The Mourinho Thread

[TrippingStep 336]

Ribery and Robben do 'extra work' and it's one of the main reason's Bayern are as good as they are.

Barca became as good as they are due to their work off the ball instead off on it, Southampton are overachieving miles ahead of their station for exactly the same reason.

Sometimes it is exaggerated how much, but balance is important in a team, do you know what's stopping City being as good as anyone? Pellegrini doesn't make his attacking midfielders work off the ball, yes they will get some fancy stats and a few 5-0 beating's, but in this day in age, to be a dominant force in football, mainly players have to be good at both aspects of the game. It's funny because despite us being quite average and them amazing at times we are still above them with harder fixtures (City have all the top 7 away still to come bar Chelsea).

I mean i keep reading how Azpilicueta should play ahead of Ivanovic because he is better going forward (same with Bertrand/Cole), yet the same people shoot down any suggestion of the AM's having to be good off the ball saying, it's completely contradictory and rather hypocritical.

It's not like Hazard and Oscar wasn't helping the fullbacks with Benitez.

Hazard was working much more with Benitez than Di Matteo. The match against Tottenham, Hazard was working like he never did before and was still a big threat.

Otherwise on the set-pieces, I think we play too much one on one, a mix of zone and one on one would protect us better. Even not great delivery is dangerous to us because we don't protect the first zone before the first post, if we did, failed delivery would be stopped before the ball is coming in the battlezone of one on one.

[Henrique 9,133]

His presse conferences are getting really annoying. WTF is that.

Game after game is the same old song: "the team failed to kill the game, after creating so many chances".

The team is not creating so many chances, in fact his team is lazy. Now we have this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/chelsea/10524466/Jose-Mourinho-ready-to-change-Chelsea-style-after-missed-chances-end-with-Capital-One-Cup-exit-at-Sunderland.html

He are trying to convince us that his team play an attacking football, and he want to change to a pragmatic approach. His team don't even have a playing style. Games ago he said the right strategy was: wait for an opponent mistake. His current Chelsea is boring at best.

[hjperdeath 2,226]

His presse conferences are getting really annoying. WTF is that.

Game after game is the same old song: "the team failed to kill the game, after creating so many chances".

The team is not creating so many chances, in fact his team is lazy. Now we have this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/chelsea/10524466/Jose-Mourinho-ready-to-change-Chelsea-style-after-missed-chances-end-with-Capital-One-Cup-exit-at-Sunderland.html

He are trying to convince us that his team play an attacking football, and he want to change to a pragmatic approach. His team don't even have a playing style. Games ago he said the right strategy was: wait for an opponent mistake. His current Chelsea is boring at best.

"We scored against Sunderland and afterwards we had two or three more chances. If we had scored then goodbye, but we kept the opponents alive."

We did create chances, didn't finish them...

[TrippingStep 336]

His presse conferences are getting really annoying. WTF is that.

Game after game is the same old song: "the team failed to kill the game, after creating so many chances".

The team is not creating so many chances, in fact his team is lazy. Now we have this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/chelsea/10524466/Jose-Mourinho-ready-to-change-Chelsea-style-after-missed-chances-end-with-Capital-One-Cup-exit-at-Sunderland.html

He are trying to convince us that his team play an attacking football, and he want to change to a pragmatic approach. His team don't even have a playing style. Games ago he said the right strategy was: wait for an opponent mistake. His current Chelsea is boring at best.

I'm really not surprised.

Watching Mourinho's team over the years, his motto has always been to wait for an opponent mistake. Just look at Real against Manchester United las year in the champion's league. Very boring matches, Manchester parking the bus and Real passing the ball in front of them waiting for a mistake.

In possession of the ball, the central defenders are quite deep, the team set-up waiting for the other team to make a mistake in their pressing and leaving spaces.

Problem is that this team has the worst midfielders of all the teams he has coached.

In porto, first Chelsea, Inter, he had much better all-around and defensive midfielders.

In possession of the ball, his teams doesn't play in a progressive way.

His biggest merits as a coach have been to putting back old school defending and some fighting, dirty plays.

The problem he has now in the premier league is that the teams are not so naive as they used to do, overcommiting players in attack and leaving huge space easily. And we don't have players that can bully other players if we are not playing well like his first chelea team who was ultra powerful.

Just look at Schalke, like a lot of german teams that are not Bayern and Dortmund, they are easily countered as they leave huge space behind them.

[TorontoChelsea 4,064]

I actually think we are playing worse than we have in a long time disguised only by some rather extreme and unsustainable luck (blown calls, very easy CL group, etc...). I don't know exactly what's wrong, but it's a lot. How many good games have we played? I'm talking about dominating a team, just playing fluidly and coherently. Maybe 2-5 games all season? I was thinking today that we don't have a single player particularly well. Who is our Player of the Season so far? I can't think of a single deserving player. People like to divide our players up into "good player/bad player" categories but the truth is that our team has been almost all mediocre. Our entire attack seems to consist of our attacking midfielders trying to dribble past players and shooting from distance. We have no fluidity at all. It's frustrating because with all the money we spent and all the talent we have, we should be seeing results. I'm not talking about winning every game 6-0 or anything unrealistic, just a string of good play and some team cohesion.

[Strike 6,968]

Fucking blame the manager when the players don't show up. We'll never get anywhere with a fucked up attitude like that.

The manager is not accountable? Too early to jump to conclusions but Jose is accountable for his mistakes. Not too concerned about the Sunderland result but overall, the team is still in first gear

I actually think we are playing worse than we have in a long time disguised only by some rather extreme and unsustainable luck (blown calls, very easy CL group, etc...). And no

I don't know exactly what's wrong, but it's a lot. How many good games have we played? I'm talking about dominating a team, just playing fluidly and coherently. Maybe 2-5 games all season?

Only Hull home and West Ham away in my view.

[hjperdeath 2,226]

The manager is not accountable? Too early to jump to conclusions but Jose is accountable for his mistakes. Not concerned about the Sunderland result but overall, the team is still in first gear

From the start of the second half, we looked a bit different, going on to score a goal. Then we had chances, didn't take them, and the players just didn't look like they gave a fuck. Not saying the performance has been brilliant, but it was tactically set up to be more than enough to get past Sunderland until we face Arsenal. Only thing I'd blame Mourinho would be about the angles and man-marking he seems to employ during set-pieces when zonal would have been so much better.

[bushman 2,043]

Jose has no choice or a clue how to play " flair" football.

Therefore, back to parking the bus will be seen soon.

[Madmax 9,219]

Is that you?

:tophat:

Exactly. It's not Mourinho's fault if Eto'o suddenly decides to play shit and it's certainly not Mourinho's fault for Luiz not preventing that 2nd goal.

People on here show sympathy for AVB after him getting sacked because 'he had so many new players to work with' and so that was too difficult to produce results with - and Mourinho? Does that not reply to him then? Does he not get time to adjust?

You completely missed my point by ignoring the continuation of the parts you quoted. Mourinho himself said it yesterday - it's the same story every game, we're making the same mistakes over and over. So what does that say about his and his coaching staff's work? They're paid mega bucks to sort it out. That the players repeat mistakes is a bigger indictment of the coaches - if they're being well coached they shouldn't make those mistakes; if they're being coached and they still do, drop them. Simple.

---------------------------------------------------

For me, when a team plays worse than the sum of of its parts, you have to look at the manager.

[kellzfresh 7,226]

We look terribly set up in defending set pieces, reminding me of how madrid defended setpieces. The line is just too high and far for the keeper to help out the defenders and there is never anyone big at the far post to help out even when EPL teams always aim for the far post

We should have killed the game yesterday. Mourinho's tactics need the players to be more clinical, if eto scored a sitter we win, if lampard shoots on target in one of the 100 shots he had in the 2nd half we win, if ba scored his chance we win, if schurle stopped shooting 10000 times and pass to willian or KDB who was free we win, if willian shoots on target we win.

But i was seriously worried from our team play, when we are in possesion it seems like there is a strict no 1-2 pass policy, no pass and move play, all just stagnant especially in the first half. This has made many of our games look boring and hard to break down opposition.

Mourinho needs to add more pattern to our play in the training, the only pattern i see was to pass to the right back to cross. (Finally azpi put a better cross than iva which led to the first goal) but still one visible pattern of play is too poor to think it can fool tight opposition defenses. It just looks like the players dont practice more than one movement in training, thats why there is no real team play.

[TrippingStep 336]

Ribery and Robben do 'extra work' and it's one of the main reason's Bayern are as good as they are.

Barca became as good as they are due to their work off the ball instead off on it, Southampton are overachieving miles ahead of their station for exactly the same reason.

Sometimes it is exaggerated how much, but balance is important in a team, do you know what's stopping City being as good as anyone? Pellegrini doesn't make his attacking midfielders work off the ball, yes they will get some fancy stats and a few 5-0 beating's, but in this day in age, to be a dominant force in football, mainly players have to be good at both aspects of the game. It's funny because despite us being quite average and them amazing at times we are still above them with harder fixtures (City have all the top 7 away still to come bar Chelsea).

I mean i keep reading how Azpilicueta should play ahead of Ivanovic because he is better going forward (same with Bertrand/Cole), yet the same people shoot down any suggestion of the AM's having to be good off the ball saying, it's completely contradictory and rather hypocritical.

I don't have problem with what you say.

And for Azpilicueta, he's better at pressing and not easily outrun, only his aerial ability is less than Ivanovic. And under Benitez he was playing like a midfielder, nothing extraordinary but he was good at passing the ball, good position to keep the ball moving.

The fullbacks I liked the most are the ones that were good in a midfield position. Zanetti, Sorin, the fullbacks of Ac Milan under Ancelotti that had a great connection with Seedorf and the other wide midfielders, Lahm, Alaba of Bayern Munich.

I know that Lahm as defensive midfielder is surprising and not the greatest idea but it's not so stupid as many think as the likes of Zanetti, Sorin, Alaba (in his youth) played decent football as a defensive midfielder.

Last year, Mata was maybe not working that much but the rest of the team was working quite hard when they had the energy to do it, the back four was pushing higher, Hazard was working much more than under Di Matteo, and in our possession of the ball, I knew what was the plan, was seeing patterns in the movements of our players. This year in possession, I don't see pattern, there seems to have no coordination between the players in their runs.

And you've said it yourself, a team should defend and attack together.

With Mourinho, his teams in possession of the ball has never been great and Terry Cahill sitting deep makes me furious. As the other teams are happy to let them the ball and is only slowing our play and making the connection between defence and midfield difficult.

[bushman 2,043]

Under Jose, this team is shit, not scoring, playing poorly on defense, no fluidity on attack, PARK THE BUS, certainly Jose knows how to do that.

[coolhead23 1,146]

"We scored against Sunderland and afterwards we had two or three more chances. If we had scored then goodbye, but we kept the opponents alive."

We did create chances, didn't finish them...

Honestly we dont recruit players to just create chances, we hire them to finish the job! This is not the excuse that the manager should be giving.

Why cant we play more direct specially in and around the box, why do we keep swinging like a pendulum from here to there without any real intent to get in.

[bushman 2,043]

Today in news, Jose is to hire De Mateo to help him with Park the Bus tactics.

[coolhead23 1,146]

It is so freaking frustating when u watch the likes of Citys, the Arsenals, the Uniteds, the Liverpools even Everton ... Their game play hugely benefits the strikers thus creating so much movement inside the box which allows them to score goals .. whereas we are just lost as soon as we touch the edge of the box and not to forgot that we have great strikers!

[Phil Driver 503]

These are not Jose's problems he inherited them ,come next summer and after the transfer window our team will be a proper team and not a football manger team,with players brought in to enable you to win matches and trophies,at the moment we are a playstation team with a collection of no. 10s and no balance. He will put this right because he understands football .

[The only place to be 11,313]

This just isn't a Jose team. These aren't Jose players. We've got so many average players running through the spine of the team that this transition is going to take a while to complete.

We've spent £70 million on a striker who can't score goals, and David Luiz.

We spent another £20 million on De Bruyne who can't really help this team and Lukaku who we chose to loan out.

We spent £30 million on Willian who doesn't address a single need that our £18 million Schurrle couldn't probably cover alongside Hazard.

There's just no spine to this team at the moment. That means there's no structure to anything that happens on the pitch and it won't be solved overnight.

There is something rotten at the heart of this club and it's the reason we're struggling now. People like Emenalo are failing to build a proper team and the results are for everyone to see.

[Rmpr 8,977]

"We scored against Sunderland and afterwards we had two or three more chances. If we had scored then goodbye, but we kept the opponents alive."

We did create chances, didn't finish them...

Have you watched the game? Because to say we created enough chances makes me wonder if you actually watched the match!

You should really stop defending Jose so fiercely even without reason, it is getting quite embarassing...