The ink was barely dry on Gareth Bale’s loan deal contract and the boy was talking about a winning mentality and players understand what it takes to win. The Mourinho factor was a phrase coined when Spurs began to noticeably recover their mojo in the Premier League table, but the real debut of the Special One’s magic was destined to come in the transfer windows.
The noisiest Mourinho dementors greeted the Portuguese’s arrival with mindless braying of a doomsday scenario that was to come the moment José demanded unchecked spending from Daniel Levy. Of course this never happened and would never happen. Levy had been wooing Mourinho for weeks (if not longer) before Pochettino was sacked, and the idea that budgets weren’t discussed is palpably laughable.
Instead, Mourinho proved that he was as agile and as brilliant as a manager as he ever had been, by identifying the type of player that he needed at Tottenham in order to break the cycle of mediocrity. Hojbjerg came in from today’s opponents, a club captain that wanted to apply his steel to a project with ambition. Matt Doherty is another no-nonsense, physically imposing and technically gifted addition. Joe Hart has won virtually everything in football both in foreign and domestic competitions. Now we see the arrival of Regulión, along with the return of Bale, both of whom have CV’s that stand up to close scrutiny.
What is under attack, and what will be brutally defeated in the 56-year-old’s regime at Spurs, is the complacency and mythology mumbo jumbo that has left us perennial losers, the archetypal footballing bridesmaids.
I expect in due course that Danny Rose’s soul destroying, ‘Anything from Milan’? routine to be replicated, as yet more fragile underachievers are gently forced out of Hotspur Way, a place that has frankly mollycoddled more players than it has propelled, since the day it was built. Making a Champions League Final is not enough if you lose. Winning is the metric.
Mourinho is taking immediate action – at a price the club can afford – to turn around side that has systematically failed to even occasionally win trophies since ENIC took over. With the wrong end of a billion pounds owed to the banks, there’s never been a better time to cast out the weak minded and get Tottenham winning.
Thank you for your efforts Mauricio, now is the time for action, not words.