How do you know Jose Mourinho is feeling the pressure? Chelsea losing has something to do with it, but when he starts complaining about the officials, this time Phil Dowd, and conjures conspiracy theories against his own team, you know it’s not so comfortable on the manager’s seat.
So after the draw with Southampton there was the conspiracy theory. Now, after losing to Tottenham, it’s Phil Dowd, even though Dowd didn’t get any decisions wrong. The penalty kick at the end of the half against Chelsea was 100% correct, and Eden Hazard wasn’t fouled on his way to the goal with Spurs leading 4-2. Mourinho knows all of that, so he talks about Dowd’s form and athleticism; unhappy with his distance from one single event.
There is an action on Eden Hazard; Hazard honest as always tells me in his opinion it was not a foul or a red card, so that’s good, in spite of Mr Dowd is too slow to go with that ball, he was like 40 yards away, he made the right decision. The decision was like 10 meters away, he couldn’t make and that’s a decision that is the crucial moment of the game. Every game is unpredictable but there are things in the game that are becoming predictable. I prefer to lose like we did against Newcastle with a clean performance by Atkinson, a lucky performance by Newcastle and an unlucky one by us. A game you lose because it is football. Our opponents have important Christmas gifts in the last two matches, the gifts that people in love with football don’t like.
The thing about Mourinho is you can see the wheels working when he realizes his team is going to lose. He’s already thinking what he’s going to say in order to make it about something else. It wasn’t his team that defended poorly, or maybe his lack of proper preparation to a Tottenham side that probably even surprised its own manager. It’s always the official. And it’s always the opponent that had luck, while his team is better, only unlucky.
Why not talk about how Tottenham made Nemanja Matic redundant for once, which might be a blueprint for other teams? How both Cahill and John Terry lost their man again and again? How Diego Costa was once again busy trying to test the limits of fouling and elbowing players without getting sent off? Tottenham were better, and won convincingly. That’s pretty much the story of the match.
Maybe the media (including us in smaller outlets) are to blame. A man who lies as part of his job to the millions watching the game, regardless of whether they are Chelsea fans or not, shouldn’t be taken so seriously. But football and sports shouldn’t be taken so seriously and yet they are, creating so many words, photos, videos and especially dollars (or whatever currency you prefer), so why not focus on anything the biggest football troll on the planet says?
Even when you know 90% of his words are meaningless psychological warfare, it’s still incredible to watch and listen to, knowing that almost everything coming out of his mouth had nothing to do with the 90 minutes of football you just witnessed.