Just after winning the Europa League in 2017 with Manchester United, Jose Mourinho launched a staunch defence of the pragmatism which has defined his career. “There are lots of poets in football but poets don’t win many titles,” he said as he outlined the way his side had over-powered a youthful and exciting Ajax. “If you want to press the ball all the time you don’t play short, if you are dominant in the air, you build long. We knew where they were better than them, we knew where we were better than them. We tried to kill their good qualities, we tried to exploit their weaknesses.”
At the time neither Ange Postecoglou nor Ruben Amorim were well known figures in European coaching but the Tottenham and Manchester United managers now look like the poster boys for the tactical philosophies which Mourinho was deriding. The two men who Mourinho might well have called poets meet on Sunday in what used to be a classic top-six fixture, including when Mourinho was in charge of either side. But the next game will be played much closer to the Premier League’s bottom six, with United in 13th and Tottenham in 14th. And one, if not both sides, could be in the bottom six by the time the game kicks off, depending on how Everton and West Ham fare in their fixtures.
Amorim’s United are on course for their worst league finish since 1990 while Tottenham have lost half their league games for the first time at this stage of a campaign since they were last relegated in 1977, prompting fears they could meet the same fate. However, neither coach seems to be dangerously close to the sack despite their teams’ pitiful results and league position. Mourinho might well despair at that very fact, given he was fired by Tottenham in 2021 when they were seventh and was let go by United in 2018 when they were in sixth.
All the same, both coaches are paying a high price for not looking at alternative remedies for their respective teams’ troubles…