Jose Mourinho is the Tottenham manager and that may never be normal to write. But Chelsea has no reason to fear him and his new team.
“So that’s how it feels”. Those were presumably Jose Mourinho’s first words as he settled into his new office. Tottenham Hotspur had just fired Mauricio Pochettino with Spurs in the bottom half of the table, and replaced him with The Special One barely 12 hours later. Usually it is the other way around, with Mourinho getting the boot having dragged his team into the lower reaches of the table and a replacement having to come in to put off fires all over the place.
This time, though, the Mourinho three year cycle starts in the opposite direction. Mourinho has, through desperation and sheer lack of opportunity, found himself relegated to a fire fighting role at one of the top six clubs in the Premier League. Most Chelsea fans would shrug off this appointment with a “meh, who cares” and would be absolutely right to do so. But there are some who consider this a knife in the back, a betrayal of sorts. To that the response should be “are you kidding me?”
Get this straight: Mourinho will always be a legend at Chelsea. He set the club up on its path to becoming what it is today: a place where second best is as good as last. No one, let alone basement dwellers frothing at the mouth on Twitter, can take it away from him.
And do not forget, it was Chelsea who decided to end their association with him, twice. Unlike he who shall not be named, Mourinho did not walk out on Chelsea at the first opportunity to manage a bigger club in his homeland. Chelsea, or its fans, can have no complaints if an out of work former employee decides to join one of their rivals. Many suspect they will not. But should they fear him and the impact he could have on a rival for the Champions League places?
Spurs and Mourinho is a marriage of convenience at best and a train wreck waiting to happen at worst. A manager who needs investment to win, coupled with a chairman who would rather die before letting that happen, is a recipe for disaster. Add to it the fact that Spurs pay some of the lowest wages in the top six and a lot of their best players are waiting at the station for the next train to take them as far away from that club as possible.
If that was not enough, Spurs broke their transfer record in the summer to sign Tanguy Ndombele, so hell will freeze over before Mourinho gets to spend a penny in January. All of this points to Mourinho getting Spurs into the top 10, or finishing what Pochettino started and getting them relegated.
Of course, there will be the traditional new manager bounce as Spurs go on a five game winning streak before the wheels come off yet again in the New Year. When that happens, the mind games will begin. Shots will be fired at Manchester United and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Paul Pogba will be called out, and called an expensive yet exponentially worse Frenchman compared to Moussa Sissoko.
Chelsea will be in Mourinho’s crosshairs, again. “Three Premier League trophies. THREE. ONE. TWO. THREE. Two sackings. TWO,” might be heard more than once in a press conference, fingers waving about, and nostrils flared. “I taught him that,” will be a familiar phrase whenever the discussion turns to Frank Lampard. The Mourinho many love to hate will emerge from underneath the facade of a man just happy to be back in a job.
So, the question remains: should Chelsea be fearful of a Spurs revival under Jose Mourinho? Hardly. The Mourinho fans used to love and revere is long gone. The current version is a shell of a man who had the world at his feet when he was at Chelsea, but has to settle for the second best club in London to maintain his relevance.
What Spurs have done is pour gasoline on a fire that has been raging ever since they bottled the Champions League final. And when the flames grow tall enough to touch Daniel Levy in the expensive seats, the result will be a familiar one for Jose: palpable discord and a separation by mutual consent.