without doubt.
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Good Reverend Sir,
It was not dislike boiling over but disgust at an uncalled foul and red card on Alexis by Cahill which pissed off the Arsenal manager. Rightfully so.
Not dilsike of an individual, but disgust at the cheating. The individual in question has some past form in the matter, self-imposed exile in Japan. That was the emotion on display. No need to speculate here.
Cheating or “Theatre” as some on the pgMOB roster attempt describe it. Which explains why Cahill wasn’t sent off, and why the AFC manager was a “little bit pissed off”.
At the cheating.
I don’t know about anyone else but i can’t describe a football manager that sells football playrs like KdV or Salah etc. that can’t manage footballers like Robben or Hazard because they have the wrong agents or see themselves as athletes and not mules a good football manager. Especially when they are specilaist sin signing players signed up to special agents, and being a “football” manager appears to be their secondary occupation/hobby.
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< Samwise The Real Slim Shady Allerdici would probably have done better in his career given the same Wonga.
Let us examine his record:
he has rehabilitated or extended the careers of older players, managed big egos (save his own) in small clubs, even brought through some younger players.
There's little doubt in my mind which of the two can be described in English as a football manager.
Big Sam's big problem compared to the Special One is that he has only been a part time agent, though Ravel Morrison might disagree.
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<< Conte's Chelsea played the far better football, and he had a slighly weaker squad then his predecessor? Sure, helped by the lack of mid-week games, but he was just being a good football manager and like any good manager's he's openly talked about the difficulty of the strains on his athletes when playing three times a week*.
Last season's champions did not collapse in the last two months of the season, and get by with the odd keeper throwing the ball into his own net before moving to chelsea the following summer – heh just kidding, that's a hilarious joke (or an unflattering observation).
The champions last season played the better football over the course of the season, and it's been a few seasons since anyone could say that (since the very cool and likeable MP at City), not assisted by an absurd pelanty count etc. though City did get some stinkers this time last year, when Young pep was especially peppy in his post match pressers as you all remember, which is why i put some Wonga on them winning the league this season last Xmas:
"Theatre"
innit.
*Should Ramsey only ever play on the weekends?????
Once a week…
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Maureen is a coward and always has been remember when he gauged the eye of the Barca coach from behind and then run away, pure cowardice.
There are many companies that make money and churn out goods but the quality is shit and that is Maureen in a nutshell.
He has always been able to spend more money than his rivals even when he was at Porto.
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COME TO THINK OF IT,
how come Jose M being a coward translates to him being called maureen?
Come on stop insulting Maureen!
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The José I prefer was the one that had “nothing to say” during his Chelsea spell post Eva, this “special one” with the likes of Castles brown nosing him is beyond cringeworthy.
I am glad Sam is back though, no “theatre”, shoots from the hip. Him telling that other nutcase Klopp, to just quit whining and get over himself is much more like it. Nothing gets lost in translation.
And I agree with Fins on whom the better man-manager is between José and Sam.
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Matthew Syed warming to the Mourinho vibe in this afternoon’s Times;
“Some will brush Mourinho’s antics aside as a strategic attempt to deflect criticism from his team’s poor performance, but it represents a deeper pathology. A critical mass of football managers, not to mention other sporting figures, greet defeat not with the class of Nadal but with the crassness of a spoilt child. So prevalent has it become that we have become inured to the dangers. To lose is not to disgrace oneself. To lose is to live. We all fail, we all fall short. The real disgrace is not to lose; it is to lose ungraciously.”
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win lose or draw, as far as Jose is concerned he is the star turn, and he can not abide anyone else, not his players, his club, so he is never going to give credit to opponents. He thinks everyone has come to see and hear him.
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Aaron Ramsey and his fitness is much more concerning , on 7 days rest , his body lets him down.
Physical profile needs to be addressed in the next couple of purchesses, the need to buy some more robust players.
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Jose is an odious man, and something of a cheat with it. No wonder the MSM love him.
Just hope the good doctor got the level of compensation from Chelsea I strongly suspect she did
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I think I’ve just fallen a little more in love with Fins. Magnificent stuff.
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Morning
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FH/Tim
It’s time you penned an article. When you have the time!
My excuse is I can’t write. Or spell…
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