Mourinho Victories
For a fair amount of his career, Jose Mourinho has been a serial winner. Winner of the Primeira Liga, UEFA Cup and Champions League with Porto. Winner of the Premier League, FA Cup and League Cup with Chelsea. The first ever Italian treble with Inter Milan. La Liga with Real Madrid.
Although nothing that quite matches second place with Manchester United, of course.
There has been a decline in recent years though for Mourinho, as his methodologies appear increasingly outdated. No longer is he the fresh, young and controversial manager. More of a demagogue of doom and shithousery.
With a lack of trophies coming in, Mourinho now has to find other ways to win.
After a miserable defeat against Sheffield United, Mourinho suddenly appeared in an interview with Chris Wilder. The Portuguese manager pulled Wilder into a congratulatory hug, bringing out a surprising amount of emotion from the usually gruff Yorkshireman.
“Class act, by the way,” uttered Wilder.
It was an act of appreciation and kindness towards Wilder from Mourinho, but it was hard to escape the somewhat performative aspect of it. After seeing his Tottenham side completely outplayed by the Blades and criticising his players’ lack of fight, he then took an opportunity to make himself seem like the ‘good guy’ by intervening in Wilder’s interview.
It’s a cynical take, but not an unjustified one considering Mourinho’s penchant in performance and mind games.
Last night, his Spurs side claimed a real on pitch victory with a 1-0 win against Everton. But that probably wasn’t Mourinho’s biggest win of the night, after an angry spat between Hugo Lloris and Son Heung-Min at half time.
It was a display of competitive anger from the Tottenham captain, and played perfectly into Mourinho’s narrative after his criticisms following the Sheffield United match.
This was the rebound from accusing his players of lacking fight, a vindication of Mourinho’s perfectly plotted mind games. He labelled the clash as “beautiful”.
In fairness to Mourinho, this could well have been part of his great plan - riling up the players to get some kind of reaction. But it does seem like he may have enjoyed the victory of his narrative a little too much. Another win (of sorts) for the Mourinho collection.
Elsewhere, Manchester United are still good - if a little haphazard - scoring five but conceding two against Bournemouth. Newcastle continue to be a weird conundrum of nonsense, terrible football and Allan Saint-Maximin being excellent as they managed a 2-2 draw against West Ham.
At the top of the table, Liverpool and Manchester City provided a relatively neat summation of their seasons. The Reds won despite not really being on it, and the Citizens lost to a long range lob despite having a ridiculous amount of chances (an xG of 3.53 according to Infogol - yielding zero goals).
While it was a frustrating night for City, it was an superb game of football to watch for the neutral. And it was wholly satisfying that it was on the BBC, with viewing figures reaching 5.7 million - record for a Premier League.
And in League One, the playoffs did turn out to be very exciting. A penalty shootout victory for Oxford United against Portsmouth, while Joey Barton’s Fleetwood violently imploded with two men getting sent off in their first leg against Wycombe.
Who would have ever thought that a Joey Barton side would lose their heads, commit stupid acts of violence and ultimately hinder themselves through it?