Jose Mourinho Still Merits a Place at Premier League's Top Table

Back in September, Jose Mourinho had nowhere to sit. Arriving late into an auditorium to watch Sir Alex Ferguson deliver an opening speech at a UEFA coaches' conference in Nyon, Manchester United's manager scanned the room for seats. The only ones free and accessible were next to Arsene Wenger.

"No, it isn't possible," was the Frenchman's deliciously pithy response to Mourinho's request to take one, according to Marca (h/t the MailOnline).

If it isn't an apocryphal version of events, Wenger in that single moment proved true the age-old adage that football keeps you young. Young and childish, that is. Schoolboy stuff from a 67-year-old should be cherished. Reports of the Arsenal manager leaving the room with a yellow "Voyeur—kick me!" post-it note stuck to his back as revenge, along with Atletico Madrid manager Diego Simeone giving Borussia Dortmund boss Thomas Tuchel a wedgie, have yet to be substantiated.   

Some eight months on, were Mourinho given free rein to sit wherever he liked, he might find it equally as troubling. Wenger would perhaps make a beeline for the gregarious Carlo Ancelotti or his friend Zinedine Zidane. Both peer and pupil make for good company.

Maybe he could discuss with his compatriot reports from the Mirror's John Cross linking him with the Real Madrid job, should the younger man fail to guide them to the Spanish title. Zidane to Arsenal in a straight swap, anyone? It would be football's most exciting trade since the summer of 1980, when Arsenal swapped new signing Clive Allen for Crystal Palace left-back Kenny Sansom, despite the striker having only weeks earlier arrived at Highbury from Queens Park Rangers.

For Mourinho, invariably, it is less straightforward. No man is an island, but the Portuguese gives it a good go. If he were, he'd complain the sea was giving him a funny look. The bloody sand, too, gets everywhere.

While it is widely accepted Wenger now operates outside the sphere of the Continent's finest tactical minds (except, perhaps, by the man himself—and Arsenal's board), Mourinho's position in the coaching hierarchy is more nebulous.

If whatever Wenger does echoes the past, and the new breed that occupy the top four places in the Premier League represent an enlightened progressive future, Mourinho perhaps finds himself in the awkward peripheral space between the two. Somehow the world's least likely middleman has become a bridge linking the old with the new. Convenient, his critics would argue, given Chelsea boss Antonio Conte has walked all over him in terms of results.

At 54, Mourinho is too old to be in the spring of his career and yet too young for it to be deemed the autumn years either. He's nine years older than Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino (45), eight than Pep Guardiola (46), seven than Conte (47) and five than Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp (49). It's worth remembering here how football years are like dog years. Was it really last season Mourinho was Chelsea manager?

Ahead of Arsenal's hosting of Manchester United on Sunday, in a game that will likely prove integral in this season's battle for a top-four place, Wenger and Mourinho should perhaps park the oldest and most embittered rivalry to take solace in one another's company. There may be a shred of comfort in that they are not alone in feeling an acute sense of usurpation when staring up at the top four.

Stick all the Premier League bosses in a room and the top table would quickly work itself out. It's not hard to imagine Conte pouring wine for Guardiola while Pochettino breaks presses bread with Klopp.

The oldest boy band in the land has had the odd niggle with one another over the years, but there is a pervading sense of genuine respect between them. They are the new guard, with membership closely guarded. It's unlikely any would invite Mourinho over. He'd likely be in the corner sneering with Tony Pulis. 

In fairness, with Manchester City just a point ahead of United in the table, Guardiola has not been without his critics either. His rivalry with Mourinho was supposed to make Manchester the epicenter of the country for the first time since Oasis were in their pomp. As it turns out, United and City have been more Beady Eye and Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds—shoots of promise, but for the large part distinctly underwhelming.

By his own admission, the Man City manager has found English football difficult and has vowed to do better. Many have given him a pass on the proviso City qualify for the UEFA Champions League. Some of the attacking football has been as sublime as the defending has been ridiculous, but a potential forward line comprising Gabriel Jesus, Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling is so exciting only the curmudgeonly aren't at least a little bit curious as to what will happen next. 

Liverpool's title tilt quickly dissolved when a tight squad, and a less-than-tight defence, was stretched to its limits. Klopp is just about on schedule, though, and there are few dissenting voices of any real note at Liverpool.

The work done by both Conte and Pochettino has rightly been lauded. Few can dispute that, in this moment in time, they are the two best managers in England managing the two best teams. Given the mess Conte inherited and the fact Tottenham have the sixth-biggest budget in the league, it's a tight call for the Manager of the Year. 

The aforementioned quartet are the poster boys for a generation of fans who deem Mourinho's perceived Machiavellian tendencies to be as unoriginal as they are boorish.

Earlier in the week, the Sunday Times' art critic Waldemar Januszczak tweeted: "I think I am going to have to write a book about how art fell into the hands of moral improvers and became a branch of social work."

It would have been no less pertinent had he substituted football for art. The game softening itself around the edges and sanding down some of its more laddish elements is to be celebrated—the coming together in support of Aaron Lennon being one such example just this week—but the priggish element that sees Mourinho as some dark malevolent force can be pious to the point of biliousness. You'd think he was a war criminal reading some of the more acidic polemics about him. 

Sure he's bitter, bullying, belligerent, bellicose and a bit of a bastard (and that's just the Bs), but every pantomime needs its villain. As the richest one in the world, the Premier League is no exception.

Just as his Manchester United side has been with fourth place all season, Mourinho is on the other side of the fence peering over at the top table. Not that he'd want to join them, but if he did, there would probably need to be a metamorphosis not dissimilar to John Travolta's Danny Zuko in Grease, where he ditches the leather for a preppy look in order to fit in better with the jocks. Tactically, philosophically and culturally, they are as far apart as it gets. At least on the surface.

In Ed Smith's marvelous essay Manager Motivations: How 4 Personality Types Define Them All, published by Bleacher Report in September, on Guardiola, he wrote: "Naturally approving of Guardiola's ends—attractive and creative football—we tend to gloss over his means. He is utterly ruthless, a ruthlessness determined by whether a player adheres to his ideology."

The same could also be said of Klopp, Pochettino and Conte. All of them are hard men, the equal of Mourinho. All of them are ruthless. Notwithstanding the obvious injury issues, is how Klopp has treated Daniel Sturridge that different to how Mourinho has been with Anthony Martial? Had Mourinho spent £33 million on a young striker, as Conte did on Michy Batshuayi, and then proceed to give him 113 minutes of Premier League football, his detractors would have sent petitions to Kofi Annan. As for Pochettino, he got Emmanuel Adebayor to leave a substitutes' bench with heated seats. He must be terrifying.

Although Mourinho has already delivered the EFL Cup in his debut campaign at Old Trafford and United remain strong favourites to win the Europa League after a 1-0 win in the semi-final first leg away to Celta Vigo, all season the question has been asked if this new breed of younger managers has overtaken him, led by Chelsea's irrepressible Conte.

Given everything with Mourinho is personal, what Conte has done at Chelsea will kill him. The Italian's achievement, if he gets his side over the line in these final four games, echoes Mourinho's own in the capital. With Conte's side demonstrating all the cut and dash of his own vintage title-winning teams, watching Chelsea will fill Mourinho with the dull ache of seeing a past love with a new flame at a mutual friend's wedding. West London is clearly over him.

Conte has overseen a 37-point positive swing from the same stage last season, of which Mourinho was manager for the first 16 games. United are six points better off under Mourinho than they were under Louis van Gaal. Perhaps after a summer outlay of £153 million, a little more could have been expected.

"I'm not surprised by Chelsea's success," Mourinho told Football Focus recently (via the Evening Standard). "I'm surprised because I thought they were demanding a different kind of football."

Mourinho does a wonderful Bruce Banner-to-Hulk impersonation. The green-eyed monster would be frightening, were his interpretation of Chelsea's current state not so hilarious.

As a deflection tactic, it only draws more attention to him. All managers at the top level have a shelf life. It's not gone unnoticed how, in the eight seasons after taking the FC Porto job, Mourinho won six league titles and two Champions Leagues. Since then, in the intervening seven years, he has won just two titles, one apiece with Real Madrid and Chelsea. 

Have Mourinho's methods, once universally hailed as being cutting edge, become blunt with time? Have his shock and awe tactics with players become more shock and bore?

Luke Shaw, Chris Smalling, Phil Jones, Jesse Lingard, Marcus Rashford, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Martial and the now-departed Bastian Schweinsteiger have all been called out publicly at some point or other over the campaign. When even Paul Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic have been given short shrift on occasion, there must be a sense among United's players of, "it's my turn now, is it?" whenever they find themselves under the bus.

The machismo over his players' injuries has admittedly been plain odd at times, though as part of BT Sport's punditry team on Thursday night, Rio Ferdinand expressed an element of sympathy (via Metro.co.uk): "I think with the modern players sometimes they're not as eager to get out there and play. They don't risk themselves as much as those players in the past."

It's not just the players who have felt the bullwhip snap of his tongue. If Mourinho were ever left alone with the fixture list computer, it would probably spend more time in the treatment room than Shaw. Laments over United having to play loads of matches in order to win multiple trophies is more than a little needy. Who'd have thought that would be the case?

"Coaching is about recognising the good qualities of the opponents and recognising the fragilities of the opponent," Mourinho said in April 2015 after his Chelsea side ground out a typically pragmatic 1-0 win over Manchester United, per the Daily Star.  

"And, more than that, it's to recognise the good qualities of my team—and the bad qualities of my team. Because my team also has bad qualities, and it's very important that me and my players, we recognise our bad qualities. One of the secrets of good coaching is, 'Can you hide your bad qualities from your opponents and even from the pundits?'"

There's no doubt a style of football that places pragmatism front and centre cuts against the zeitgeist. Mourinho still gets results, but he's unfashionable. He'll argue he doesn't care, but as the renowned Austrian psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl once said: "Even a genius cannot completely resist his zeitgeist, the spirit of his time."

Mourinho will claim it is tradition, not fashion, that has steered his thinking, but placing to one side for just a second a chronic lack of goals, there's little doubt this United team is one of the most attack-minded he has overseen in his career. It's definitely the most profligate. The problem for Mourinho is both Conte and Pochettino have been able to marry pragmatism with expansive football this season. In comparison, Mourinho's United look a little staid, never quite sure whether they are Martha or Arthur. 

Still, the majority of United supporters seem quietly content. A tailored version of the Herman's Hermits song "I'm Into Something Good" is a familiar refrain heard at Old Trafford, and particularly at away games. 

Woke up this morning feeling fine


Got Man United on my mind


Jose's got us playing the way United should, oh yeah 


Something tells me I'm into something good.

It's a chant that delights Mourinho, he told Portuguese television channel SIC (h/t the Mirror). Still, there's a sense it is as much an attempt to inspire a self-fulling prophecy as it is the reality. However, while the football Mourinho has United playing is far from perfect, it's still a million miles away from Van Gaal's tenure of acute ennui. 

In any case, only the most red-eyed supporter would not accept that, when required, Ferguson was the most pragmatic manager in the business. In European competition in particular, United were often happy to lean on the ropes, take whatever the opposition could throw at them and then hit on the counter-attack.

"People talk about style and flair, but what is that? Sometimes I ask myself about the future, and maybe the future of football is a beautiful green grass carpet without goals, where the team with more ball possession wins the game. The way people analyse style and flair is to take the goals off the pitch," Mourinho once famously opined, per the Guardian. 

Some would argue, on a literal level, it is Mourinho who has taken the goals off the pitch this season. Just 51 have been scored in 34 Premier League matches. That's only one more than Bournemouth. Manchester City have 14 more, with Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur having each outscored them by 20 and Chelsea 21.

Where perhaps Mourinho has fallen behind his peers is in the coaching, or lack thereof, of his forwards. When in February a gushing Eden Hazard spoke of Conte's sessions being superior to Mourinho's, it was hard to separate his words from the fact the previous season the pair were clearly not getting along.  

"Tactical training. We do more with Conte. We know exactly what to do on the pitch, where I have to go, the defenders [know] where they have to go," Hazard revealed to Sky Sports (via Metro.co.uk). 

"We know that to create movement I have to not even get the ball, but to create movement and space for others. I think now I understand that football is not only with the ball at my feet."

Yet now, watching Chelsea, it's clear the forwards are as well-drilled as the defenders. coordinated attacks seem like quite a rare thing in football. A number of goals scored by both Chelsea and Tottenham this term have seem orchestrated as if they have already been fine-tuned on the training ground.

It's not just left to individuals to break down the opposition with a moment of brilliance, a la Rashford's free-kick on Thursday, but a collective effort. It's like with Gonzalo Higuain's first for Juventus in Wednesday night's win in Monaco. A thing of beauty; engineered beauty. Hazard seems freer than he's ever been, yet he has been told where to go. What looks intuitive, and, of course, to an extent is, has been worked out by Conte.

There's no dispute those who see Mourinho as being antiquated in his methods and philosophies have had plenty of ammunition this season. Having overseen the club's worst start to a Premier League campaign, with five wins from their first 14 matches, United were effectively out of the title race by October. It's probably worth reiterating how they are the most expensively assembled squad in the history of football.

Last weekend's 1-1 draw against Swansea City set a new club record of 25 league games without defeat. That over the same period they have reached double figures for home league draws for only the second time in their history, 11 in 1980/81 was the only time they have "beaten" that number, says everything about United's debut season under Mourinho.

Scoff all you will, but he's made them the most difficult side to beat in the Premier League, the most difficult Manchester United side to beat in the club's gilded history.

When he said he wants to "close the circle" of Manchester United's history by winning the Europa League, it led to quotes about Europe's little brother competition, made on returning to Chelsea in 2013, being mercilessly recycled (via the Telegraph): "I don't want to win the Europa League. It would be a big disappointment for me. I don't want my players to feel the Europa League is our competition."

He might in private moments wince when he reads his words back, or more than likely probably won't, but if United see off Celta Vigo and go on to triumph in Stockholm, the club's supporters, players and board will care not one iota about the manager's loose mouth. In his first season, he will have made Manchester United multiple trophy winners again. And that, at even the biggest clubs in the world, is a noteworthy achievement.

For all the criticism, and it has been farfrom perfect, the bare facts don't lie. Of the four competitions Manchester United have competed for this season they are likely to win two of them. That would be two more than any of Guardiola, Klopp or Pochettino will probably manage.

The purists and puritans might not like it, maybe even the other managers, too, but that would be more than good enough to merit a place at football's top table.