The 2020/21 Premier League season should have been a refreshing start for Tottenham Hotspur and Jose Mourinho, however things are very much the same for the north London outfit as they have ever been.
No new players (as of yet – they’re linked with a host but whether they actually come through the door is something we’re unwilling to bet on), and a whinging manager in Mourinho – oh, it’s good to be back (unless you are a Spurs fan, of course).
Tottenham suffered a 1-0 defeat to a heavily reshaped Everton side over the weekend and looked well off the pace, as they really struggled to get anything going over the course of the 90 minutes. Throughout that hour-and-a-half, he might have had more joy if he had been playing in online casinos as he may have won some money in which he could use for some desperately needed recruits!
The Amazon documentary has shown a number of clips of Jose Mourinho in disgust at various points, and his reactions on the sidelines would have seamlessly fit into the series. Let’s not forget his ‘RESPECT!’ tirade as well when things were not going his way at Manchester United. Perhaps all those sleepless nights at the Old Trafford club did not help him?
Nonetheless, he threw each of his players under the bus following the result in typical Mourinho fashion and even resulted in blaming the Coronavirus as an in-direct reason as to why his side were so poor.
“Look, Harry Kane trained with us once,” he said. “Once. [Moussa] Sissoko, a couple [of times]. I am not going player by player but for different reasons many of our players didn’t have a proper preseason,” he said.
“We had cases of positive COVID. Of course, we have the right not to say which players were but we had players with positive COVID. We had other players with quarantine due to the proximity with positive players. We had a player in quarantine because he was on holiday in the country which England implements quarantine.
“We had many of them, they went to the national teams so the preseason was a difficult preseason for many of the players. I couldn’t expect them to be sharp, intense, agile. But I was expecting much more individually and much more collectively.
“It disappoints me and that’s where I have now to work. Again, I can complain about the free-kick but I couldn’t coach referees. I can coach, I can train my players to deal with these crosses. It doesn’t matter the position where it is.
“The players who didn’t have a preseason, we don’t have now the possibility to have a preseason but we have lots of matches to play consecutively, and we have to use these matches not just to try to win them, and the knockout ones are obviously decisive matches, and try to improve the form of some players because some of them were in trouble.
“You can look to [Spurs debutant Matt] Doherty, a player who is normally in an incredible condition, he didn’t have a preseason. He went direct from holidays to national team matches. Not one single training session. He played two consecutive matches and today he was not Matt Doherty like he normally is, so these are the things that we knew could happen to us.”
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live’s Rob Nothman after the match, in typical Mourinho fashion, he hit back at an accusation with his own unique take on what he saw from the game and decided to blame the reporter for his side’s shortcomings.
“Did you see the first half or only the second half? That is why Jordan Pickford made two top saves in the first half and Hugo Lloris did not touch the ball,” Mourinho said.
“What is possession? Goal, goals, goals. And shots. We were poor, not good enough at all, but you also are not good enough in your analysis.
“They scored the goal in the second half and we were poor in creating chances and were not aggressive enough. In attack we looked tired, lots of players did not look sharp and we lacked intensity, sharpness and creativity. After the goal, they were the best team.
“You stay with the possession in the first half. I will stay with the two amazing saves from Pickford.”
Having started his tirade of blaming everything else but himself from the very beginning of the season could mean that he, Tottenham Hotspur and everyone involved with the Premier League (from fans to the media) could be in for a very long campaign but one with plenty of pieces of gold.
Oh, let’s not forget that Spurs are also involved with the UEFA Europa League, so we’d suggest you get your bingo cards ready as phrases like “we haven’t had as much time to prepare as our opponents” and “this tournament is bad/awful/inconvenient” etc. because we can guarantee that they’ll pop up almost every single time.
Never change, Jose!
