Archive for the ‘Jose Mourinho’ Category

Jose Mourinho In Limbo After Chelsea Exit

Posted: January 21, 2016 in Chelsea, Jose Mourinho, Managers, Manchester United, Opinion, Premier League
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(Jose sits with his medical team and ponders the future!)

Jose Mourinho is in limbo. If we believe all the reports then he wants the Manchester United job. If we believe further reports then the reason he isn’t the current manager is because of Sir Bobby Charlton. He is old school and doesn’t like the idea of the club’s manager being headline news most of the season.

If it was only for all the good things, he would probably be fine with it but Jose, as is his wont, tends to make the news for virtually everything he does and, let’s be honest, it isn’t always the stuff used to set as examples for schoolboys to follow.

From arguments with his medical team to arguments with his players, Jose isn’t too fussy and even manages to include other managers in his occasional outbursts.

Arsene Wenger, Sam Allardyce and Manuel Pellegrini to name but three, have all crept into Mourinho’s radar of people he loves to hate.

The problem for United is actually quite simple. They have tried David Moyes. A likeable, non-confrontational Scot who, some people thought, would be ideal for United. He wasn’t because the job was too big for him.

So they are now trying van Gaal. After all, he is a winner, more like the “United type” than Moyes. He knows what it is like to win Championships and Champions Leagues titles.

Having spent £258 million on new recruits you could be forgiven for thinking that van Gaal would be doing somewhat better than his predecessor. He isn’t! His record is almost identical to that of Moyes except he didn’t last as long in the Champion’s League, with Moyes having taken United to the quarter final stage. (more…)

What Next For Jose Mourinho?

Posted: January 1, 2016 in Football, Jose Mourinho, Managers, Opinion, Premier League
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(Jose tells the team how many players he wants on the bus!)

If it is true that Jose Mourinho wants to stay in England as a manager, he may have to set his sights a little lower than he is used to.

It would appear that his first choice of club would be Manchester United, but the noises coming from Old Trafford are not encouraging for him. If we are to believe the press then Louis van Gaal had to win one of his last two games to keep his job. He failed to do so but remains in situ at United. This says one of two things. Either the press were wrong, (perish the thought!), or United don’t have a successor lined up. If the latter is the case, then Mourinho is not in the running for the job.

Further, more recent rumblings, supposedly emanating from Old Trafford, suggest that the players would like Diego Simeone from Atletico Madrid. I am not aware that Simeone has been consulted on this matter but I suggest it may be a job he could summon up some interest in, despite his lack of English. In actual fact, having no command of English never appeared to be a problem for the likes of Mauricio Pochettino or Harry Redknapp. (more…)

Is Jose Mourinho The Right Fit For Manchester United?

Posted: December 23, 2015 in Chelsea, Football, Jose Mourinho, Managers, Manchester United, Opinion, Premier League
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A lot of people, when Sir Alex Ferguson retired, were under the impression that Jose Mourinho would be the next United manager.

At that time, people involved in the decision making process would have included Ferguson, Bobby Charlton, Ed Woodward, one or more of the Glazers, another director or two and probably David Gill.

My guess is that Ferguson favoured Mourinho and he would probably have had the support of his friend, David Gill. That the vote obviously went against the “Special One” is probably due to Bobby Charlton and the other directors. This would be particularly true if any of them, like Charlton, were there during the Busby era.

Back in the seventies when Tommy Docherty had an affair with Mary Brown, the wife of United’s physiotherapist Laurie Brown, the club waited for Busby to return from holiday for a decision on Docherty. Within hours of Busby’s return, “The Doc” was fired, even though he later went on to marry her. This way of thinking, whereby nothing can be done to tarnish the image of the club, stays with Charlton, but he appears to be the last of a dying breed. (more…)

Jose Mourinho & Chelsea: The Odd Couple

Posted: December 17, 2015 in Chelsea, Football, Jose Mourinho, Managers, Opinion, Premier League
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(Jose waves goodbye to Chelsea again, probably for the last time, but who really knows?)

For a while it was a match made in heaven. Jose and Chelsea had a passionate marriage which lasted three years and only ended in divorce when the bubble appeared to have burst and the passion went out of it.

After a short separation, Mourinho and Chelsea realised that they could no longer live without each other and decided to give it another go. The passion returned for a short while and everything was fine for a short while. The problem is that “short while” has come to define the marriages between Mourinho and Chelsea.

Now he has gone, probably for good, because of the vow “for better or worse” in the wedding ceremony. To Jose’s way of thinking this meant that the “better” bit was for him and the “worse” bit was for Chelsea and everybody else. In other words he was quite happy to take all the praise when winning, but turned into a spoiled brat when losing.

The final straw, in my humble opinion, was when he turned on his own players after the Leicester City game, which Chelsea lost 2-1. (more…)

Jose Mourinho Through The Looking Glass

Posted: December 14, 2015 in Chelsea, Football, Jose Mourinho, Managers, Opinion
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Having qualified for the knockout stage of the Champions League as group winners and having lost their last Premier League game at home to Bournemouth, Jose Mourinho could be forgiven for wondering if he had passed through a looking glass into a strange new world where the unexpected is the norm.

On current form there is no way that Chelsea should have qualified as winners of the group in the Champions League. At one stage it seemed they would struggle to qualify at all! There is also, even on current form, no excuse for losing at home to Bournemouth, so the world of Chelsea appears to be a little upside down and inside out at present.

Tonight they had the chance to redeem themselves in the league against top four side Leicester City, managed by ex-Chelsea man Claudio Ranieri.

Jose has now decided that Claudio is actually a good egg and swears he didn’t mean all those nasty things he said about him when they were both in Italy. Claudio, as usual, has been the more gentlemanly of the two by not speaking at all, a tactic which would never occur to Mourinho. (more…)

Arsenal & Chelsea Get The Job Done

Posted: December 9, 2015 in Arsenal, Arsene Wenger, Champions League, Chelsea, Football, Jose Mourinho, Managers, Opinion
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Jose Mourinho didn’t need to win this game. He didn’t even need to draw this game. He can be eliminated from the Champions League at the group stage, knocked out of the FA Cup at Stamford Bridge by the Wheeltappers and Shunters social club second eleven, and be relegated to the Championship and it won’t bother him a jot. Why? Because he has what nobody else in Britain has had since Lord Ferg retired. He has job security!

He knows Roman Abramovich so well that he knows the innermost thoughts of the Chelsea owner without being told what they are.

Convinced as he is that he has a job for life that still didn’t stop him urging, cajoling and pushing his team hard for the victory which keeps him in the competition if not important in keeping him in a job.

Chelsea were not their last-season-excellent selves, they were just efficient and did a good job when that was what was required. A 2-0 win sees them stagger into the knockout stage where they will lose to either Benfica, PSG or Juventus. (more…)

The Transition Of Jose Mourinho

Posted: November 23, 2015 in Chelsea, Football, Jose Mourinho, Managers, Opinion
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Jose Mourinho sat in his office at Cobham, whistling “Maybe it’s Because I’m a Londoner,” in between mouthfuls of fish and chips and slurps from his mug of Tetley’s tea. His anglicization now almost complete.

He has to retain a little of the Portuguese, after all, it is where he was born and it is where he wants to retire to at some stage in the dim and distant future, or quite soon, depending upon which is your newsrag of choice.

Since winning the Champions League title with little old Porto back in 2004, having only replaced Octavio Machado in 2002, Jose’s star has been on the rise.

He has become a truly European manager, having won the title with clubs in Portugal, England, Italy and Spain. He has also won the Champions League with clubs in Portugal and Italy. (more…)

Jose Mourinho To Manchester United?

Posted: November 11, 2015 in Football, Jose Mourinho, Managers, Opinion, Premier League
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(A cheerful looking Mourinho reacts positively to the news that Real Madrid would quite like him back)

Someone, somewhere, started a rumour. The rumour spread and began to take some shape. The rumour was now being believed and seen as possibly true. The rumour then becomes a story in the national press, who don’t really care whether or not there is any truth in it, as long as somebody buys the paper.

Here is the national press not really caring.

When I read the story originally my first reaction was to check the date. Satisfied that I hadn’t been asleep for five months and it wasn’t April 1st, I looked for proof that I wasn’t hallucinating. No, no sign of any strange coloured mushrooms or green tobacco anywhere. There were the usual empty bottles, but not enough to send me this far over the edge. Therefore, I must be sober, (or as sober as anyone can be nowadays), and what I am reading must have some substance, however tenuous, or it couldn’t be printed.

So Jose Mourinho has an agreement to take over at Manchester United when Louis van Gaal rides off with his damsel into the sunset of the Algarve in 2017. (more…)

Jose Mourinho, The Friendless One

Posted: November 1, 2015 in Chelsea, Football, Jose Mourinho, Managers, Opinion
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Jose Mourinho is a winner, (usually). He is not in the football business to win friends, admirers or even fans. He is in the business to win trophies. In achieving this he may attract some of the aforementioned but, if he doesn’t, he isn’t the type of person to lose any sleep over it.

Having been very successful at every club he has managed, he is now finding out what it is like to be below average. Yes, Chelsea have not only descended from the top of the pile to being average, they have stayed on the elevator for one more downward level to become below average.

What is responsible for this sudden and dramatic downturn? It is not only a collective loss of form, confidence and cohesion, it appears to be a loss of faith and/or trust in the manager. How else can the loss of form of a whole team be explained? (more…)

When Football And Medicine Don’t Mix

Posted: August 12, 2015 in Chelsea, Football, Jose Mourinho, Opinion
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When a footballer is genuinely injured he is usually substituted and the game continues with eleven against eleven. When a footballer feigns injury he is usually booked and the game continues with eleven against eleven, (assuming the referee or linesman spots the deception). In between these two extremes is the “ouch, that hurt!” type of injury.

This is a minor injury which is not serious enough to warrant a substitution. It may not even require any attention from the physio but this one is the difficult one to call. If the player is more seriously injured than at first thought, the physio will be in trouble for not immediately attending. If the physio attends and the injury is not serious then the club may suffer as the player will need to leave the pitch until allowed back on by the referee.

All the annoyance and confusion caused by Eden Hazard going down injured against Swansea City towards the end of the game at Stamford Bridge can be summed up in five words. The law is an ass. (more…)

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