The Unraveling of Jose Mourinho
Manchester United are showing cracks and there is serious doubt if their manager even knows what his best 11 is. While the rest of the EPL stays course how late is too late for the Special One?
Another week and another EPL defeat for Jose Mourinho. It seems that the Special one cannot catch a break when it comes to figuring out what is going wrong. He has one of the most prolific striking talents of multiple generations as well as the most expensive player in the world, but it seems like the devil may be in the details. You know, such details as who do you field in the other 8 positions (we’ll assume De Gea is safe).
Serge: What’s your take on Jose? Is he mentally unraveling? Has the king of the mind game hit a wall?
Cam: Well, this wasn’t true at Inter Milan, but this was most certainly true at Real Madrid and at both his stints at Chelsea. The end always came when Mourinho almost seemed to buy a little too much into his ow shtick, where he would get too involved in the mind games. Where he would get too involved in trying to out-psyche everybody. And start trying to play twelve dimensional mental chess with the rest of the league. At a certain point it just doesn’t work. So I don’t know whether we will see that yet at Manchester United, but it has certainly been a very rough month and a half for Mourinho.
Serge: I don’t think he knows his best eleven.
Cam: I don’t think so either. Particularly, I don’t think he knows his best back four, is the biggest problem.
Serge: And I think not having Bailly is going to give him some time to try and figure it out, but we’re getting to the point where we’re seeing Wenger, Klopp, Conte know their best eleven. I think Pep is still tinkering but he has a line-up that is at least 9 or 8 certain players that he wants in every game. Mourinho, I don’t think he does. Not having Herrera with a red card, which I think was a little harsh, is going to be hard.
Cam: Even with Guardiola you get a sense that by February he’ll have a sense of what his best eleven is. I don’t think you get that with Mourinho right now.
