Jamie Carragher has criticised Tottenham’s style of play under Jose Mourinho and says the Lilywhites are far behind the team of Mauricio Pochettino.
Spurs named Mourinho their manager last season after Poch struggled to get good performances from his players following their loss to Liverpool in the Champions League final, 2019.
The Special One is famed for playing defensive counter-attacking football and that is so different from the exciting attacking football that Spurs played under their former manager.
They were in fine form earlier in the season and Mourinho would have felt justified when his team topped the league table at some point.
But things have changed now and they will struggle to get into the top four if they don’t return to form soon.
They will face Manchester City in the final of the Carabao Cup and Carragher reckons even winning that trophy will not justify their current style of play.
‘The big thing with Tottenham right now, would winning the Carabao Cup in April justify the way Jose’s team play?’, Carragher questioned when speaking on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football as quoted by Mail Sport.
‘The position they are now in the league – would winning a trophy justify that considering Tottenham didn’t win a trophy under Pochettino? For me you bring Jose in to keep what Poch was doing in terms of Champions League football and just make that difference in a cup final or semi-final.
‘They are a long way from that Pochettino team and I don’t think winning that trophy, if the performances and league position carries on as it is, I don’t think it justifies it.’
He added: ‘I do worry where Tottenham are in terms of getting back to a top four club. I think they are a long way from that. And the actual football they are playing to get there, they need to have results to play like that and they are not getting results at this moment.’
I for one agree the real culprit is Mr Levy and Jose doesn’t have the tools to do what he has done elsewhere. But and it’s a big but and I cannot lie – he is doing poorly. For a long time while he was uber successful, rival fans used to say of Jose – yeah but could he do it without all the financial backing? Now we have our answer and it’s a big fat no at the moment. To be fair (because I try to be) there’s a long way to go in this topsy turvy season. A lot has changed so far. Teams have been up then down again. Maybe we are just in a down phase and the up is on its way back soon. Personally I don’t think so but would like to be proven wrong. However, if things haven’t improved by the end of the season, a Carabou Cup final (or victory) isn’t going to cut the mustard. I’m sure Levy will not tolerate another year of missing out on the CL millions unless there seems to be hope that next year will be better. There’s a real possibility that if things don’t improve soon, we may be seeing Kane’s final season for us. He may well decide its time to go get a trophy or two elsewhere and Levy will begin the inevitable rebuild phase by reinvesting the Kane cash and I doubt Jose will be here to spend it. Hope I’m worng.hope I’m doom mongering but it feels close to me.
Totally
Hard to see any other pundit doing this and retaining his job.
Was carragher spitting this out of a car window? .
Vile creature who should be no wear hear a t.v studio.
No doubt Carragher had very little to say when Klopp finished 8th in his first year and is making plenty of excuses for him now.
Nothing to do with the time-expired players. At all.
Pochettino built up a great well of sentiment among fans due to his style of play, his title challenges and that historic CL run. (Bolstered by it being achieved against great financial odds, including a world record 518 days without fresh blood.)
But even Pochettino had to go once he started delivering the kind of performances we are watching today 15 months into Mourinho’s reign.
Mourinho’s win ratio at Spurs is now worse than Redknapp’s, AVB’s or Sherwood’s, let alone Pochettino’s, and his style of play has been no compensation.
No coach survives delivering this at a top 6 club, even if they have excuses as valid as Pochettino’s . Mourinho has developed no well of sentiment at Spurs for anyone else to be making excuses for him.
Paying him off would be prohibitively expensive and would make Levy look ridiculous (yet again), but if CL qualification is not achieved I suspected he will be fired regardless.
Well no, I won’t stop defending him if the criticism is low effort nonsense. I don’t enjoy the style of play – who does, currently? – but comparing this side to when the players were at their peak is in bad faith, and saying “it’s not good to watch” is superficial. We all know that.
As for the great summer…we took baby steps to make things right after the long-term neglect. Our only good players are constantly overplayed, so they are burnt out or injured. Hojbjerg and Reguilon were the only two ready-to-go quality players to improve the starting 11, and Reguilon has been injured, as has Lo Celso (one of the few decent players we have).
So apart from PEH, we still have 10 players in the starting line-up who have been here a long time. And surprisingly, not all transfers always work perfectly. You will sign duds. And that’s what happened with us and Gedson and for the time being, Doherty, Vinicius and Bale. Hart was always going to be a backup.
Go ahead and criticise the style – but it’s useful to think why nothing one of the greatest managers in history tries works, and why Poch got fired after a little over a year of mostly trash football.
We had a great summer buying players, or did we not? The style and system is gad awful. Stop defending Jose in the moment. He is our manager now, stop looking else where to blame somebody. I root my head off everytime we take the field because i am a life time Spurs. The football now is unbearable to watch. I cannot blame all the pundits taking pot shots everytime we mail it in.
The pundits are so disingenuous it actually beggars belief – and it’s strange that it still riles me up, even though I know what they are like and have known that for a long time. But as long as they can run their mouth about Spurs and Jose, anything goes, right?
They can’t compare the Poch team that got into the CL several times, finishing third and second, to this team. Granted, most of the current players were here when that happened, but more recently, they were 14th and hadn’t won away in a year in the league (also, the 2-7 against Bayern at home springs to mind – often and painfully). Same players that served up absolute garbage in Poch’s last year or so, losing 20 games in that last full season.
If Jose took over in 2016 or 2017, fair enough, go ahead and compare the teams and he will compare unfavourably. But this is the “late” vintage. The one knocked out of the cup by Colchester. The one serving up absolute dog sh_t against Brighton (0-3), Newcastle (0-1), Leicester (1-2) or Liverpool (1-2) – any results seem familiar?
“Jose is too defensive and the players don’t enjoy it”, “Jose is trying to please the fans and it doesn’t work” and “Where has it gone wrong for Spurs?” are or were the main points for the pundits at Sky and elsewhere. A defensive style doesn’t work and attacking doesn’t either – why? The answer is simple but either you know it by now or you probably never will.
(Hint: It’s got very little to do with Jose.)