It was with great shock that I received the sudden departure of «the special one» from Chelsea Football club, this morning.
I had predicted that he would not last the season when I was previewing the premiership but it still came as a surprise.
The reason I thought he would go was football related because I could not for the life of me think, why Chelsea ever thought they were even remotely close to Manchester United last season but chose not to make significant signings this season.
I was flabbergasted that they only brought in Claudio Pizarro, Steve Sidwell on a free and Tal Ben-Haim. None of those players in my humble opinion is likely to add anything really significant to a championship chasing side. They even managed to lose Arjen Robben in the process to make them worse.
I have never been a fan of the way Chelsea played under Mourinho with the emphasis on Drogba muscling his way round defenders and Lampard coming in from deep. Mourinho may have further irritated with his constant harpings that after a while, became tedious.
But there is no escaping the fact, that he was the finest tactician in the premiership by a long way and possibly in the world. Some myopic people would argue that he was successful because of Abramovich’s money. Having money does help but does not get you success, as Real Madrid and Inter Milan would testify to.
Barcelona won the champions league and the La Liga title 2 seasons ago and deemed it fit to spend money on Gianluca Zambrotta, Lilian Thuram and Eidur Gudjohnssen to make them even stronger but they did not win anything last season.
Newcastle have spent money over the years and they just have 2 FA cup final appearances to show for it. Mourinho, in just 3 seasons, had won the premiership twice, Coca cola cup twice and the FA cup. His Chelsea side has gone from being soft away from home to be the most feared ruthless machine in premiership history and are unbeaten at home in 64 matches, which is an English record.
He has reached the Champions league semi final twice only to be defeated by Liverpool through a controversial goal and on penalties that everyone knows is a lottery. What some of his critics fail to understand is that a lot of his buys are vastly overpriced like £12 on Paolo Ferreira for instance.
Again it is not like Chelsea are the only ones that spend big, Manchester United have spent £30m twice on Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand, £18 on Michael Carrick and £17 on Owen Hargreaves. You have to be rich to spend those sums on players that are nowhere worth that kind of money.
As a matter of fact the only manager that has not spent big to gain success is Arsene Wenger and that is mainly because he does not have that much money to spend and when he does splash out, it tends to be a waste like £8m on Francis Jeffers!
It does not matter how much money you spend but whether you spend the money wisely.
Not necessarily getting the best players and the most skilful but also getting players that would gel with one another, players that are ready to do battle for you and you should be able to create an atmosphere that is to most of the players’ liking.
I think Mourinho did that to great effect at Chelsea. My only big problem with him was his favouritism of some players over the others.
I do not subscribe to treating people differently and I did not like the way he was always putting the likes of Lampard, Terry, Cech, Essien and especially Drogba over the others.
His treatment of Shevchenko was extremely shabby as he should have shown Shevchenko more respect and understanding instead on continually undermining a great player. But Chelsea, in my opinion have committed an almighty blunder and only time will tell how big a blunder it was to get rid of the most successful manager in their history. The winners are Rafa Benitez and Arsene Wenger because they now know that instead of 2 teams standing in their way, it is now just Manchester United, as I don’t really see Chelsea mounting a serious challenge with their current crop of players.
On a side note, a lot of women would be very upset that they would not be getting their regular dose of oogling Mourinho. I have never come across any other manager with his effect on the ladies.