A familiar refrain from some fans is that the match stats can be used to prove anything. That’s not true, because what cannot speak cannot lie. As long as those pulling the numbers select the examples with a fair hand, then you get accuracy. The only thing that is more nuanced and can be far trickier to pick up is the influence players have upon each other. Spurs have two players that have a greater effect than the nuts and bolts of their passing averages. Two players that never switch off.
One is just beginning to make his voice heard, Pierre Hojbjerg, and the other as we saw in the All Or Nothing series, is the man that rules the roost, is Harry Kane. This is not because Kane is from another planet, rather, within most sides, even the less successful ones, one can find men who demand more than others. Being technically good enough isn’t enough on its own,
Tottenham’s problem isn’t a reliance upon Kane, it’s the saddening reality that so few other players in our squad come across as being such nice boys, it’s ridiculous. When the row erupted between Sonny and Lloris, I can’t be the only one who struggled to keep a straight face. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen two physically unthreatening men ‘go for each other’.
Given the Mourinho prototype player that we have all come to know and fear, it came as no surprise that José had his ‘nice boys’ speech when he arrived at Tottenham, nor that he regarded Dele Alli as untrustworthy. Mourinho’s CV wasn’t built upon the backs of adolescents who pontificated on chocolate bars, whose obsession lay in nutmegging opponents. Indeed, when Mourinho sat down with Levy in the Amazon documentary and said that Sir Alex had urged him to buy Alli, one could almost sense the disbelief in José’s tone – prompted by having actually met the boy.
Tottenham needs to recruit more players with the focus and work ethic of Kane and Hojbjerg. Until then, Spurs will remain as utterly unreliable as they are now and have been for some time.
In the final analysis, Pochettino couldn’t get a tune out of most of these, so I have no idea why anyone might expect why anyone might believe Mourinho would. Management simply doesn’t work like that, if you’ve ever managed anywhere, you would know that.