Tottenham Hotspur Football Club play Chelsea Football Club tomorrow, in a game whose narrative has already been written.
The quotes coming out of Chelsea after their masterful 1-0 destruction of Norwich City could have led a stupid person to believe that the war on want at Second Hand Fridge is over.
My Vacuousdrivelometer fused as Gary Cahill and John Terry spoken of the club being back on track.
The truth of it is that you can barely put a cigarette paper between Norwich’s crappy season and Chelsea’s crappy season.
This was no corner turning moment, this was no eureka moment. Instead the Canaries merely continued to flounder as they have done all season so far.
The spin coming out of CFC would make Goebbels blush. Mourinho said:
“We have to play every match as if we are fighting for the title…
“Now the only thing we can do until the last day in December is to try to get the maximum points possible – try to arrive at the end of December, half a season played, and try to be in a position where we can smell the top part of the league and (so) we can believe that in the second part of the season we will be able to reach the top positions.”
The only thing he has been smelling thus far is Tippex thinner.
Chelsea are not fighting for the title now, nor will they find themselves troubled by such an onerous task after Christmas, either.
Not only is Jose failing to manage Chelsea fans’ expectations – with even a vague semblance of reason – he also sees the situation Spurs are in with an eye that is equally detached from reality:
“(There is) no pressure on them, like it is in the other four or five top teams to reach important positions,”
“Nobody speaks about them as title contenders, like they speak about Man City, Man United. They have great conditions without the same pressure other clubs have to do magnificent work. They lose a couple of matches and nothing happens. They are in the Europa League, and, in the group phase, to be fair, nobody cares about Europa League.
“They go smoothly, step by step. They build a team. They bring in young players. They give conditions, without any kind of pressure, for the young players to develop in the team.
Mourinho isn’t even having a laugh here, here’s the guy is a deluded oaf.
Spurs’ ‘conditions’ have been engineered by a coach that has undertaken a refining process with his playing personnel that quite frankly only comes a close second to the time some Nazarene was described as turning water into wine.
Yet the rise of Spurs isn’t magic or historical hokum.
But Jose would have you believe that Tottenham are mysteriously advantaged.
We aren’t.
Had Pochettino flushed 23 points down the toilet from his 13 games of the season, it’s highly unlikely he’d still be the Spurs coach right now.
Jose’s situation, the ‘conditions’ he finds himself in, are purely down to him being incompetent, and his employer having few immediately credible alternatives.
The narrative for tomorrow will be that form is temporary and that class is permanent. That the stage is set for Chelsea to rise again.
I’m looking forward to the first of several Tottenham goals going in, and the narrative being abandoned.
There was a time when Jose added a certain something to the Premier League.
In 2015, he’s merely become the ‘Time Expired One’.
