Put yourself in Alan Pardew's place earlier this season. You arrive at your place of work and people who should ordinarily be on the side of your employers are calling publicly for you to be fired. They print banners, placards, T - shirts, create a website to spread this message. Other examples abound. Wenger - underwhelming in recent years perhaps but consistent (granted not in an outstanding way but delivers to agreed corporate targets we are led to believe) Despite these, some disgruntled Arsenal fans want him out.
Brendan Rodgers - Manager of the Year a few months ago and now favourite to get the sack. Tony Pulis - walks on EPL water, turns same water into vintage wine for Crystal Palace and felt he was unable to carry on before the start of the season. In my opinion, you really have to be extremely self obsessed or self loathing to want a Football Manager's job. The self obsession bit is easier to understand when it comes to Mr Jose Mourinho (moaninho or mouthinho or motormouth to some). The self styled Special One. Is he really Special?
I have just checked the Free Dictionary (online) and one of its definition of Special is as follows - "distinct among others of a kind". In calling himself the Special One, it is fair to assume that Jose buys into this definition. In fact his vomit inducing Wikipedia entry claims he is the best manager in the world. You can certainly imagine that someone who buys into his myth has contributed to that entry.
Jose's claim to speciality is hinged on his trophy winning record and his ability to make a side difficult to beat. Let me unhinge both today. Those two claims are foundered on quick sand. Yes he has won the league at Porto, Chelsea version 1, Inter Milan and Real Madrid. 4 in all. Good for him. But is that special? Is it unique? Is it distinct among others of a kind. A big fat NOPE. 3 other managers apart from Jose have achieved this. Giovanni Trapattoni, Ernst Happel & Tomislav Ivić. So using that 4 country league thingy to define specialness means that we have 4 Special Ones. It also does not confer on you the title of best manager in the world. We can't have 4 best managers can we?
What about Jose's 2 UCL win. That is not even outstanding. Bob Paisley & Don Carlo Ancelloti have won it 3 times. There are 17 SEVENTEEN other managers who have equalled Jose's two wins. Again is that special? Not in my opinion. Some claim that Jose will improve his winning record. We will see and perhaps he should wait till he is distinct in his managerial record before labelling himself as a special one. I am not holding my breath though. Same claim about wait and see can be said about Pep Guardiola. He has won the league in 2 countries and the UCL twice and with the way he manages his career like a boxer taking on deadbeats to bolster his record, it will only be a matter of time before Pep's league winning record looks way better than Jose Mourinho's.
In fact if you want to be pedantic, you can discount Jose's league win at Porto. According to Neil Ashton of Daily Mail - anybody could have won with Porto. Neil was obviously referring to AvB's time at Porto. Notwithstanding, the comments are relevant for Jose's achievements at Porto too. And if you go a bit further and apply Mourinho's recent comments where he ascribed Roberto Di Mateo's UCL win to luck, you can certainly say that Jose's first UCL win was luck too. Roy Keane (petulance in getting a red card in the first match), Tim Howard (dodgy handling of Benni Macarthy's free kick to allow Costinha's equaliser at Old Trafford) & Sir Alex Ferguson (Benni said after the match that Man U did not take Porto seriously) all conspired to hand Jose his first UCL win and create the myth that is Jose Mourinho.
Another so called claim that Jose's lovers like to spout is the fact that he can organise a side defensively. I find this very laughable. How does this make you special. Organising a side defensively is what Tony Pulis and Sam Allardyce do very well. Are they special? You tell me. In fact Sam did the defensive organisation thingy so well against a Jose side that the latter ungraciously commented that Sam's West Ham were playing 19th Century football. Utter BS.
Tony Pulis organised his side so well they defeated Mourinho's team. Guy Poyet's Sunderland was somewhat unlucky tonight not to score maybe 2 against the so called well organised side of Jose's. Guess what, Tony Pulis and Sam Allardyce have done this consistently and in multiple club sides and with a tiny fraction of the money at Jose's disposal. In my opinion, Tony & Sam have achieved more success than Jose on a comparative basis
I will suggest that the British press take their noses out of Jose's back side and cotton on to the fact that his success is reliant on spending loads of money. In Chelsea, he failed to win the UCL which was part of the deliverables set for him by the Owner. Realising he couldn't achieve this and knowing that the owner had shut his wallet, he picks a fight with the owner, inviting a firing and the owner obliged. He disappears and tags onto another gullible owner desperate for success, in a league where the direct competition had been wiped away by match fixing scandals. Spends a shed load of money and buys his way to success again. Proceeds to Real Madrid the biggest spending club on earth manages a miserly one league win and was fired.
Now he is back in Chelsea when he couldn't find a job elsewhere. He failed in his first season at Chelsea Mark 2, winning zilch and bottling a title challenge and a UCL attempt despite been in with a shout with a tiny amount of games to go. He claims to have been offered the PSG job, we now know that PSG was close to a transfer ban for flouting UEFA FFP rules. Is it inconceivable that Jose didn't know this fact a few months before the punishment was announced? We know that the executives in charge of Man City will rather take cyanide than allow him manage their club and that the Man U lot will forever turn their nose at him as they consider him beneath them. The jury is still out on his second season at Chelsea. The bookies have crowned him champions. We will see how it all ends up.
I cannot understand why owners who claim to believe in building a sustainable club will have anything to do with Jose. He doesn't give a hoot about legacy. His claim to fame is the footballing equivalent of a one night stand. Negative attention and negative energy follows him - disgusting finger poke in the eye of a very ill man; the furore surrounding referee Anders Frisk retirement; lack of class and generosity of spirit that brought about his obscene comments on Wenger. Not for me. He is toxic, always wanting everything to be about him.
My abiding memory of Mourinho in his first coming at chelsea is that of his players cynically pushing opponents to score goals and now, his players viciously tackling opponents on the edge of what is acceptable? His nasty exploits in Spain is well documented. That is what Mourinho brings. Testing and straining the boundaries of the rules and accepted common courtesies to achieve his so called winning record / maintain the false special one claims.
I guess if you are a win at all cost type, Jose will appeal to you and you deserve each other. As for me, the day Jose turns up at the club I support, is the day I stop supporting that club.
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