The application of Mourinho’s style is under scrutiny once again, and one cannot but feel that there are some forces at play in the media that are uncomfortable watching Tottenham show signs of dominance. After the game yesterday the nay saying began in earnest on Sky Sports, and any appreciation of what the Portuguese is doing in N17 was through gritted teeth. The truth is, the table doesn’t lie.
xG graphics don’t tell many fibs either and if we look at yesterday’s game (above) it becomes apparent that Spurs created very few chances, but were quite clinical in the manner that they took them, whereas Arsenal were called ‘naive’ by Jermaine Jenas for the BBC, and whilst Arteta’s boys had plenty of the ball, they were rarely very clever with it. I’m not sure what Arsenal were expecting from Mourinho, but from what we witnessed, they lacked both the discipline and the ingenuity to tackle Spurs quality and resilience.
As this graphic from the BBC shows, Arsenal like Manchester City and Chelsea before them, were forced into wide positions and harassed into making low quality balls in that could not be converted. Indeed, the more central they were able to play, the better their efforts became.
Despite whatever ‘stats’ any haters, naysayers, doubters or negative-nellies wish to quote, THFC were in total control of the match & comfortable with anything/everything ‘Woolwich’ could throw at them.
As far as managers go it was a man v a boy.