No, just happier without Mourinho.
I'm not saying they can't be even happier than they are with Solskjaer.
-
The Fighting Cock is a forum for fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Here you can discuss Spurs latest matches, our squad, tactics and any transfer news surrounding the club. Registration gives you access to all our forums (including 'Off Topic' discussion) and removes most of the adverts (you can remove them all via an account upgrade). You're here now, you might as well...
Manager Jose Mourinho
- Thread starter paddy hotspur
- Start date
Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports
No, just happier without Mourinho.
I'm not saying they can't be even happier than they are with Solskjaer.
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.
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.
how long would you be happy if we win the league cup? A few hours? A few days?
how much time will you then have to spend watching us fall over our feet in the league week after week shitting ourselves
Woolwich won the fa cup they’re still shite
Take away that I am old, overweight and have cataracts and I am quite the catch for someone.
Also Aurier is guilty but he is not alone
We have scored 34 goals in the league, only Liverpool ( 40 ) , city , leicester ( both 36 ) and united ( 37 ) scored more. Which means we are actually a pretty attacking team , don't mistook possession with attacking cause possession without quality chances being created doesn't equal with attacking
We conceded 20 goals , same as Liverpool and only city conceded less with these set of defender.
Progress is there to be seen , which at least i think daniel levy could see it although some fans couldn't. Problem isn't on mourinho , we have seen his winning team back then scoring goals for fun and kept clean sheet over and over again , now it's matter of the board to help him creating those team again. We as fans should just enjoy the ride.
In replying to my own post.
I think this finding a scapegoat, way of explaining bad results is signs of very bad leadership. It shows signs of José being a psychopath to always have one or more scapegoats in every team he coaches, lately. It can't be good for team morale. The team splits up in groups, and supporting the scapegoat and the other following the coach. For a team is never good. Mourinhos inevitable loss of the dressing room is well in its way.
And Ndombele didn't turn out around because being scapegoated by Mourinho, according to some interview
We’ve got to build from somewhere! We’ve got to start winning something to build on upon it. Even if you claim the Woolwich is still shite, they still have the silverware to be proud of. You have to remember, they’ve won silverware throughout the years, we haven’t for many years!
Good read that, nice one. Still don’t think he’s said anything unusual re the defensive mistakes. Anybody watching that game could see that all 3 goals were gifts. What’s the harm in saying it? They did cost us the game.
But fuck me.. ominous reading about going “back to basics” and sitting deeper to sort our defensive frailty out. If we’re about to get more boring to watch.....
So, him saying the facts and actually what happened is now no longer ok? He has to coddle the players? He has never done that all his career and why would he choose to not be truthful?
The happiest I have seen them since SAF left was when they won the EL and saddest was when Liverpool won the title last season.
Since Ole came in, most I have seen is swings between hope and disappointment.
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
This is such bollox, because Man U replaced Jose with a clown it won’t work for us to get rid of him?!
Conte came in the season after Chelsea cut his head off and won the league, so your ridiculous attempt to show it won’t work is proven wrong instantly.
There is of course an inherent risk in appointing any new manager.
There are no guarantees. But that’s not a reason to stick with him and endure this shit.
Asked it many many times to those that back Jose, but what are you seeing tactically that impresses you? What things are you seeing on the pitch that make you think he has the recipe for success?
Or is it all based upon history?
I hoped that Jose would sort out our defence, dropping all 11 players deep in our half is not sorting out the defence to me, leaving 2 players up field for out balls means the other team needs players back to cover our attackers, but our defenders are so poor we need to defend deep
you can teach players sturcture and basic positioning, but inmatch inteligents and seeing a pass are things you have or don't, we only have Kane that can see the pass before its there (as Eriksen could) in defence we only have Toby that sense's where danger will come from, look at Winks he runs from here to there to there because he just dosn't sense where the danger will come from
you can teach players sturcture and basic positioning, but inmatch inteligents and seeing a pass are things you have or don't, we only have Kane that can see the pass before its there (as Eriksen could) in defence we only have Toby that sense's where danger will come from, look at Winks he runs from here to there to there because he just dosn't sense where the danger will come from
Shame he’s unable to turn that keen eye for critique on himself though.
Perhaps around team selection, substitutions or our inability to create an attacking identity outside of “counter” in over a year he’s been here.
and what happened with Conte? were they playing better football? How well did he do when he had to compete in Europe like all other top clubs?
But then my point was never about firing Mourinho or not, but that trying to blame everything on him is poor judgement. The squad is lacking in quality and that is independent of Mourinho. Sacking Mourinho will not magically fix that.
As to tactics, I see what he is trying to setup and see players like PEH, Ndombele, and Reguilon settling into their roles. But we are a few players short and that affects the immediate product. I would like to see the addition of a playmaker and top quality CB before passing judgement.
Yes where is the passion and fight in our team? The attitude that says you ain’t scoring today over my dead body. I don’t see jose after 14 months instill any kind of never say die attitude considering he sets us to play so “ defensive”!
The team is devoid of a lot as they can't defend well or finish teams off, the home form for a supposed big six team is a joke.
Are you saying that Henderson / matio/ Williams pool had playing are a top CD pairing? What kloop does is make sure his weakest link is not exposed. What do we do? The complete opposite. It’s like saying in the old days when goalie had nothing to do he was great goalie but actually it was the 10 in front who made his job easy . Any team who plays like would have defenders looking bad if most of the game they are under pressure. If we had 70% of the ball and they had nothing to except clear a few headers stop some counters we’d all be saying they are a great defensive unit.
Well the facts around the 1-0 hotel could always be discussed. Was it Auriers goal or Diers or maybe Lloris. Somehow is always the scapegoat that's at fault.
I don't see how it helps the team.
Optimistic in the extreme to say that we are an attacking team. You only have to watch us play to know we are a shadow of those teams in terms of quality. Those stats are heavily biased by a couple of freak results and a period where we didn't concede many but were basically unwatchable sat on the edge of our own box.
Where is the progress? By the end of the day we'll mostly likely be 7th, and could be level on points with Woolwich who have been a laughing stock this season. Where are you seeing progress?