I don’t have much compassion for Jose Mourinho, but neither do I dislike the man.
After all he proved to be the right choice to take Chelsea forward shortly after the arrival of dodgy Russian cash and the rise of the mega-money game that exploded in the early 2000s.
His press conferences over the last two years have been lacking the usual entertainment factor, however, his words on Saturday stuck with me: “I am 55 years old and this is the first man-hunt I have seen in football, if it rains in London it is my fault. A bad Brexit deal is my fault.”
Ok, there have been “man-hunts” before. It’s a fact of life in England, dealing with the filthy press. Raheem Sterling will attest to that as the most recent victim of disproportionate and unfair reporting on his life outside the game.
But there’s no doubt, Jose is on the front line, fending off the gutter press.
Of course the story is huge, United is the worlds ‘biggest’ club and there’s no getting away from it, but reporters will dig and pick and lie about whatever they can to lead the back pages and trend on social media.
The Daily Mirror published an ‘exclusive’ on Friday, citing “senior United sources” that win, lose or draw, the Portuguese coach was going to be sacked after the game?
It had to be bullsh!t…
The worrying thing for the club though, is that the fan-driven narrative is twisted; they want CEO Ed Woodward out and want Jose to stay!
This is in response to claims that the board haven’t backed Mourinho.
Am I missing something or has £350m not been spent on players since his recent arrival? Apparently he wasn’t given another centreback? But he bought two (Eric Bailly and Victor Lindelof)? With a combined cost of £73m.
He’s bought (amongst others) Paul Pogba, Romelu Lukaku, Nemanja Matic, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, he got Alexis Sanchez on a swap deal, surely, with the excellent existing squad, reinforcements like that should give a fighting chance?
Fans seem to be forgetting that Mourinho is driving out the Manchester United ‘way’ and it wasn’t long ago that he was being booed at Old Trafford following a string of boring performances.
Why would they want him to stay when he’s unable to motivate such a strong squad of players?
Perhaps Saturday will prove to be a turning point.
His half-time talk did the job, they came out and scored three in a great comeback, but that was against the worst side in the league, and how the hell did they go 2-0 down so easily, could have been three! It’s all very dodgy.
Moving on to the top end of the table before I sign off, and what brilliant performances from Arsenal and Chelsea.
As a fan of either club, thank goodness the transition of football philosophy hasn’t proved to be a big problem Liverpool v Manchester City was a good game, of course everyone was expected a goal-fest, but 0-0 was a fair result and reflected a tight game.
Unfortunately, another international break this weekend, but the following Saturday the lunchtime kick-off is Chelsea v United.
Dare me to do whatever if United get anything at the Bridge, come on, dare me!