-
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...
Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports
what do you know about the bang bus?????
Great post. This morning, I prayed longer than I have for a long time. Similarly caused by the suffering this portuguese war criminal has brought upon us.
Not quite true. Though it is not far off mark either.
Thing is that he is offering lot of losing posession in situation that are not worth it.
So on one scale there are his goals and assists ; on other scale there is his inability to help us to control the game and his tendency of giving ball away in needless situations.
Point is - he is player with significant problems, and given his spark seems to be gone as well, I am not sure his wings will carry him into anything better than what he has achieved. To me his most likely outcome is to play for Everton in the future..
"Parking the bang bus" starring Jose Moaninho?
Mourinho has to stop the rot - but do the fans want him to?
Mourinho's challenge is to show he and his team can recover rather than unravel. But many Spurs fans would rather he didn't
theathletic.com
Mourinho has to stop the rot – but do the fans want him to?
Two months ago, Tottenham Hotspur were top. The picture is very different now. Following two defeats in four days, are they getting sucked into the toxic whirlpool that marked the final dying months of Jose Mourinho’s last two jobs?
Watching Spurs stumble blindly through this 1-0 defeat at Brighton & Hove Albion was to be hit with a series of reminders of bad moments of the recent past. And not just the 3-0 collapse at the same ground in October 2019, the defeat that showed us the Mauricio Pochettino era was truly broken. (Pochettino only lasted six more games after that.)
There was something in the awfulness of this game, too, that reminded you of when Chelsea started to spiral in the first half of the 2015-16 season. That was the most spectacular collapse in modern British football history — Mourinho’s team went from Premier League champions to 16th place when he was sacked just before Christmas. The Chelsea players looked so lost and tired and flat, with no energy in their passing or pressing, no spirit and no ideas. Almost every week they were outplayed by teams with a fraction of their budget. And to see Brighton run rings around Tottenham on Sunday night was to be hit with a pang of anti-nostalgia for what his Chelsea successor Antonio Conte famously called the “Mourinho season”.
Three years after that it happened again, when he was Manchester United manager. Mourinho’s first two years at Old Trafford were good: United won the League Cup and Europa League in his first season, and finished second in the Premier League with 81 points in his second. He should have left that summer after falling out with Ed Woodward over signings, but he stayed on against his better judgment. Another bad run followed, and again before Christmas, Mourinho was out.
Just under a year after that Mourinho was unveiled as Tottenham head coach, announcing to the world that he had used his time out of the game to reflect on his recent “mistakes”, to grow and improve. “I always thought these 11 months were not a waste of time,” he said. “They were months to think, to analyse, to prepare. I have had time to think about many things.”
That question has hung over the entire Mourinho tenure at Spurs: has he mellowed or changed or adapted at all? Will this new Mourinho prove more durable than the man who burnt out so quickly in his last two jobs, lasting two and a half years each time?
There have certainly been moments when Mourinho’s positive contribution to this Tottenham job has shone through. Last season, he took over an exhausted team. They were in desperate need of a refresh and beset by injuries at the worst possible moments. In the circumstances, steering them to sixth place in the league to ensure European football can be viewed as an above-par achievement.
This season, there have been moments when it’s looked as if Mourinho had cracked it, finding a way of playing that was very difficult to stop. Spurs put five past Southampton away, six past Manchester United at Old Trafford, and have beaten Manchester City and Woolwich at home, too.
You could call their style conservative, minimalistic or efficient, but it was definitely Mourinho’s and it seemed to work. Tottenham had the best defence in the country and, in Son Heung-min and Harry Kane, the league’s two in-form attackers. They only needed a brief glimpse of the ball to score a goal. They have reached the Carabao Cup final and are into the FA Cup’s last 16 after wins over Marine and Wycombe Wanderers and the Europa League knockout phase. The individual form of Son, Kane, summer signing Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and a rejuvenated Tanguy Ndombele felt like proof that Mourinho still had his old motivational magic.
But as this season has gone on, Mourinho’s Spurs seem to have become less convincing. The defence has fallen apart, conceding late equalisers in five league games they should have won. At the other end of the pitch, a reliance on Son and Kane to do all of the attacking themselves has proven to be unsustainable. No one else has been able to chip in.
When Tottenham go ahead, they have started to look nervous, unsure whether to go for the kill or sit back, inevitably conceding late on, much to Mourinho’s fury. But when Tottenham go behind, they look clueless, throwing on attackers to whom they are unable to get the ball, with no apparent idea of how to actually score a goal.
That is why Sunday night in Brighton, as bad as it was, was no real surprise. It was simply a continuation of that nightmare second half against Liverpool three days earlier, but against a worse opponent. Just as flat, just as lost, with no obvious plan for getting the ball into the opposition goal.
Taking Kane out effectively renders this team brainless and unable to construct attacks. Rather than flourishing in Kane’s absence, Son looks desperately isolated without his partner.
Fans would be entitled to wonder why, after 14 months of Mourinho coaching their team, Spurs do not have any ways of constructing attacks that are not entirely dependent on Kane. It reminds you of the moment in Diego Torres’ book The Special One (which is, admittedly, quite thorough in its criticism of Mourinho) about his time in Real Madrid, when the players would joke about Mourinho taking credit for attacking plans that simply never existed.
Real Madrid still won the title in that 2011-12 season, despite the internal tensions between Mourinho and the squad. Chelsea still won the Premier League in 2014-15 despite issues behind the scenes. The existence of tension alone is not proof that Mourinho’s time at Tottenham is doomed. Spurs are still in all three knockout competitions, and although winning the title this year is unlikely, a top-four finish is certainly still within their grasp.
Remember, too, that Mourinho’s United had a miserable run in the autumn of his first year, which effectively sunk their title campaign. He had a feud with left-back Luke Shaw, his team got battered by Watford and Chelsea, and it looked like his United project might not get off the ground. But they still ended that season with two cups, before improving the next year.
The challenge for Mourinho, then, is to find that narrow path to get this season back on track. He needs the injured Kane back, but more than that, he needs to find a way to create chances without his best player. Maybe that requires Giovani Lo Celso, or even Dele Alli, but certainly not this team. He needs a defence he can trust to do the amount of defending demanded of them. He needs a system that works, having started the last two games with a 3-4-3, then switched to a back four at half-time, for little obvious improvement.
But above all, Mourinho needs a change in mood.
There was a stark contrast between his post-match mood on Thursday, when he tore into his defence, and the one on Sunday night, when he was far more forgiving. He spoke in soft terms about the “human feelings” of his players and even painted a rose-tinted image of the “different spirit” shown in the second half against Brighton, and the commitment he says he saw from his players then. “If you lose 2-0 or 3-0, you lose, but we go with everything we can,” he said. “And the boys did that in the second half.”
Whether or not Mourinho’s analysis is correct is beside the point. He was very critical of his players following the loss to Liverpool, but he has decided to change his tone. The stick is out, the carrot is back in.
It’s Chelsea, West Bromwich Albion, Everton in the FA Cup and Manchester City up next, four huge games for Spurs’ season, even before the Europa League returns in a couple of weeks with a two-leg last-32 tie against little-known Austrian side Wolfsberger. Managing Spurs out of this moment, without Kane, will be as hard as anything Mourinho has done for years. This situation is far from terminal. He has only been in the job 14 months.
In normal life, the fascinating thing would be to see how the crowd would respond to Mourinho in these moments, whether they would stick with him or side with the players instead. Of course, there will be no Spurs fans at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium any time soon, so we will be denied finding out.
But those fans still exist and they still have opinions. Views are divided, but there are plenty of Spurs fans who are so opposed to Mourinho, even after this season’s good start, that they want this to be over as quickly as possible.
Even as Mourinho tries to steer his ship away from that cycle of gloom, some want his rescue to fail, and for this iteration of Tottenham Hotspur to be killed off and replaced with something else fast.
Last edited:
His performance has been fine, more than fine actually. We need more guys like him that can actually pass, beat defenders and create.
His health has been an issue but there is nothing wrong with his performance at all.
There's been a few games this season where he was anonymous.
And some where he was genuinely good.
It's got a Lamela ring to it.
Injured a lot. Then comes back and shows up once every 3 matches before getting injured again.
Not sure if he was anonymous its more the role he is being asked to play
Saw him at RM once , then at CAM and then at CM.
They need to still find his best position
I must have missed these anonymous games, every game I have seen from him he has been one of our best passers and one of the few guys moving the ball forward.
His "worst" games are better than 90% of Lamela's games, the only similarity is that they are Argentinian and have injury histories. You want GLC to have the ball unlike Lamela, he almost always makes the right play unlike Lamela, he is great working with teammates in attack unlike Lamela.
The guy is a massive positive when he is healthy. I understand if someone wants to move on from him because of his injuries but complaining about his play when healthy is ridiculous.
Similar comparisons to us which is worrying.
spot on
and this was THREE years ago!
Lamela has been with us 7 years, almost 8. If we don’t know what his best position is then what the fuck are these people paid for?
Other than the treatment table, obviously.
As said earlier in the thread
Mourinho never learns. Writing is on the wall. Sack him before its too late.
I was Talking about Lo Celso btw
I was against his appointment but when he was given the job I genuinly hoped it would work out. When the results are good you can not complain but when the results turn sour there is nothing else to hang on to. Players being unfaily maligned. Sterile football at odds with our proud tradition. The only thing he excels in is soundbites against other managers. That's not really Tottenham.
Last edited: