Arserne Wenger and Jose Mourinho betrayed their identity in recent losses against Spurs News

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Arserne Wenger and Jose Mourinho betrayed their identity in recent losses against Spurs

By Daily Sports on February 21, 2018

Watching the English top flight league in recent times, it seems clear that Tottenham Hotspurs play the next best football after Man City. Argentine manager Mauricio Pochetinno has given a solid backbone to Spurs since he came on board as manager of the team a few seasons ago and Spurs back an exciting fast-paced style of football with steel and calmness and the rest of the premier league, well apart from unstoppable Pep Guardiola’s Man City, are finding it very hard to cope with them.

In the past two weeks Spurs have swept aside Manchester United 2-0, had an impressive away draw at Liverpool which ended 2-2 and in the North London Derby last Saturday Tottenham looked too strong for Arsenal as they won 1-0, a scoreline that flattered Arsenal in the end. Such was the dominance of Spurs in the game.

A solid investment in youth, a smooth relationship and mutual trust between club hierarchy and manager as well as a group of players hungry to achieve something big together have all combined to make Tottenham a pretty much improbable force in Europe.

But let’s talk about the two big clubs that Spurs beat recently, Manchester United and Arsenal, and how they lost against Tottenham. These are two clubs who came out of the January transfer window very happy with the player acquisitions they made and the expectations were reasonably high that with the squad of players that they have got, they would be able to take points from Pochetino’s men.

With Man United buying one of the Premier League and world football’s deadliest strikers Alexis Sanchez from Arsenal, they were adding to a squad already brimming with attacking talent including Romelu Lukaku, Anthony Martial, Jesse Lingaard and Marcus Rashford.

So it was that José Mourinho’s men arrived at Wembley Stadium with the enthusiasm of showing their attacking strength. Unlike Mourinho’s way of setting up his teams against formidable opponents, Man United mostly attacked for the duration of the match and looked far less assured defensively like a typical Mourinho side usually are. Although United’s attacking mindset in the game may have been dictated by the fact that they conceded very early in the game, it is not unusual for Mourinho to concede a goal against a big side, sit back, still keep their defensive discipline and patiently find a way back to the game.

But Mourinho seemed to want to pander to a growing mob of Man United fans and non-supporters of the club who challenge the manager to play a more expansive style laced with fierce attacking football like in the Sir Alex Ferguson days.

In an attempt to do this against Spurs, United sorely came unstuck. Save for some one or two scary moments for the Spurs backline, United often looked like rabbits thrust into the blazing brightness of the day.

If Mourinho had come with an ultra defensive mindset, would Spurs have found it so easy? It is doubtful they would. But Mourinho abandoned his lifelong defensive identity in Wembley and the result was failure.

Another manager who sacrificed his identity against Spurs was Arsene Wenger of Arsenal. The recent North London derby was for large parts the most one-sided affair recorded in the recent history of the meeting of both sides as Tottenham dominated Arsenal from start to finish. For the Gunners supporters the slim 1-0 scorelune in favour of Spurs did little to mask their feeling of utter embarrassment at seeing their club being blown apart.

Usually, this fixture was marked by end-to-end attacking football and goals galore. But what was served up by Arsenal in the second half, after a first half of over-defensive timidity, was an amateurish attempt to park the bus and try to keep the rampaging Harry Kane and co. at bay.

Tottenham smelled blood and for most of the game they looked like the team Arsenal were for many years since Wenger took over the reigns as manager of The Gunners. Spurs pressed high, played with gusto and style and, overall, showed more appetite to win and when Kane towered above Arsenal’s centre back and captain Laurent Koscielny to score the game’s solitary goal, it was a moment that captured how Spurs seem to have arisen over their eternal rivals to become the most feared side in North London.

It is said sometimes that if one has to die, then he should do so fighting. Arsenal fans would have surely preferred that they lost playing their attacking, fluid and usually carefree style of play that has acquired a special name called ‘Wengerball’, than going down to their local rivals in such an effete manner.

Wenger has continued to come under stringent hammering for his lack of defensive organisation in such big games and even though he has always sought to defend his preference for attacking football, it is clear that he is very mindful of the criticisms and sometimes, though very few times, he tries to adjust and play negatively, but the results have not often been successful for him. There were days, like in the game away Manchester City some years ago when the Gunners recorded an improbable 2-0 win, when an ultra-defensive system was favourable to Wenger, but clearly he’s no expert in that dark art and against Spurs in the last derby he, like Mourinho, came unstuck as he tried to sacrifice his coaching identity in order to satisfy fans and critics.

Source Daily Sports

Posted February 21, 2018