Premier League: Jose Mourinho must own up to his failures before he becomes a 'specialist' at it

“He is a specialist in failure. Eight years without a piece of silverware, that’s failure.  If I did that in Chelsea I’d leave and not come back to London. I don’t fear anything in football.” These words by Jose Mourinho about Arsene Wenger in 2014 didn’t just reek of the Portuguese manager’s arrogance, but also testified the confidence he had in his abilities. It was bold of him to utter these words about a man who albeit in the remote past, was a Premier League champion on three occasions. A little more than a year after that, his words gathered a bit more significance when he guided Chelsea to their first Premier League title in five seasons, while the wait for Wenger’s Arsenal for a chance to get their hands back on the trophy stretched to 11 years. [caption id=“attachment_3139786” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho. AFP[/caption] Chelsea’s season that year could be split into two parts - one where they played fluent football and demolished teams and the other where they ground out results. The result of the combination of the two was enough to secure the Premier League crown for the ‘Blues’ with a margin of eight points and three games to spare, but not without a few cracks in their system becoming too big to be not evident. Mourinho had just enjoyed a decade of great success with his methods till that point, but Chelsea’s limp to the title in 2015 gave hints that the self-proclaimed ‘Special One’ wasn’t so special any more. There were problems with the personnel that Chelsea had as well, and the board’s failure to address that, in addition to sale of Petr Cech to direct rivals Arsenal just didn’t go down well with Mourinho. It might be down to him sensing his own shortcomings, and fearing the exposure of the same upon failure in improving personnel in his charge, that might have led to Mourinho taking the field in an angry, frustrated mindset at the start of their title defence in the 2016 season. It turned out to be a horrible title defence — in fact, the worse in Premier League history — and Mourinho didn’t even last half of it. It all started going horribly wrong during the home game against Swansea, when the Portuguese lashed out at club doctor Eva Carneiro, doing what was her duty - treat Eden Hazard, who was clearly injured. It was just a spark that was to turn into a fire. Chelsea kept shipping in goals while failing to conjure up any of their own, while Mourinho could only blame bad luck, refereeing and the world for conspiring against them. It was evident that there were problems, and a frustrated Mourinho’s erratic behaviour only worsened the scenario. From substituting Nemanja Matic after being sent in as one at half time, to continuing to stick with horribly out-of-form players such as Branislav Ivanovic, the master tactician gave several clues to his clueless about turning the situation around. What reflected worse on Mourinho’s part was his inability or perhaps reluctance to acknowledge his own failings. What started out by lashing out at his doctor ended with him saying that he felt betrayed by some of his players. By December, Mourinho was dismissed as Chelsea manager. Fans, pundits and the footballing world rightly deemed it as a collective failure, and just six months later, Mourinho took over reigns at Old Trafford. The setting was perfect for a man who needed to pump his bruised ego. Manchester United were a club that were yearning to regain their lost glory, and Sir Alex Ferguson’s boots still needed filling. It was a challenge that has fuelled Mourinho all throughout his career, but for him it was yet another chance to build his own legacy in English football that would mirror that of Ferguson. His return to English football could be attributed to him harbouring such daunting ambitions. Having failed to do so at Chelsea, there was no better place to fulfill his dreams than Manchester United. But after the passage of six months in his tenure as ‘Red Devils’ boss, Mourinho is seen striving against similar problems. Under him, United have made the worst start to a Premier League campaign, even worse than his immediate predecessors - David Moyes and Louis van Gaal. Mourinho was widely considered an upgrade over their two previous managers at United, but so far it has hardly panned out like that. Mourinho’s United have accumulated 21 points from 14 games, a tally that’s worse than the one under Moyes by a point and that under Van Gaal in 2015 by four points. While his United side have been better off than Chelsea circa 2015-16 by six points at this stage, Mourinho’s managerial patterns of his last term in charge of the ‘Blues’ have been mirrored in his opening months at Old Trafford. A reluctance in changing his formation to suit the personnel at hand has increased the number of voices that have criticised the Portuguese of failing to get the best of Paul Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, two of his top signings in the summer. Unlike in the past, Mourinho hasn’t stuck to a fixed starting eleven for majority of the games like he did in his days at Chelsea, Real Madrid and Inter Milan, primarily because he is yet to find one at United. However, his approach and tactics have remained the same. The problem with that is that teams and managers have figured out how Mourinho’s teams play, and made plans accordingly. Moreover, the static nature of Mourinho’s teams seems slightly outdated when moving towards a high-intensity brand of football. One can derive a conclusion from the predictability in the current Manchester United side as well as Chelsea from the previous one. These are problems that arise from Mourinho’s own shortcomings, and despite a year of suffering, there aren’t signs of it being acknowledged. After a 1-1 draw with Everton that left his Manchester United side trailing leaders Chelsea by 13 points, the Portuguese manager was sore again. Marouane Fellaini’s glaring error that gave his former team Everton a late penalty and eventually a draw meant Mourinho couldn’t blame the referee anymore. It also wasn’t just a one-off result, as it was the fifth time United had drawn a game where in they played well enough to walk away with a win. There were problems no doubt. But Mourinho was more concerned about how the media speaks of performance when his side grind out ugly wins and how they highlight the result when his side performs well but fails to get the necessary result. “When my team are playing pragmatic football, and winning matches and titles, you say it is not right and nice. When my teams play very well, there is a huge change in relation. Now you say what matters is to get the result,” the 53-year-old said after the game. “We were the best team by far, but we didn’t win. But when my teams play matches in a different style, what matters is style of football. When you have teams playing defensive counter attack football they get praise,” a frustrated Mourinho added hinting at the applause Chelsea got for beating Manchester City on Saturday while playing in that fashion. Those words were quite hypocritical coming from a man who once took extreme pride in his style of grinding out those results. After winning the title with Chelsea in 2015, Mourinho had mocked the inefficiency of the playing styles of their rivals in a six-minute speech at Chelsea’s end-of-the-year award ceremony. That fictional story that he narrates in the video below clearly showcases the pride he had in his methods.

But today as he struggled to find a solution to Manchester United’s problems, he’s trying to cover it up with the good football that his side are playing without much reward. That just goes to show how far he actually is from the problems he has been facing for a year now. Samuel Eto’o, whom the Portuguese twice signed in the past — at Inter Milan and Chelsea respectively — told Telefoot that the 53-year-old has lost his magic touch, as he tried  to explain his former boss’ recent woes. “I discovered someone exceptional (about Mourinho) when I came to Inter. At Chelsea, it was already a bit difficult. He asked for three years to relaunch Manchester United, but you have to get your team playing, you can’t defend continuously. Football isn’t like that anymore,” Eto’o told Telefoot. “I’ve nothing against Jose. He is able to pick someone, tell him ‘you are the best’ and he’ll have a very good game. But football is evolving.” he added. The fact remains that Mourinho enjoyed unparalleled success in his first decade as a manager and the law of averages seems to have caught up with him. And as Eto’o pointed out,football has perhaps evolved. So the big question facing Mourinho is whether he has kept terms in the evolution. His current failures point more towards a no than a yes. There’s no doubt about what Mourinho has achieved in the past, but it’s equally clear that he has a bad patch. The sooner he accepts this, the quicker he will get closer to sorting out the problems as he’s certainly good enough to do that. Signs of that are little as of now if this continues it won’t be a surprise if he follows the same path that Wenger did. Stick with his own trusted methods until the time they became horribly obsolete and outdated. The Frenchman has recently shown signs of change in Arsenal’s wins at Manchester City, but not before depriving his club of the Premier League crown for the twelfth year counting. Mourinho is yet to have a such a spell, which in his own admission would make him leave his job, but if he doesn’t own up to his failures, he will be it’s next specialist.