There has been what I would describe as a white noise of anti-Mourinho sentiment from social media that is frankly impossible to negotiate, simply because of its bluntness. The “he’s the one £15million, so he should be able to make it work” argument is similar to the argument for paywalls. Any business model with ‘should’ or ‘ought’ at the heart of it is most often doomed. Less of a model, more of a crusade.
The inarguable fact that we watched a lot of football – a lot like this – under the last guy towards the end of his tenure, and that this squad remains heavily laced with the same players.
Instead of throwing money at obvious danger-areas in the squad, ENIC opted instead to make a Hollywood signing that costs the club £320,000 a week, plus a smattering of mid-price/budget deals (some of which have been good, some of which have been less good).
If Mourinho denies instructing the team to play in a stifled manner, and during games, his technical area is bellowing attack-minded encouragement as per the Football London report, and still the players are subdued, do we have a better argument than “he’s lost the dressing room!”? I believe we do and here we go again looking at an ageing squad that has in many instances, run its natural course.