MOURINHO’S SWEET MUSIC
Jose feeling happy as Spurs play to his tune
JOSE MOURINHO spoke with a rasp in his voice, as if he had had a lot to say in the last couple of days as well as the last couple of hours. He was hoarse but he spoke of music in the away dressing room at the London Stadium and of rapture and of how much he had missed all this. ‘Today, the feeling was I was where I belong,’ said the new Spurs manager. ‘This is my natural habitat.’
For all his flaws and self-regard, Mourinho is still treated as English football’s eternal messiah. His fourth coming as a Premier League manager could scarcely have got off to a better or easier start as he led Spurs to their first away win in the Premier League since January against a wretched West Ham.
‘Eleven months without music in the away dressing room,’ said Mourinho, as if he were composing a rhapsody of his own. ‘Eleven months without a smile, without happiness. And they did it. A victory is something you have to value and I am glad the music was loud. I am not worried about the start of my Tottenham career but I am very happy for them.’
For all the excitement about his latest return, we know exactly what we are going to get from Mourinho on occasions like this. He speaks as if from a script, praising his players’ reaction to his arrival, making subtle digs about his predecessors, earnestly affecting lack of ego. All that remains is to wait to see how quickly it curdles.
At least Mourinho will have slept soundly in his Tottenham pyjamas. The rehabilitation that The Special One, The Happy One and The Humble One seeks after the rancorous end to his second spell at Chelsea and his failure at Manchester United will not be earned in a match like this but there were signs that this Spurs team is good enough to give him the platform that he craves.
Perhaps the biggest compliment to pay his side was that it looked like a Mauricio Pochettino team again. That is to Mourinho’s credit. Spurs had not won a league game since the end of September and had slipped to 14th in the table but they played with belief and verve again at the London Stadium. The extent of their superiority was not reflected in the margin of victory.
As one manager arrives, another may leave. West Ham boss Manuel Pellegrini was said to be under pressure before this match and his team now has only one point from its last six matches.
He sidestepped the question of whether he had received the backing of the club’s hierarchy, saying: ‘We tried for our fans to return to a winning performance, but we couldn’t. When you don’t have the results that you want you must trust more than ever what you are doing in the way you work. You see a lot of pressure on the players but they never give up.’
Apart from a late rally, which yielded two goals, the manner of their defeat against a Spurs side that has hardly been in top form itself did not say a lot for the prospects of their boss.
But this was about Mourinho and his return to English football 11 months after he was fired by United. He will have been encouraged by much of what he saw, particularly renewed signs of life in Dele Alli and some superb interplay between Son Heung-min and Lucas Moura, that were at least a nod to the good times under Pochettino.
Mourinho will be annoyed his side could not preserve a clean sheet. The two goals Spurs conceded were a reminder of the vulnerability his new team has shown this season. There are ghosts that must be banished, like the 7-2 home defeat by Bayern Munich and the Carabao Cup exit to Colchester United and this was at least a step in the right direction.
Spurs may not quite have looked like a team that got to the Champions League final a few months ago but they did start well. Alli, who had been told by Mourinho to stop playing like ‘Dele’s brother’, appeared to have heeded the advice. He does not actually have a brother but that did not seem to matter. Much of his old creativity and intelligence was back.
Four minutes into the game, he slipped a ball through to Kane who lashed it into the roof of the net only for the linesman to raise his
flag on the far side. For the first 15 minutes, anchored by the solid presence of Eric Dier in midfield, Spurs zipped the ball around and West Ham chased shadows.
Spurs survived a penalty claim when Serge Aurier climbed all over Robert Snodgrass midway through the half but that was the only time the hosts threatened. As the interval approached, Spurs began to increase the tempo again and Roberto punched away a stinging shot from Son. Roberto looked uncertain throughout. That is not unusual. It would not be unfair to say he does not enjoy the approval of West Ham’s fans.
When a loose ball trickled towards their goalkeeper and he picked it up, it was met with a loud chorus of ironic cheers.
Roberto was partly to blame for the Spurs opener. Alli threaded another neat pass through to Son and when he ran at Issa Diop, whose earlier yellow card seemed to have made him scared to make a challenge, he danced round the outside of him and lashed his shot through Roberto’s dive and into the back of the net. On the touchline, Mourinho turned and clenched his fist in celebration. Better was to come.
Two minutes before halftime, Alli fell as he tried to keep the ball in play on the left touchline. Somehow, he managed to stop it going out and backheeled it into the path of Son as he lay on the turf. Son sprinted for the byline and whipped a perfect cross into the path of Lucas Moura, who slid it over the line at the back post.
West Ham were desperately poor. Mark Noble worked hard and produced one magnificent pass with the outside of his boot that Felipe Anderson wasted. Apart from that, the home side struggled badly. Anderson is a player of great talent but he was so ineffectual, he was rightly withdrawn at halftime and replaced by Michail Antonio. Spurs should have gone three up two minutes after the interval but Moura dragged his shot wide when he might have squared to Son. It was only a momentary reprieve for West Ham. A minute later, Aurier swung a cross over from the right, Kane climbed above a half-hearted challenge and nodded the ball down and through Roberto.
West Ham salvaged a little pride 17 minutes from the end when Antonio tricked Toby Alderweireld in the box by allowing the ball to run across his body and lashed it past Paulo Gazzaniga and into the back of the net.
Angelo Ogbonna got a West Ham second but it was too late either to spoil Mourinho’s day or offer Pellegrini hope of salvation.
In the away dressing room, Mourinho turned the mood music up to maximum.