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Jose Mourinho

How do you feel about Mourinho appointment

  • Excited - silverware here we come baby

    Votes: 666 46.7%
  • Meh - will give him a chance and hope he is successful

    Votes: 468 32.8%
  • Horrified - praying for the day he'll fuck off

    Votes: 292 20.5%

  • Total voters
    1,426

LeParisien

Wrong about everything
Mar 5, 2018
3,212
8,169
Edit -Also good and bad football is such a vague distinction between the two and again totally subjective, not everyone prefers Pep and Klopp football, some people prefer the style of play by Conte and Ranieri for example. There is so many different styles you can like which is why this argument is nonsense.
Because you edited - as I said in my response to you, a discussion of what constitutes good football only occurs if you think Mourinho does play good football. Otherwise it’s wholly irrelevant because we’d still be discussing whether we should be playing good football.

Are you arguing that Mourinhos football is good football? That you enjoy watching it?

If so, discussion over because it’s all just subjective. You’d be in a small minority but that would be your prerogative!!
 

C0YS

Just another member
Jul 9, 2007
12,780
13,817
It really is. Any look at the trends in football currently show attacking teams are far more successful.
Sort of, but Liverpool became better by not being as attacking and becoming very solid. Honestly, Klopp's reputation protects them a bit, but their success of the last two seasons has coincided with them becoming much more compact and much less exciting. Liverpool are very good at grinding out 1-0 wins against opposition that in the past they would have drew against and that's a major part of their success. Tightening their defence and turing loses into draws and draws into wins. This team doesn't blow teams away anywhere near as much as the liverpools of the past. There solid defence is what has won them the title not their attacking prowess.

Internationally you have teams like Real Madrid, who play largely in a very structured way that relies on creating a solid base for their attacking players who have dominated the champions league with that approach. While Juventus seem to have regressed by changing to a more attacking approach this season instead of having the balanced flexible game by game approach of Allegri.

Now attacking football tends to dominate. It makes sense, because that is what you tend to be doing most of the time, but most successful attacking teams tend to be made out of much better players, and I think we would have one something by now if we were able to at least change the way we play in particular games. I'm thinking Chelsea last year, the champions league final as well might have been a different story if we bought Llorente on earlier and played a bit more directly. I love Poch and wish he was still our manager but this was a big hindrance in being able to win things. Too much faith in his system, and not being Barca or Man city.

The teams who have won the league in the UK apart from the clubs which are clearly better players are not that attacking, but more balanced. Chelsea in 16/17 a Conte team which was not defensive, far from it. But balanced, namely solid defense, quick direct play supported by suberb attacking movement, this is how Conte plays. All about off the ball movement, but on the basis of a solid defence which is able to create super quick transitions from deep direct balls from the defence. Leicester city, speedy counter attacking based on a solid defensive unit and balls over the top from deep. Chelsea again, Mourinho. Atletico Madrid won a title on the basis of super compact brave defending (actually isn't that bad too watch as every big game would be filled with last ditch defending, energetic counter attacks, not built on pace, but built on taking people on one on one).

The last non-big money team to win the league with attacking play was Dortmund in Germany, at that was some time ago. They won because the system they played, no one new how to react to it. There is a reason that both Klopp and Poch stopped playing this super pressing game, because teams learnt how to play through the press a lot better, though most successful teams now press at points of the game, not all the time.

As Klopp said in 2018:

“Last year, our big strength was high pressing, and then when the opponents didn’t play football, it was like, ‘sorry’,” Klopp told the Telegraph.

“You cannot win only with offensive football, it’s not possible. Because you are open and the pitch was too big for that.

“You need to be organised and, on the other side, you need to create. I would love to see us do that a little bit better.”


Klopp's realisation that this pressing style left too open, and focusing on defensive organisation was the turning point for liverpool. It transformed the team from being exciting and able to take on any team and dominate them into a team who regularly were able to win games regardless of the opposition. When Klopp played us in the CL final, they got a lucky first goal and then sat compact (not deep) with minimal press in an attempt to contain us, stop us playing from the back, and it worked incredibly well. But it was super negative, they made no attempt to attack us, and the team now is reliant on having the best defensive unit in England, possibly in Europe. A strong defense backed up by a fundamentally, hard working, defensive midfield three, and the most underrated player in the world, Fabinho who allows them to control games with the ball and protect the back four expertly without the ball.

Poch, never went far enough, he stopped non-stopped pressing but we never had enough diversity, he never really experimented with keeping us compact, the only times we really did so were through particular circumstances, but we were never really very good at holding onto 1 goal leads. In fact sometimes we would be in a safer position with us chasing the game late on rather than trying to hold onto a slender lead. Again, Poch was a massive success and deserved more patience but if he lost the players, what can you do? But we did need to be more flexible.

Now Jose's potential problems are not that he is a 'reactive' coach (I'm going to say this rather than defensive as I think that confuses thing). It's that his instinctive style of playing, normally deep, compact and little pressure on the ball, is considered outdated. Pressing is a vital part of football these days and even lower table teams tend to play with a relatively higher line. Even defensive teams don't play so close to their goal anymore, more try and stay super compact but still fairly high up the pitch, the fear of balls over the top needs to be countered with putting pressure on the ball (and this works against any player who isn't called De Bruyne).

Now I'm not going to pretend I fully understand why this is the fashion, probably makes it easier to counter attack, being further away from goal will protect the team from giving cheap penalties or being undone by a long ranged shot etc. The popularity of pressing came as a reaction to possession based football and this kind of shifted the nature of play to this point. High line as well makes it harder for teams to pass through you as there is less space to pass into. Possession based teams are not so common anymore, so maybe playing deeper might work again. These things go in cycles, and I am sure Jose Mourinho has thought how to adapt to these.

The current thing he is trying to do is quite clearly making us hard to beat. This seems to be what he has really worked on over the break, and this break has saved our season from being a complete disaster. Champions League or not a good run of results will raise moral that we will be capable of doing something next season. Clean sheets will raise confidence too. We have been playing the last two games deep and compact. In a real post-inter Mourinho way. We didn't do this before, possibly because Mourinho didn't feel he had the ability to change too much, but I think this created a team with no identity, instead of the team with an identity that wasn't working under poch. Now this new identity we are trying to create is 'solid' and that is important for now.

Now, Jose will always be largly a reactive manager. Namely, he will look at the opposition and think how can we beat them. You will see us letting the likes of Wolves keep possession, and sometimes I worry. I got very annoyed in how we played against Chelsea, because for me we had to take them on, play on front foot and expose their defence, rather than being scared of what they can do, but that is how Jose plays. However, I suspect we will see more work in the future on how to build quick attacks and more work in the transition next season. This might be a bit different than the Jose of Man utd, but the one positive thing in the last two games is we really need at the moment to focus on defensive organisation, even if next season we play to play like peak Barcelona (we won't, we will probably become a well organised defensive counter attacking side with some room for offensive improvisation).

We need to build confidence, clean sheets breed confidence and creates a stronger player mentality as well. If players feel confident of being able to defend, it will allow forward players to know that even one or two good attacks could bag us the points, and allow us to transfer to various different game by game strategies with the confidence that we will be hard to beat, even if you end up playing a more open game. The feeling of being defensively strong will make defenders more decisive and have less doubts. A positive mentality like that can have effects that last years (btw, post-Mourinho teams tend to do very well long term, and the identity persists well after he's left)
 

fishhhandaricecake

Well-Known Member
Nov 15, 2018
18,702
46,941
If we win the Europa League next season under Mourinho , how would you rate Mourinho's work ?
Bloody brilliant!! It would be a major European trophy and get us into the CL in a now hugely competitive league so yea I’d take that all day long. Don’t think we’ve even got to the quarter finals of it in the past 15 years have we ?
 

fishhhandaricecake

Well-Known Member
Nov 15, 2018
18,702
46,941
Sorry, this simply wasn't the case. The last year under Poch was ABJECT. Slow, turgid, sideways football of the type we hadn't seen since the worst days of AVB.

I get that people love(d) the guy but lets not try to gloss over how bad it became towards the end.
I really don’t like the word turgid.
 

Dillspur

Well-Known Member
May 18, 2004
3,747
9,926
The original question I was trying to answer was how you would rate Jose's work if we won the EL next year.

Of course I want to win something. But for me football is about entertainment, so it would depend on the manner of the win, but it's been so long since winning something that I can understand why people don't care how it's done.

Would anyone consider Poch's time here a failure just because he didn't win something? No need to answer that as this is the Jose thread.

Football for me, is more than just the result at the end of 90 minutes.
 

Shadydan

Well-Known Member
Jul 7, 2012
38,247
104,143
The original question I was trying to answer was how you would rate Jose's work if we won the EL next year.

Of course I want to win something. But for me football is about entertainment, so it would depend on the manner of the win, but it's been so long since winning something that I can understand why people don't care how it's done.

Would anyone consider Poch's time here a failure just because he didn't win something? No need to answer that as this is the Jose thread.

Football for me, is more than just the result at the end of 90 minutes.

Well I'm gonna answer it anyway :p I guess it comes down to what your expectations are and your definitions of success is, Poch didn't win anything but for me his era was successful because it far by exceeded my expectations of him as a coach and we reached places we'd never been to before.

But I do expect to win something under Jose and my expectations for him isn't to put expansive football first, what I expect is the type of football to win at all costs, whether that's reactive football or counter attacking football, if anyone thinks this isn't the case or wasn't the reason he was bought in is absolutely kidding themselves and need to reset their expectations.

I guess though we just need to wait and see going forward, if he wins no matter the style then his appointment will be completely justified, if he doesn't then it's a step back and his appointment was a failure.
 

jay2040

Well-Known Member
Aug 31, 2012
2,635
4,165
The original question I was trying to answer was how you would rate Jose's work if we won the EL next year.

Of course I want to win something. But for me football is about entertainment, so it would depend on the manner of the win, but it's been so long since winning something that I can understand why people don't care how it's done.

Would anyone consider Poch's time here a failure just because he didn't win something? No need to answer that as this is the Jose thread.

Football for me, is more than just the result at the end of 90 minutes.

Its different objectives for different folk and glad that you are content with a loss if we played well as is more than the result, however my objective would be that we win as often as we can,regardless of the style of play, it is the result that one remembers and not the performance.

Do you not consider that in the long run winning means potentially more money to spend on players that will be able to entertain and win as well.
 

Dillspur

Well-Known Member
May 18, 2004
3,747
9,926
Its different objectives for different folk and glad that you are content with a loss if we played well as is more than the result, however my objective would be that we win as often as we can,regardless of the style of play, it is the result that one remembers and not the performance.

Do you not consider that in the long run winning means potentially more money to spend on players that will be able to entertain and win as well.

Never said I was content with a lose but I can certainly take a lose if actually played well. Performance and results are 2 different aspects and I like to look at them individually.
 

H-SF

Well-Known Member
Jan 2, 2020
2,198
10,484
I fully back Jose and think we will do well next season but can't help but feel demotivated for next year seeing how good United look (before the inevitable arrival of Sancho) and Chelsea spending millions in the transfer market, knowing full well that City and Liverpool will 90% both still be at the top next season. As I said before I think we will do well next season and we have an excellent squad but as we lack a few players to really elevate us to that title/ucl challenging level that we all dream of us being at and in the current financial circumstances I can't see those players coming in. I'm basically saying I can't really see a possibility of us getting near the league or UCL title in the next few years and we will probably win a domestic cup/Europa League which would be amazing don't get me wrong but having been so close to the title two years running and reaching a UCL final last year I don't think I personally will be truly happy until we win one of the big two. Bit depressing really but you never know in football I guess.
 

WinksyBoy

How does one change one's username....?
Jun 26, 2020
1,000
1,588
If we win the Europa League next season under Mourinho , how would you rate Mourinho's work ?

He's a winner, it's that simple.

Hard to say. Yes it would be great to win a trophy, but for me it has a lot to do with the style of play, I want to be entertained, I want to love the way we play.

One trophy in 20 years, so I couldn't give a fig. I want success now.
 

stormfly

Well-Known Member
Dec 6, 2006
4,584
11,990
What’s really funny about this so called ‘park the bus’ philosophy Jose has is that he actually coined the phrase after Chelsea drew with us and he was complaining about our negative tactics. Maybe it was always meant to be.
 

Shadydan

Well-Known Member
Jul 7, 2012
38,247
104,143
Never said I was content with a lose but I can certainly take a lose if actually played well. Performance and results are 2 different aspects and I like to look at them individually.

ha Spurs getting relegated...it's alright lads we controlled possession :LOL:
 

Shadydan

Well-Known Member
Jul 7, 2012
38,247
104,143
Again someone putting words into my mouth, that's not what I said.

2tYt6V9.gif
 

Ionman34

SC Supporter
Jun 1, 2011
7,182
16,793
Poch led a massive improvement in results and outcomes compared to what had come before. And he did so playing great football for much of that time.

Jose needs time to evaluate his results but so far he has guaranteed us only one thing - bad football.

Everyone should agree that they would rather have a coach who tried to win playing good football and that Jose’s approach is suboptimal.
Absolute tosh, he's not "guaranteeing" anything of the sort.

He's rebuilding the team at the moment from the defence forwards. Rebuilding their solidity and confidence. What he inherited was a disjointed mess with a group of players who had clearly lost faith in the previous project. A team that was in freefall and couldn't buy a win. Let's not kid ourselves, we were in relegation form when he took over.
He managed to get us to turn it around and get back into winning form, but only because we were out scoring opponents, we were still massively porous when attacked. Then he lost our 2 main strikers so we had a porous defensive unit with no attacking threat.

Who the fuck in World Football would be able to churn out entertaining and successful Football with the handicaps he had?

You want success, you build a strong foundation, you start by being hard to beat. Once you have that in place, you work on how you transition into attack and how you dominate the ball. You don't try to do it all at once, even youth coaches understand this. Drill one aspect until it is second nature, then work on the next until ALL are second nature.

JM teams play attractive attacking Football, they always have. It's a fallacy that they don't, based on the few "big ticket" games where he adopts the pragmatic "contain and nullify" approach. You don't set goal scoring records in virtually every league you've managed in by being a boring, counter attacking side, rolling that chestnut out is pure sophistry.
 
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