Ian Wright has watched enough of José Mourinho over the years to know what the problem is at Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. It’s not Daniel Levy, and it’s not Gareth Bale. Wrighty knows that the Portuguese’s default setting is to keep his players on a short leash. That he just cannot help himself. And so on that note, I will close the blog forever, and thank readers for…
I take a view that the former Arsenal Invincible is playing fast and loose with the evidence in order to make a point. We’ve watched Spurs play fast and furious expressive football, under several coaches, and it never resulted in us winning anything.
Maybe this isn’t a black or white issue and that having a defensively competent football team isn’t a bad aspiration.
I know decent Spurs fans who say “old Wrighty is alright innit”.
He is a cannot and I have an anecdote to prove it.
Awkward atmosphere in the dressing room? That’s not true. “Considering their futures? Only the ones José doesn’t want. The players love Josés honesty. The methods on the training ground ain’t negative. All the above you have written is guess work.
Most clubs that win stuff have “tons of it.
Totally. Once our backs “locked off” properly you’ll see us go out and play. All styles. No-one knows more styles than José.
Lost? Top four still very much on and we’re in a cup final. It’s all good. You just love hating on José.
Not as much as poch. 6 years a failure.
If José gets as much time as poch (6 years) he’ll win more than nothing.
Pundits aka ex-players will always back the players in whatever debate they are having. It regularly annoys me when I hear then roll out the old “you can’t criticise the players” routine – if there have been awful performances of course you bloody can!
Was gonna push the boat out mate. We will again soon. Those worrying about the debt. Untold billions gonna pass through tottenham in the next 25 years. Worry not.
Does that include the opinion that opinions as meaningless as belly button fluff?
“We’ve watched Spurs play fast and furious expressive football, under several coaches, and it never resulted in us winning anything.”
That is true of course. But it’s also true that we finished as PL and CL runners up; which last time I checked, was a tad more prestigious than going out of the Ropey at the first knock out stage, and finishing outside top 4. Not to mention finishing every season above the sort of placing that Tottenham’s spending model would have you expect of them.
Also, as I recall, we had our best defence in half a century and the best defence in European domestic football while simultaneously playing fabulous passing/attacking football, just as a vast majority of successful teams do.
Go on the GetBackToPunchingAboveYourWeights’s!
Lampard signed for Chelsea before Mourinho took charge. John Terry cost him nothing. He has managed many of the world’s elite players and won all the top competitions.
Of course they cost money. Harry Kane and Sonny would cost any club big money. They are both having excellent seasons and cost Mourinho nothing.
Who cares what anyone from Woolwich has to say. Opinions as meaningless as belly button fluff.
We’ll probably go from
Spurs poised to sign Milan Skriniar.
to
Vlad Chiriches re-signs for Tottenham.
We sort that centre back pairing, a big ask I know, and things will look a lot different. Confidence with a secure back line will start flowing again. No second best please Mr Chairman.
Ian Wrong wrong wrong…. It’s clear that too many aren’t good enough.. Davies, Winks, Dele, Sanchez, Dier plus more have let us down and have to go…… If Maureen had a prime Walker, Rose, Toby, Verts, then it would be completely different. Maureen has always had a quality decent settled back four… Half our squad needs to go or improve.
Why do you think we can play “something palatable” consistently with mostly the same players with whom – to borrow your words – there was no cohesive plan to be defensive or attacking and who looked lost under Poch at the end?
He had us playing very well for a time, but there were absolute sh*t games too, including our best seasons. WBA, Burnley and others now deemed trash opposition would take points off us regularly. We relied on everything clicking up front – and when it didn’t, there was no plan B, so we looked utterly clueless, just like under Harry. Or am I imagining things?
Let’s not make one manager a saint and the other the devil. We were very good for a time under Jose (though some people were still complaining about the style even when we beat City), then pretty bad, and now hopefully improving again. Villa was a decent game and given our run-in, if we achieve any sort of consistency, we can finish the season on a high note.
Then get a few PEH/Reguilon style bargains in in the summer and who knows? The old dinosaur might surprise you.
I guess, due to the financial implications of the pandemic, we’ll never know to what extent Levy was prepared to indulge Mourinho in the transfer market
It’s so obvious but pundits and others involved in the game can clearly see there is an issue with the way this manager and his individual, almost unique style of management is not working with this club and it’s players.
The squad have followed the disciplined routines of training methods and tactical playing style laid out by Mourinho as best they can, but I don’t really believe this squad is convinced in what they are doing.
The message may be clear but it’s somehow getting lost, which is why you question why he perseveres with such negative methods, but it looks like it’s his way or the highway.
The constant changing of team selection from game to game seems to be for personal reasons than rotational purposes like it should be, why create an awkward atmosphere in the dressing room which also appears to have happened.
Summer will tell us so much with who stays and who goes, but a lot of players will be considering their futures under the present leadership that’s for sure.
If Mourinho was brought in to win a trophy et cetera to keep the fans happy after the stadium move then it’s been a bit of a failure so far.
Porto?
They cost money, and wherever he’s been and won the big stuff he’s had tons of it…
Very good points. Levy though will want to continue with ‘development’ players because of their ages and resale potential.
None of this suits Jose’s approach, secondly I feel that last summer was a chance for Jose to prove what he could do with a few players coming in. Reguilon and PEH have been good signings, Doherty clearly a Jose pick too.
Levy will have wanted to have seen more in terms of progression this season, which is why I can’t see Jose being given any more time to rebuild than Poch got in the end.
There will be a Poch Mk2 project made up of younger players next up. Watch this space.
How else can Levy do it with the level of debt he’s racked up? He will have based the debt repayment on certain things, the football budget on certain things. He said himself that the team budget would be ‘unaffected’ by the debt, so that means no downward trend and no upward trend.
Unless he returns to the ‘building for the future’ mantra and the spending levels that works within, he won’t be able convince anyone that the team is going anywhere.
The only way out of this purgatory is to find an oligarch… 🤔 😂
Mourinho gets the best out of winners. Players who never settle and constantly keep up outstanding standards. It’s a mentality.
I get fed up with this nonsense from pundits. We spanked man u, saints, palace, burnley and beat city 2 nil. Have a look how many teams have kept a clean sheet against city this season. Have a look at how many teams have scored once against city this season let alone twice. We’ve had some great games this season. We have also had some tripe but you can’t lay that all at the managers doorstep. He has picked plenty of offensive lineups. The players just haven’t lived up to it.
The style we played under poch was fine if you have a team of kids that can run all day. But its no good for the long term for looking after players bodies and dealing with the niggles that don’t go away that all players pick up over the course of a career. Look at Leeds. Because that is Poch’s inspiration. I was a Poch fan but i realised that style is not sustainable. You need a team of lads under 25 for that. Notice how Toby signed a deal pretty quick after Poch left?
Fair point that we haven’t won anything playing more expansively but you also need to play in with an approach that suits the tools at your disposal.
Making the point that Jose’s plans are being scuppered purely by not have a side made up of John Terry’s and Essien’s is fairly irrelevant for me.
If you’ve got players with ability on the ball, let them have the ball, besides, the boring stuff looks like it’s going to win us naff all either so we might as well watch something palatable.
There us no cohesive plan plan to be defensive or attacking right now and we look lost.
I don’t know who the female goalie was on there, but she said something that I believe is at the heart of our inconsistency; and that is that Mourinho was never going to be an ideal fit, from day one. He inherited a squad that was not only going stale; and starting to show signs of wear and fatigue, but also one that had a certain style ingrained into it, that was at odds with his own style. Those conditions were always going to be difficult to work with, without a number of successful transfer windows. And maybe Levy’s lack of football acumen, in regards to Mourinho’s appointment, put him in a position he didn’t want to be in, i.e. having to get shot of a lot of deadwood, for less than he paid.
I think we have to accept that Mourinho will, in the absence of a £300m transfer window, need a fair bit of time; and clever transfer business, to turn things around