Welcome to the Jose Mourinho paradox. Possession capped at 24 per cent, two shots on target, one goal. Yet Spurs were the better team in defeat to Liverpool at Anfield, according to sage Jose.
Fast forward 11 days at Wolves. Tottenham possession up to 45 per cent, more shots on target, albeit only up to three, one goal. Spurs slammed for lacking ambition. What’s it to be, Jose?
The team functioned pretty much the same way in both matches; compact, organised, alert to danger, and to the half-chance at the other end.
Spurs scored while Wolves were still in bed on Sunday, a crisp drive from Tanguy Ndombele from a corner in the opening minute.
The goal was well taken but hardly practised. It relied on a sequence of variables to go Tottenham’s way. Fair enough. Same for both teams.
At Anfield, Spurs poached an equaliser against the run of play through the excellence of Son Heung-min and in the second half had three outstanding chances to score again before Roberto Firmino did just that with a late header.
Mourinho saw the outcome as somehow unjust, cruel even, reasoning that Liverpool’s domination of possession was not in fact control of the game but the consequence of Tottenham’s strategic marshalling or defensive resources. Had strategy played out justly, Steven Bergwijn twice and Harry Kane would have rendered irrelevant Firmino’s winner.
At Molineux the same essential strategy played out. Spurs fell into an organised shield designed to keep Wolves from their door. It worked efficiently until the home team executed a set-piece special of their own, Pedro Neto delivering a corner kick with minutes to go that was too good to defend, which he is surely entitled to do, requiring only a tickle from the rising head of Romain Saïss to guide the ball past Hugo Lloris.
Mourinho correctly surmised that the line of questioning would have been different had Spurs held on. Engaging his love of drama, he then insisted that had Spurs indeed prevailed his dominant emotion, one of disappointment, would have been the same. To which the only sensible response is to call the bulls__t police.
Mourinho was miffed that Spurs blew a game they led from the first minute. Pure and simple. He whinged about the inability of his team to add more goals in the 89 minutes available. He junked every member of the team by claiming the intention was not to defend deep. Blimey, we must have been mistaken when he routinely parked the Manchester United bus at Anfield, a betrayal that ultimately cost him his job. He would have blamed Odysseus for stationing the Trojan Horse at the wrong end of the pitch.
The one thing it cannot be is the fault of Mourinho. Jose does not make mistakes. Only the players fall foul of that frailty. Except everything comes back to Mourinho. The culture, habits, mood, attitude, outlook, atmosphere are set by Mourinho. It wasn’t the players that failed at Liverpool and Wolves, it was the schema to which they were chained.
It seems Mourinho’s contrasting emotion on this occasion was rooted in his downgrading of Wolves as a team Spurs should expect to beat. In his analysis of losing matches after scoring early goals, he coupled Wolves with Crystal Palace. Perhaps he just cannot accept that a club managed by a former reserve keeper under his command at Porto could ever be a match for him.
Wolves are a tough gig home or away. They deserved their equaliser and better than Mourinho’s dismissive hauteur.
Rather than dump on his players for failing to execute his plans, perhaps Mourinho should ask how a selection that included two centre-halves, three full-backs, and two defensive midfielders, could ever prise open a nut as hard as this Wolves power unit? He won’t of course because, as the god of all things, he can never be wrong.
Instead he makes a bogeyman of Ndombele for not being fit enough for the Premier League despite being the only connector to Kane and Son, running himself dizzy, and scoring his team’s goal in the process. Woe betide should Fulham pull off a result tomorrow.
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