Jose Mourinho takes pride in building his teams to defend with little to no mistakes.
This is important as it helps them launch counterattacks when their opponents have committed too many men forward.
He has won several trophies playing this way, and his Chelsea team when he first came to England was one of hardest teams to score against in the competition’s history.
He wants the current Tottenham team to defend that way, and they have achieved a degree of success, in some games.
However, against Liverpool yesterday, his players looked to have forgotton how he wants them to defend as they conceded three very avoidable goals.
Eurosports’ Marcus Foley watched the game and gave his verdict on Tottenham’s defending.
He said that the Lilywhites were simply atrocious and made too many mistakes, even more than they did in the reverse fixture.
Foley wrote: “Jose Mourinho’s modus operandi is to eradicate risk/mistakes. That’s the philosophy. Strip it all back and that’s the basis of Mourinho’s football. However, there were mistakes aplenty in Spurs’ 3-1 loss against Liverpool on Thursday.
“In the reverse fixture, the plan almost worked. Tottenham restricted Liverpool to two clear chances – they scored both – and had, including their goal, three gilt-edged chances. Hence, the quip from Mourinho post-match that the “best team lost.’
“Mourinho was mocked for this. Liverpool played the better football, clearly, but Mourinho doesn’t frame his analysis by the metric of who played the better football. That’s just aesthetics. Mourinho’s definition of the best team is the team who made the fewest mistakes. Thus, in the reverse fixture, Mourinho’s comment was at face value. Tottenham were the better team when measured by the metric of fewest mistakes.
“So, on Thursday’s showing Tottenham were atrocious by Mourinho’s measure. Three goals conceded. Three horrendous goals. Eric Dier, Hugo Lloris and Joe Rodon all made sizable errors. And that ultimately is on Mourinho, whose USP is the eradication of risk and thus mistakes.”
He was tired, man. He’s not far behind Verts.
C’mon man.
Was Alderweireld, our best defender and lynchpin injured? He was on the bench right, or have I made that up? Why didn’t he play? I surely didn’t get the memo about him. Why did Jose play a massively out of form Doherty out of position? It bemused me that he was even on the field to begin with. We were overrun in midfield, when Ndombele and Hojbjerg did get the ball they both hung on to it too long, but there was no way we could compete with so many mistakes. I didn’t feel we were too defensive, I was expecting a smash and grab at home, a proper Jose rearguard action, but we gave them far too much space in the middle and out wide. When Liverpool were drawing v WBA, Fulham, Newcastle etc few errors were made by their defences. We on the other hand, handed a team struggling for confidence 3 easy goals and if Mane had his shooting boots on it would have been worse. A very bad night indeed. I thought we were making slow progress under Jose, but we are still lacking quality in a lot of areas. Good scouting and money would help. We have neither!
Jacob – you’re crackers
Sack him for what? Getting to a final and still in the running for the other cups? How many points off top are we?
He don’t have any strategy or tactics,just rely on goal scorer Kane and son,the rest all about defending,playng against worst Liverpool moment a home,levy should sack him yesterday,luckily Liverpool at moment don’t have much confidence it not would be 1-6 for Liverpool yesterday
We know his thoughts on Dier. He wanted to lumber Man U with him when he was there.
For what it’s worth (not much) Foley actually concludes “And that ultimately is on Mourinho.” Heresy …
I’d love to know Mourinho’s real thoughts on the players he’s been lumbered with. You can’t blame him for the mix up between Laurel (Dier) and Hardy (Lloris), “your ball, no your ball, no mine, oh FFS”.
I suppose you need to give Dier and Lloris time to get to know each other and learn how to communicate. That takes time and with such a new partnership, I’m sure they’ll come good in years to come.
One one the u23s Vs the gooners. Still top of the league
Under 18s third. Only lost two