Football News: Jose Under Fire

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Jose Mourinho is under fire from all quarters right now, with the pressure building fast on him, as Chelsea lurch from defeat to defeat this season. This is a man who has brought success everywhere has been and is suddenly faced with failure, and he looks completely at a loss at how to deal with it. There are lots of claims flying around in the media that he is trying to get himself the sack, but that makes no sense to me. Jose has far too much pride in his abilities to just give up like that, in my opinion.

To me, he just seems to be trying to do the same things that brought him success, but cranked up to a whole new level. The running battles with opposing managers and the FA etc are all par for the course with Mourinho, as he looks to build a siege mentality within the squad, the everyone is against us attitude. The problem is that he no longer has the players stood alongside him right now, they seem as fed up with it as pretty much everyone else in football.

Mourinho's success was built around him, he led from the front, taking all the pressure upon himself and protecting his players from any criticism at all. That has enabled him to get the backing of his players, they appreciate him taking the pressure off them and can play with freedom and a togetherness. Now though, he has lost the players, or at least a significant portion of them, and that has made his constant fights seem silly and unsettling. To make matter worse, he has lost the media as well.

When he first arrived in the UK, Jose Mourinho was seen as a breath of fresh air, the press were so far up his backside you could see them every time he opened his mouth to make a pronouncement. This time around, they are no longer fawning over him, they are even against him in the main, as his rants are now annoying those that loved him. Mourinho has gone from being funny and fresh to become embarrassing and tiresome. To make matters worse he is not dialling back those antics, he is instead increasing them all the time.

All of this seems to stem from the first game of the season, when Jose realised his masterplan for the next few months was unravelling in front of his eyes. Suddenly, the plan to pick up results while the players improved their fitness, as the club returned later than others to preseason training, was shown to be overly ambitious. Arrogant even. Arrogant to believe that the players at his disposal were good enough to continue to win games, despite not being fully ready for the season ahead, allowing him to have a fresher squad later in the year.

That is why, I believe, he threw such a fit of temper at the two medical staff, Jon Fearn and Eva Carneiro, when they went onto the pitch to treat Eden Hazard, when he knew full well Hazard was just exhausted. Exhausted because of Jose's decision to return late from training, as it dawned on him that he had made a mistake, he cast around for someone else to take the blame. Fearn and Carneiro took the brunt of his anger, anger that was truly aimed at himself.

Normally this kind of thing would be solved simply and quickly behind the scenes, with nothing more being said about it as the media forgot about it, but this time was different. Not just because it was Jose Mourinho, who is a central figure that the media love to talk about, but because this was something different from the usual people that are involved in professional football. This was a pretty woman, not just some vacuous WAG either, but a pretty and highly capable member of the staff at the club. This meant that suddenly it became front page as well as back page, because she makes for a great picture to use and support form the feminism lobby and the misogynists was crystallised behind her.

The situation soon spiralled out of Jose's control and, if there is one thing Jose dislikes it is losing control, as it became clear this was not just going to go away and Eva Carneiro could not just be pushed quietly into a corner. The solutions offered to her were unacceptable, for a lot of reasons, not all her choice, and it became clear that she had the sympathy of a large portion of the players. While Jon Fearn faded into the background, Carneiro became a major thorn in the side which is not going away quickly, again not all her fault, though the club have tried hard to make it look that way. The players, already unsure about the late return to training, suddenly had another grumble, and results turned it into something more than just a bit of muttering.

This season has turned quickly away from the triumph of the previous season into a major debacle of proportions very rarely, if ever, seen in modern English football. The closest comparison is Blackburn Rovers, who also fell apart after winning the Premier League, but nothing like as quickly as this. The difference was that Rovers did not have a manager with the kind of winning pedigree of Mourinho. Maybe you could compare them with Manchester United, but everyone knew that Alex Ferguson had performed a minor miracle to pick up that final trophy with that midfield-less squad. Again though, they lacked a manager with a true winning pedigree, instead having a man in David Moyes.

Is that enough to make the difference? Will Mourinho be able to rebuild it within the season? It is certainly far too early to write them off just yet, the season is still just getting going and they have plenty of time to climb back up the table. It is hard to see a squad with such quality struggling to get results for the entire season, though there are examples out there of teams failing to get going early and ending up wasting the whole season because of it. One thing is for sure, Jose will be learning a lot from this situation, this could make or break the rest of his career. Fail and he loses his aura, succeed and he raises his legend up to a whole new level.

Written by Tris Burke October 27 2015 06:24:19