Jose Mourinho is being left behind by Pep Guardiola in the battle of Manchester, as City went 11 points clear of their bitter rivals after prevailing 2-1 at Old Trafford overnight.
Despite controlling the game for large portions, City had to rely on two scrambled goals from set pieces, as Mourinho bemoaned his team’s lack of concentration.
Through fifteen games, Manchester City are now running away with the Premier League, having racked up 48 goals with just one draw and no defeats. While Mourinho’s United remain in second place, Jose doesn’t stick around for fights he can’t win and, if he senses this City juggernaut might be hard to stop, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he cut and ran to Paris Saint-Germain within the next two years.
While the final margin might have been slender, the difference between the two teams could not have been starker. City are soaring, playing the sort of football Pep Guardiola promised when he arrived.
Mourinho did his usual grumbling about decisions and luck to the press afterwards and while he might have had a point when you look at the season as a whole, United are struggling to forge an identity like Manchester City. Maybe it was just another deflection away from the fact his team are being left in the title race and Mourinho is being put in the shade by his greatest rival.
Both managers came into this season under some pressure after falling well below expectations in the Premier League last season, however it appears Guardiola has built something pretty impressive this year. Mourinho’s team, despite getting results, still plays in fits and starts and concedes the initiative far too often,
Mourinho is not doing a bad job at United by any means. This club was in free fall from two disastrous spells in charge from Louis van Gaal and David Moyes. Mourinho has galvanised United to at least win trophies in his first season and move up the Premier League table this year. However Mourinho doesn’t settle for second best as he becomes increasingly agitated through a lack of success.
(Image via Tsutomu Takasu, Wikimedia Commons)
Mourinho managed to win two trophies last season, showing he remains a winner by and large in a season where United struggled. Essentially he turned an ordinary season into an entirely acceptable one by winning the League Cup and the Europa League.
That’s quite ironic really, given Mourinho has this season called for the League Cup to be scrapped and has often berated the Europa League as an irrelevant competition he wanted no part of. This papered over the cracks of what was a shocking Premier League season, in which the Club finished sixth with a number of draws against lower ranked opposition.
The truth is over the years, there isn’t that much to admire about Mourinho’s teams if they are not winning trophies. Unless of course you are a fan of those clubs like I was at Chelsea and you couldn’t really care less about the football. While he is not always defensive he is a pragmatist at heart. The problem with this sort of football is once you stop winning, what is there to enjoy?
Jose used to be the master of the big games however he he come up short and applied the hand break far too often in the past two seasons at Chelsea and United. While the 0-0 draw at Anfield was essentially a decent result for United, the way they went about it was like a backs-to-the-wall team fighting relegation.
They stuttered to a 1-0 loss at Chelsea, barely creating a clear cut chance, and now having lost at home to City it is clear Mourinho is not the master tactician that has an answer to everything like he once was.
Mourinho used to thrive on these tactics as he used to scrounge out 1-0 win and be called a tactical genius. Now the results in these games are not going his way and after spending over 300 million in the transfer market, fans at United should and will expect a little bit more 18 months into his tenure.
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Mourinho constructed title-winning seasons at Chelsea in the past with functional football rather then fantasy football. However, there was never quite the same expectation at Chelsea to play attacking football. On the other hand, United have forged a large part of their identity over the past 20 years on playing a swashbuckling and entertaining style of football.
Now with their noisy neighbours up the road playing some scintillating and spectacular stuff, it leaves Mourinho in an awkward spot. While United fans wouldn’t care what sort of football the team played if they won the title this season, the fact is they won’t. The mix of not winning and average football is not a sustainable one.
While Sir Alex Ferguson was never as cavalier as people make out, he did by and large love to throw caution to the wind when he sensed a wounded opponent or an opportunity against a rival. Mourinho seems to be content to play for draw against big opponents these days and it simply is not cutting the mustard anymore. Poor old Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal is the only team that Mourinho continues to enjoy sustained success against.
Mourinho has won the league a record five from five times in his second season at every Club he has managed – twice at Chelsea, as well as at Inter, Porto and a famous triumph over the all conquering Barcelona at Real Madrid.
Not doing so at United might not be a disaster, but given the high standards he sets himself, and clearly having a self-destruct button in him, I expect the pressure to crack if he can’t deliver in the Premier League this year. Of course Mourinho still has the Champions League – a competition in which he has a formidable record. United are very much alive in that having qualified in first place in their group.
However, just to my eye, Mourinho has looked pretty miserable ever since joining Manchester United. I’m not 100 per cent sure if he has been scarred by some of his failing at Madrid and Chelsea, however he is far from the charismatic and magical boss he was a decade ago.
Mourinho, while he could be moody and cynical in his first spell at Chelsea, also had the Press under his wing, and could be charming and engaging at the same time. A decade on and he looks battle weary. Perhaps the football he dominated with is being phased out to an extent and he just hasn’t been able to adapt his approach, or take the handbrake off his side.
Curiously, Mourinho has already publicly admired the project at PSG this season, which would have been slightly bemusing for United fans. Mourinho has a habit of planning his next move and, while you would be stretching things to suggest he wants to leave United, my gut feeling is he won’t stick around to play second fiddle to Guardiola for more than a year or two.
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