Mourinho career at crossroads after humiliating loss to Chelsea
Jose Mourinho’s career — and not just his Manchester United jaunt — stands at a crossroads following Sunday’s 4-0 humiliation away to his old club Chelsea.
Having suffered the implosion that saw him lose his job at Stamford Bridge last season, he can’t now afford another meltdown at a top Premier League club and expect his career to emerge unscathed.
Albeit on a much larger scale, the Portuguese would suffer a fate similar to his supposed one-time prodigy and compatriot Andre Villas Boas, who after failing at both Chelsea and Tottenham, went to Russia’s Zenit Saint Petersburg but has been out of work since the end of May this year.
Similarly, it would be difficult to see where Mourinho’s career would go after back-to-back failures in England, especially after being given everything he wanted at Old Trafford this summer yet still not delivering.
The Special One has always had the reputation of being a three-season fix, who, once plied with cash, can pull off some quick success, and that’s exactly what United needed after David Moyes and Louis Van Gaal failed miserably to stop the rot after Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement.
If he can’t even do that now, his party trick is ruined and no major club is going to trust him again, especially after picking needless fights with fellow coaches like Antonio Conte on Sunday, team doctor Eva Carneiro while at Chelsea and players such as Juan Mata and Luke Shaw — he’s become toxic.
He isn’t playing players in their best positions to get the best out of them, and his park the bus tactics are looking outdated and one-dimensional.
Greatest fraud
In all it looks like he doesn’t have a clue, he’s run out of motivation or tricks up his sleeve and he’s a shadow of the man who swept the league by storm when he first arrived in England in 2004.
Has he been found out? Is he the greatest fraud in football history? Well, if he is, he has done alright for himself with eight league titles across four countries and two Champions League wins — not bad for someone who barely played the game and started out as a translator.
Of course he’s still the Special One. United are only six points off leaders Manchester City, and they are still right in it with only three defeats in nine.
Things are just being blown out of proportion because he’s the world’s biggest coach at the world’s biggest club.
Win the next few games against more than manageable Burnley and Swansea and they are right back in it ahead of the Arsenal game. And continue their Europa League run, where they are top of their group, and the storm will pass.
True, but before anything gets better things could get markedly worse as United play Man City in the League Cup on Wednesday and with both Mourinho and City coach Pep Guardiola suffering bad runs, this particular Manchester derby will be even more acidic than usual.
What Mourinho needed was a quick pick-me-up, but what he’s getting is a potential horror of a week, which if accompanied with unthinkable defeat at Burnley on Saturday could accelerate his demise to the extent we could be evaluating Ryan Giggs’ credentials to succeed this time next week.