The Mourinho Thread

[The Skipper 20,593]

Congrats Eden & Azpi.

[dimmas 126]

jose just rocks!!!!

his speech was the highlight. fills me with so much confidence. even the way he presented the award to EH. asking more of him... just brilliant.

video or link ?

[kellzfresh 7,229]

http://weaintgotnohistory.sbnation.com/2014/5/5/5682644/on-strikers-finishing-parked-buses-and-jose-mourinhos-tactics

Our play may not be pretty, but this debunks any theory that we only shoot from outside the box. We actually create enough chances from the box to win games but we don't have clinical finishers at all. There is a huge difference being 1-0 up than going to the break at 0-0, a far more clinical striker and Am will change this.

Mourinho knows what he is talking about when he complains about our lack of clinical players.

[The only place to be 11,313]

http://weaintgotnohistory.sbnation.com/2014/5/5/5682644/on-strikers-finishing-parked-buses-and-jose-mourinhos-tactics

Our play may not be pretty, but this debunks any theory that we only shoot from outside the box. We actually create enough chances from the box to win games but we don't have clinical finishers at all. There is a huge difference being 1-0 up than going to the break at 0-0, a far more clinical striker and Am will change this.

Mourinho knows what he is talking about when he complains about our lack of clinical players.

Did anyone seriously believe this 'theory' though?

The lack of a clinical striker is so painfully obvious that sometimes people try to overthink things and look for other issues. Sometimes when you hear hooves, think horses not zebras.

[didierforever 7,349]

video or link ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqRIi9RZUpg#t=20

dint get one for the speech where he says he was not happy with 3rd. games like palace and sunderland would even be troubling the players. that he wants us to be the favourites from the first minute etc etc.

[MrExcalibur100 7,124]

fsw would never be liked @ CFC because of his comments about the Club. Maybe you weren't around 10 years ago, but here is a refresher

Then you add to the fact that fsw wouldn't play JT or Lamps. Hell don't you remember when he could have played Lamps & instead he brought in Yossi? Did you agree w/ that? I certainly don't. Again, let fsw eat his tapas in Italy. We don't want the bum. I am happy that Jose is back w/ us.

Ha, I don't like Rafa but most of those quotes are fake.

[EBH 283]

If Rafa got us the same results, people would be calling for his head right now...

Mourinho better buy whoever he needs and sell the surpluses if he wants to win next season.

I think people have forgotten just how rancid Benitez was. The standard of football was woeful, the substitutions never made sense (he'd often take off the best player on the day for Yossi Benayoun or bring on a defender when chasing a match or some other counter-logical thing), and 'squad rotation' policy was shocking.

On the other hand Mourinho has only been a tiny little bit better and certainly if another manager had done the same things he has done then they would have come in for more scrutiny. That Mourinho has created an unshakably strong cult of personality amongst Chelsea fans allows him to stretch the elastic a lot further than Benitez could.

[LAB 1,030]

Excellent speech yesterday. Expressed a big team's mentality by pointing out that we are not sitting comfortably in 3rd place. Jose is some man to have in the driver's seat. :blue scalf:

[Jase 43,479]

I think people have forgotten just how rancid Benitez was. The standard of football was woeful, the substitutions never made sense (he'd often take off the best player on the day for Yossi Benayoun or bring on a defender when chasing a match or some other counter-logical thing), and 'squad rotation' policy was shocking

Not going to criticize the work Benitez did. He did okay in the end. Not good/great but not awful either.

Just find it funny that whenever people mentioned and thought that Benitez did a great job and we did better under him than Mourinho this season, it seems that they only remember the last 10-15 games or so when we had that good winning run in the league and Europa League but forgot the amount of dross and rubbish-ness that we had to endured in the months before (and even at times during the run-in). It's almost as if people have a short term memory loss or a selective memory.

[The Skipper 20,593]

http://weaintgotnohistory.sbnation.com/2014/5/5/5682644/on-strikers-finishing-parked-buses-and-jose-mourinhos-tactics

Our play may not be pretty, but this debunks any theory that we only shoot from outside the box. We actually create enough chances from the box to win games but we don't have clinical finishers at all. There is a huge difference being 1-0 up than going to the break at 0-0, a far more clinical striker and Am will change this.

Mourinho knows what he is talking about when he complains about our lack of clinical players.

There's a difference between a shot on target and a good quality chance. You don't need stats to tell you that.

As the author of that title said, the article is purely based on stats and everyone knows stats don't tell the whole story. If we go by stats we've apparently created the 2nd most chances in the league after City. Everyone knows that most of those chances weren't quality chances.

[The Skipper 20,593]

Did anyone seriously believe this 'theory' though?

The lack of a clinical striker is so painfully obvious that sometimes people try to overthink things and look for other issues. Sometimes when you hear hooves, think horses not zebras.

Yes, because those saying that we need more than a striker to complete the team are saying that we don't need a striker? How stupid does that sound?

I've said before, a top striker would've probably won us the league this year but it wouldn't have made our side complete. Even Mourinho acknowledges that and understands that we're still a couple of top signings away from completing the side. He hasn't said, "all we need is a striker".

[Chelsea Legend 11 4,062]

There's a difference between a shot on target and a good quality chance. You don't need stats to tell you that.

As the author of that title said, the article is purely based on stats and everyone knows stats don't tell the whole story. If we go by stats we've apparently created the 2nd most chances in the league after City. Everyone knows that most of those chances weren't quality chances.

but they were chances and a good amount of them WERE quality. Bottom line is until we get someone who is capable of finishing off some of the chances we fashion we'll never know what type a team we have. A great deal of goals we've scored this year have come from our attacking midfielders which is exactly the opposite to the teams that have scored the most goals this year.

[kellzfresh 7,229]

There's a difference between a shot on target and a good quality chance. You don't need stats to tell you that.

As the author of that title said, the article is purely based on stats and everyone knows stats don't tell the whole story. If we go by stats we've apparently created the 2nd most chances in the league after City. Everyone knows that most of those chances weren't quality chances.

Look at those charts again, look at where we took those shots from, look at how nasri scored city's first goal against westham and tell me any of our players would have scored that. Surely you know that our front four except eto are average at best in finishing. Rarely score like yaya or nasri from outside the 18box against parked buses on their own.

I didn't say we will play as well as bayern of last season with a striker, I said we don't play the most sexy football but we created enough chances to win games that we drew/lost. I said we would have gotten at least 5 more points than we have now and we would have won the league.

That said, people also put this impression that we take all our shots from outside the 18 box. That article debunked that theory. Infact it shows we take as much shots in the box as any other top team in the league but like torres and salah showed once again in our last game, we fluff them. That changes the psychology of the game and makes things more difficult.

See madrids last 2 games without ronaldo and bale, they don't score much because the rest are bad finishers as our team. With all the chances they created, morata fluffed them.

[The Skipper 20,593]

but they were chances and a good amount of them WERE quality. Bottom line is until we get someone who is capable of finishing off some of the chances we fashion we'll never know what type a team we have. A great deal of goals we've scored this year have come from our attacking midfielders which is exactly the opposite to the teams that have scored the most goals this year.

Mate, I'm not disagreeing that a better striker would've probably nicked us a few points here and there but can you can't honestly tell me that we consistently created quality chances like City and Liverpool do. We just didn't. The teams that have scored the most goals this season have set their team up with two strikers, of course most of their goals are going to be via them - us on the other hand, only field one striker, so of course our goals are going to be more distributed. You can't really use that to justify what you're saying simply because they play a completely different system to us.

Not all of our chances are going to fall to our striker either because we play a 1 man system up front so it's natural that some go to our attacking midfielders. As I said before, you really can't compare our system to City's or Liverpool's simply because we don't have a top striker and we do not play like they do.

[The Skipper 20,593]

Look at those charts again, look at where we took those shots from, look at how nasri scored city's first goal against westham and tell me any of our players would have scored that. Surely you know that our front four except eto are average at best in finishing. Rarely score like yaya or nasri from outside the 18box against parked buses on their own.

I didn't say we will play as well as bayern of last season with a striker, I said we don't play the most sexy football but we created enough chances to win games that we drew/lost. I said we would have gotten at least 5 more points than we have now and we would have won the league.

That said, people also put this impression that we take all our shots from outside the 18 box. That article debunked that theory. Infact it shows we take as much shots in the box as any other top team in the league but like torres and salah showed once again in our last game, we fluff them. That changes the psychology of the game and makes things more difficult.

See madrids last 2 games without ronaldo and bale, they don't score much because the rest are bad finishers as our team. With all the chances they created, morata fluffed them.

We do have midfield players that are decent shooters from outside the area - Schurrle especially, and let's not forget Hazard and Oscar have it in their locker as well. I don't think that's the debate here at all.

Now to those charts; you can't honestly tell me that a shot inside the box equates to a quality chance. The chart ignores the speculative nature of the shot, how many defenders are still in the box, whether the player shooting the ball is being heavily marked or not... It's not like those shots in the box equate to 1 on 1 quality chances for whatever player is taking that shot. Shot on target in the area does not equal a quality chance, surely you know that? The same article above tells you this regarding the Norwich game:

"We had 4 shots on target in this game. 1 of which was inside the area. 1 shot on target inside the area is not good enough. It is that simple."

Are you telling me that we created enough to win that game? Surely not. It's not about sexy football, it's about creating quality chances. We should be able to consistently do that with the talent in the team. Can you honestly tell me that our strikers (no matter how bad they've been this season) have routinely flopped 1 on 1, quality chances that have been laid on a plate for them this season? Surely not. Of course goals change the psychology of a game, we're not discussing that here - what we are discussing is that we don't create enough quality chances to get these goals. If we truly want to be a dominant side, we must improve our play in the final third by creating more space for our creative players and our strikers, getting them into dangerous positions and bettering our off the ball movement and link up play.

If you honestly think we've created as much as the likes of City and Liverpool did this season then respectfully, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

[Chelsea Legend 11 4,062]

Mate, I'm not disagreeing that a better striker would've probably nicked us a few points here and there but can you can't honestly tell me that we consistently created quality chances like City and Liverpool do. We just didn't. The teams that have scored the most goals this season have set their team up with two strikers, of course most of their goals are going to be via them - us on the other hand, only field one striker, so of course our goals are going to be more distributed. You can't really use that to justify what you're saying simply because they play a completely different system to us.

Not all of our chances are going to fall to our striker either because we play a 1 man system up front so it's natural that some go to our attacking midfielders. As I said before, you really can't compare our system to City's or Liverpool's simply because we don't have a top striker and we do not play like they do.

Are we talking about chances CREATED or chances CONVERTED?

And yes you are correct not every chance is going to fall to the striker but as I've also said our attacking mids score more goals than pretty much any squad in the Prem. We're mincing words here anyway, I just don't buy this argument that we don't create enough chances, we do, they just haven't been converted at a reasonable clip.

[The Skipper 20,593]

Are we talking about chances CREATED or chances CONVERTED?

And yes you are correct not every chance is going to fall to the striker but as I've also said our attacking mids score more goals than pretty much any squad in the Prem. We're mincing words here anyway, I just don't buy this argument that we don't create enough chances, we do, they just haven't been converted at a reasonable clip.

I'm talking about chances created. Sure, we've created chances but in my opinion they haven't been chances of real quality, i.e. clear cut, and that's my argument, and that ties in with chances converted. You can't expect to convert more when the quality of the chance is poor. Actually, on average we've made the most shots in the league this year yet we're still 30 odd goals behind Liverpool and Man City - surely that should tell you that our shot selection just isn't good enough (because of various reasons I've stated before)?

But you're right, you have your right to believe that we do create enough quality chances whilst I have the right to believe that we don't - as you said, it's better to agree to disagree on the subject, since we are going round in circles with the discussion.

[couris 232]

Before Jose came back last year, when the media started to say Jose is going to get rid of Mata and Luiz, Joses lovers would blast the shit out of these rumors, saying its just tactics to make Jose look bad.....Now looks like everyone is happy with Mata and Luiz gone. Incredible.