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Jose Mourinho - SACKED


Moyes gets a bad time of it unfairly for me. He was a very good manager at Everton but never good enough for United. However, you couldn't blame him taking that job. That failure damaged his reputation hugely. People were talking like he was an imbecile. Fact is, he is and always was a very good manager at a certain level. And that level is just below the top tier in the PL.

I'm delighted to see him do well (except for the fact it's with West Ham) because he was always a much better manager than a lot of people gave him credit for over the last 5-6 years.
 
brilliant read and rightly scathing.

He inherited a side in mid-table, 11 points from fourth-place, but their fifth defeat in the last six League matches leaves them nine points shy of the Hammers and with the manager admitting that finishing in the Champions League positions would be "very hard".

While Moyes has created a West Ham side greater than the sum of its parts, Mourinho's Spurs continue to be reliant on individuals, emphasised by the impact of half-time substitute Gareth Bale, who set up Lucas Moura's consolation and nearly inspired a comeback.
 
From F365 Winners and Losers (again, you can guess which section we and Jose are):

Tottenham were better than West Ham for the final 30 minutes and probably merited an equaliser. Gareth Bale’s introduction changed the game and it’s rare that Harry Kane has six shots without scoring. But that all reflects badly on their manager in two ways: 1) It suggests that it takes Tottenham to fall behind (this time conceding twice) for them to muster the urgency needed to try and play front-foot attacking football, and 2) Attacking at times like this is likely to be frantic, without a strategic plan other than pushing more players forward. It doesn’t suggest an attacking system, merely a reaction to the game situation.

I wrote this column on Monday about Jose Mourinho’s lessening ability to produce a team capable of winning matches consistently. When you watch Tottenham defend badly and lack an attacking plan, it strikes as the antithesis of both many of his high-profile peers and of what made Mourinho great.


I’m wary of saying that Mourinho is finished at the very top level, because he could easily make that look foolish and it feels unnecessarily cruel. But you really do wonder, given the diminishing returns while Mourinho continues to blame individual players and a lack of investment. Remember that Mourinho, when his appointment was announced, declared that this squad didn’t need any extra investment because he loved the players and had tried to sign some of them for other clubs.


Mourinho’s gripes fall on deaf ears when they lose to teams like West Ham and against managers who pride themselves on finding a style that suits the squad and fulfill their potential because of it. But they also raise serious questions for Daniel Levy, the man who was so infatuated with making Mourinho Tottenham’s superstar manager. It’s fair easier to change him than sign the players he wants and hope this works out against overwhelming current evidence.


After the game, Mourinho produced an extraordinary (even by his standards) admission of his current situation: “I feel that we are not in the position in relation to our potential – even if I think for a long, long time that we have problems in the team that I cannot resolve by myself as a coach.”


That is a clear attempt to point the finger of blame anywhere but towards himself (and Mourinho went on to say that he was still the best manager in the world), but it’s simply not good enough. To say that he has no control over the performance of this team is an abdication of responsibility and effectively a resignation letter. To imply that these players are not good enough for any better than their current upper-mid-table position is an act of mutiny given his own salary.


Tottenham are in the EFL Cup final, which Mourinho may view as proof of his sterling work. But if he honestly thinks that beating only Stoke and Brentford without penalties is sufficient for him to remain in his job, he has become more blinkered than even we feared.
 
Moyes gets a bad time of it unfairly for me. He was a very good manager at Everton but never good enough for United. However, you couldn't blame him taking that job. That failure damaged his reputation hugely. People were talking like he was an imbecile. Fact is, he is and always was a very good manager at a certain level. And that level is just below the top tier in the PL.

I'm delighted to see him do well (except for the fact it's with West Ham) because he was always a much better manager than a lot of people gave him credit for over the last 5-6 years.

He's a good manager at a level, as many are, throw away comments are always easy

- Very few managers who last more than a couple of years in the PL are brick
- Same, very few players in the PL are truly brick, hence why when you sit off, give time or space even the most average player in PL is capable of doing spectacular things.

The Moyes/Jose Spurs/West Ham comparison is a bit of flimflam to be honest.

West Ham is not going to finish in the top 6 (regardless of where we finish), they are a form side, doing well but they play City, United, Scum, Leicester, Wolves, Leeds & Chelsea in their next 8, if they come out of the other side still in top 8, then perhaps. Looking at the table at points in time is often just a fool's game
 
Media and their articles. So now Moyes has done a better job than Mourinho and thus inferring that he is a better manager!

Let people earn their wages with an hack job but all these attacks at Jose - he is human. I will not be shocked if he is not as well mannered as people expect him to be at all times.

I wish Jose the best and if / when he turns it around, I look forward to the comments from the media again.
 
He's a good manager at a level, as many are, throw away comments are always easy

- Very few managers who last more than a couple of years in the PL are brick
- Same, very few players in the PL are truly brick, hence why when you sit off, give time or space even the most average player in PL is capable of doing spectacular things.

The Moyes/Jose Spurs/West Ham comparison is a bit of flimflam to be honest.

West Ham is not going to finish in the top 6 (regardless of where we finish), they are a form side, doing well but they play City, United, Scum, Leicester, Wolves, Leeds & Chelsea in their next 8, if they come out of the other side still in top 8, then perhaps. Looking at the table at points in time is often just a fool's game

think you're doing a massive disservice to West Ham. And including Wolves and Leeds in that upcoming match list is a bit of a straw grab. They're where they are for a reason, just like we are where we are for a reason.

No one is saying Moyes is a better manager than Mourinho. What they're saying is, one has shown marked improvement since they've come in, the other hasn't. And one is paid around 15x the other.

We can ask for better, it should be exepcted to be honest.

Before Marine game, Jose said: "If we lose in the league, that's on me, if we lose this game, that's on the players".

Now we're losing in the league and he tells us it's not him, he can't fix the issues and his coaching methods are second to none? Funny how he's changed.
 
think you're doing a massive disservice to West Ham. And including Wolves and Leeds in that upcoming match list is a bit of a straw grab. They're where they are for a reason, just like we are where we are for a reason.

No one is saying Moyes is a better manager than Mourinho. What they're saying is, one has shown marked improvement since they've come in, the other hasn't. And one is paid around 15x the other.

We can ask for better, it should be exepcted to be honest.

Before Marine game, Jose said: "If we lose in the league, that's on me, if we lose this game, that's on the players".

Now we're losing in the league and he tells us it's not him, he can't fix the issues and his coaching methods are second to none? Funny how he's changed.

I think you're right here and Mourinho has moved into career damage mode to protect his legacy, where it's everyone else's fault but his own as he knows his time at Spur's is fast approaching it's disappointing conclusion.
 
think you're doing a massive disservice to West Ham. And including Wolves and Leeds in that upcoming match list is a bit of a straw grab. They're where they are for a reason, just like we are where we are for a reason.

No one is saying Moyes is a better manager than Mourinho. What they're saying is, one has shown marked improvement since they've come in, the other hasn't. And one is paid around 15x the other.

We can ask for better, it should be exepcted to be honest.

Before Marine game, Jose said: "If we lose in the league, that's on me, if we lose this game, that's on the players".

Now we're losing in the league and he tells us it's not him, he can't fix the issues and his coaching methods are second to none? Funny how he's changed.

Mate, the media is saying exactly that .. it's clickbait brick at it's best

West Ham will end where they usually do, outside of European spots but safe, and yes vs. recent years that is an improvement but comparing Moyes to Jose is a stretch to be kind. I put Leeds and Wolves there because they are both sides that I wouldn't consider a walkover for midlevel sides, on their day they can cause upsets, in West Ham's next 8 games, I saw one easy one.

Losing in the league is on Mourinho, he said he can't fix everything on his own, not he can't fix things. Not interested in a defence of Jose conversation because he has to be accountable for results, but to make an issue of those two statements? he needs a better CB, and the ones he has needs to stop falling asleep once a match (an issue they have had way before him), his record suggest his coaching is pretty good (and it was a prompted question btw).
 
I think you're right here and Mourinho has moved into career damage mode to protect his legacy, where it's everyone else's fault but his own as he knows his time at Spur's is fast approaching it's disappointing conclusion.
What if it is? What if we're like Sunderland, another impossible job?
 
I think you're right here and Mourinho has moved into career damage mode to protect his legacy, where it's everyone else's fault but his own as he knows his time at Spur's is fast approaching it's disappointing conclusion.

Exact repeat of his time at Utd (though with £100m rather than £400m spent)
 
Just read the article. The Athletic is first class compared to some other rags so they have credibility.

A lot of what is apparently coming out of the dressing room is exactly the stuff that people on here have said. No attacking plan, it's just boot it to Sonny and Kane and hope they work some magic, it's all about nullifying the opposition rather than playing to our strengths and he's not working them hard enough in training.
 
Just read the article. The Athletic is first class compared to some other rags so they have credibility.

A lot of what is apparently coming out of the dressing room is exactly the stuff that people on here have said. No attacking plan, it's just boot it to Sonny and Kane and hope they work some magic, it's all about nullifying the opposition rather than playing to our strengths and he's not working them hard enough in training.

I read the article too. If true (and, like you, I think The Athletic has some credibility), most of it is worrying.

I found the stuff about not working them hard enough in training a bit weird / annoying though, if it was the same players complaining about being worked too hard by Poch.
 
After Tottenham lost their fifth Premier League game out of six, Jose Mourinho insisted that the methods that he and his coach staff use are “second to nobody in the world”. But the reality inside the Spurs dressing room is that some players are unhappy with training sessions they think are too defensive, too focused on the opposition, and not as intense as they were used to under Mauricio Pochettino.

The Athletic has learned from multiple dressing room sources that although Mourinho has not lost the whole dressing room yet, some of the team are increasingly unhappy with his approach. This disquiet is starting to tell in terms of results. Having started the season brilliantly and been top of the Premier League in December, Spurs have taken just 12 points from their last 12 league games. They have sunk to ninth in the table, raising questions about the direction under Mourinho.

It is 15 months since Mourinho replaced Mauricio Pochettino. And while the Argentinian’s relationship with the players had broken down by his sixth season at the club, some senior players now look back fondly at that era. A section of players who used to complain about Pochettino’s double sessions and rare days off now wish they were working harder, although the impact this COVID-19-affected season is having on training loads cannot be ignored.

Some of the attacking players, who feel that Mourinho’s training is too focused on defence and on not making mistakes, are unhappy with how little focus there is on coaching complex offensive patterns. Some attacking players have even remarked privately that they are still reliant on moves and finishes in the final third that they learned and honed under Pochettino because there has been so little detailed attacking work under Mourinho.

Fundamentally, this comes down to a difference in approach between Pochettino and Mourinho. Pochettino’s whole philosophy came down to a positive, dominant style of play, the positional game, and his training was built around helping his players to understand it, to play it and to perfect it.

Mourinho’s whole approach is different. Rather than mastering one particular style of play, he is focused on developing and executing a different plan for every opponent. This means that training is largely focused not on Spurs’ own game, but on how to exploit the weaknesses in whomever they are playing next. Training will be tailored towards the specific scenarios Mourinho expects to face, and the mistakes he does not want his players to make or does want to trigger in the opposition. Players have remarked that as they get closer to every game, the atmosphere is increasingly based on fears of what might go wrong, and Mourinho’s insistence that the players must be careful at all times, only playing out or taking risks under certain circumstances.

At times, this pragmatic work has proven useful, as the players have developed gameplans that have proved successful. Mourinho has recorded impressive counter-attacking plans that have brought wins against Emirates Marketing Project, Manchester United and Arsenal, masterclasses in reactive football that took Spurs to the top of the table. But at times, some players have grown bored and frustrated with how much time Mourinho will focus on one particular aspect of the game — hours spent working on how to defend throw-ins when they are preparing to face Liverpool, for example, or on perfecting attacking crosses from deep positions before playing West Ham United. One source said the players are at risk of a “tactical overload”.
 
So much attention on nullifying the strengths of the opponent means that Tottenham do not focus as much time on developing and improving their own attacking game. The priority is defence and counter-attack. Numerous sources say this is why Spurs’ attacking football has looked limited at times this season because there is no plan for how to build out from the back, play through the thirds and create chances in the opposition box.

In that sense, it is the polar opposite of how Pochettino works. Now in charge of Paris Saint-Germain, he always had a clearly structured method for moving the ball forward from one end of the pitch to the other, how the goalkeeper plays the ball, where the centre-back splits and drops to, where the full-back moves to, and so on. With Mourinho, there is no such coordinated plan. “Everything has changed, even the training is so defensively minded now,” one dressing-room source says. “There is no plan to move the ball forward. The plan is to defend, boot the ball up to Harry Kane and Son Heung-min, and that’s it.”

This is an issue that has followed Mourinho around his last few jobs. He has been routinely accused of not coaching attacking patterns in the way that his modern rivals do. Jurgen Klopp, Antonio Conte, Pep Guardiola and Pochettino all work in this way, instilling patterns that help their teams unpick opponents in the final third. Mourinho’s own approach of “guided discovery”, hoping his players would be good enough to find the right combinations, has worked when Kane and Son have been at their best, as proven by some incisive counter-attacking performances earlier this season. But it also has its limitations, as shown by Spurs’ struggles to create good chances against deep-lying defences.

The other major change between Pochettino and Mourinho concerns workload and intensity. Pochettino worked the players famously hard, with hardly any days off and double sessions pencilled in every time the players had a free week. It was necessary to get the players fit enough to play Pochettino’s style of play, but there is no point pretending that the players enjoyed it at the time. They did not, and often complained about the workload, especially during the end of Pochettino’s tenure.

Mourinho’s approach is different. Players have noticed that there are fewer double sessions than before, and more days off, with days off sometimes used as a reward after victory. Multiple sources have questioned whether the intensity of Mourinho’s sessions can ever replicate match situations. When Spurs finally had a free week in the build-up to the FA Cup game against Wycombe Wanderers on 25 January, some of the players were relieved to have finally been worked hard.

Of course, Mourinho is operating in the unique circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. There were only five weeks between the end of the last Premier League season and the September 2020 international break. They have already played 40 games in all competitions so far this season, with the possibility of another 23 to come if they go the distance in the Europa League. They have played more matches than any side in Europe’s top five leagues this season, so Mourinho has been forced to manage the physical loads of his entire squad to keep them fit through an exhausting calendar. No team in the world is training or playing as intensely now as they did before the pandemic.

Another view is that this was a team that was in decline before Mourinho arrived, whose declining performances in the Premier League in 2018-19 were masked by their unlikely run to the Champions League final. And that Mourinho’s job of transforming the mentality of these players, most of whom were here under Pochettino, still needs more time to deliver consistent results. Spurs are in the Carabao Cup final, almost in the Europa League last 16, and not out of European contention in the league. This season can still end well. Mourinho’s first season at Manchester United was not much fun at points but it still ended with the League Cup and Europa League trophies, and a place in the following year’s Champions League.

But ultimately, right now, Mourinho’s mixture of analysis, defensive work and tactical drills designed for each opponent is not prompting the right response in the Tottenham players.

When Mourinho was asked last Wednesday what he would be doing in training to iron out the defensive errors that have undermined Tottenham’s season, he replied that he would be sending the players more clips on their phones for them to mull over, before more individual analysis meetings and then a session to prepare them for Wolfsberger AC in the Europa League.

“Everything we can, everything we can,” Mourinho said. “Starting with players receiving on their own phones and iPads immediately analysis of all the situations. So they can read, they can analyse by themselves. Then the individual meeting analysing every situation and trying to improve every situation. Then on the pitch, we managed to have two good training sessions today and yesterday. Yesterday, they had individual work with (first-team assistant) Ledley King and the staff. And then today, we had a collective session in relation to the game tomorrow. Work: that’s the only thing that we can do to try to improve.”

But Tottenham’s decline in form recently suggests that Mourinho’s methods are not having the desired effect, despite what he said in his press conference after the West Ham game on Sunday.

When Mourinho arrived in English football in 2004, he was a revolutionary. His approach of tactical periodisation, with everything geared towards the game itself, had been very successful in Portugal and worked just as well in England too. Players loved the fact that everything Mourinho did had an application, and everything was with the ball. His methods were wildly successful: Chelsea won the 2004-05 Premier League, 95 points, 15 goals conceded, before retaining it the following era.

That was almost 17 years ago and other coaches now think that Mourinho’s rivals have caught up with him. The idea of all training being with the ball is no longer new, especially as other managers set new standards for technical football at the top of the league.

Mourinho’s other great strength when he first arrived, of meticulous attention to detail and rigorous analysis of his opponents, has itself been eroded now that every Premier League club has its own analysis department.

And then Mourinho’s powers of motivation, the psychological tricks and games he plays with players to provoke the right response — what he calls “confrontational leadership” — have consistently shown to be less effective with this generation of players than they were with his great Chelsea, Porto and Inter Milan teams. At Spurs, Tanguy Ndombele has responded well to Mourinho’s methods, and Kane, Son and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg have shone this season, but plenty of other players have plateaued or declined since Mourinho took over. This generation of players does not always respond to psychological triggers as the last generation did.

Mourinho now finds himself — 15 months, three transfer windows, and 75 matches — into his Tottenham reign, complaining that there are “problems in the team that I cannot resolve by myself as a coach”. And yet he must also know that the only route out of this situation is to win games. We will all know soon enough whether Mourinho’s coaching methods remain as good as he still thinks they are.
 
I read the article too. If true (and, like you, I think The Athletic has some credibility), most of it is worrying.

I found the stuff about not working them hard enough in training a bit weird / annoying though, if it was the same players complaining about being worked too hard by Poch.

The question on that would be timing, I find it hard to believe that in last 3-4 weeks we haven't been working on attacking plays (considering how we are playing).
 
The question on that would be timing, I find it hard to believe that in last 3-4 weeks we haven't been working on attacking plays (considering how we are playing).

Yeah possibly - I've certainly been glad that we've at least been trying to play a more attacking brand of football.
 
We've played teams that sit back primarily and we have put extra attacking bodies on the pitch - so we're naturally positioned higher up with more attack minded players available to get on the ball - that isn't evidence of there being a plan being worked on on the training pitch.

That's not to say it isn't being worked on but there's no evidence as of yet that it is.
 
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In that sense, it is the polar opposite of how Pochettino works. Now in charge of Paris Saint-Germain, he always had a clearly structured method for moving the ball forward from one end of the pitch to the other, how the goalkeeper plays the ball, where the centre-back splits and drops to, where the full-back moves to, and so on.

This is absolute flimflam, Poch style at it's best has
- Yes, FB's forward with a DM falling back to cover
- Pressing game, typically with a higher line
- Possession game

Where Poch's game failed in my opinion was there wasn't much in the final 3rd movements, honestly our strategy was get to Eriksen and hope for the best, or have Toby hoof direct. Kane, Son & Dele did the rest (similar to how it is now minus Dele)

Compare that to a Pool or even Leicester where there are clearly motions to get the ball (quite direct) to front runners.
 
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