Sunday was not a very good day for Jose Mourinho.
For a man who always has an excuse, the landscape was bleak.
elastico superfly green His Manchester United side shambolically conceded inside 30 seconds at Stamford Bridge and then got progressively worse from there, it was impossible to find anyone else to blame.
16.3 Primemesh black The livewire performance from Chelsea was itself in stark contrast to the displays served up last year under Mourinho, with his ley lieutenants Cesc Fabregas and Branislav Ivanovic nowhere to be seen.
Mercurial Superfly V black Mourinho could not even pin the blame on Chelsea’s freshness after no midweek game, because that was his fault as well.
It was a great ruse, and you have to admire the gumption. The on-field side of things may be going haywire, but it’s encouraging to see that Mourinho remains a master of the more important aspects of top-level football management.
MercurialX Proximo II But he has to be worried. He had a list of the players he wanted, and the Manchester United board produced every one of them. Big money was spent on the manager and the players he requested and the goal was clear: return Manchester United to the top of the English game.
X 16.1 purechao black Now, a quarter of the season gone, United are in danger of losing contact with the leading pack.
With the top five separated by a single point and only a couple of goals, the five-point gap from fifth-place Spurs back to Mourinho’s men in seventh is starting to look significant.
While Chelsea themselves have shown how quickly things can change with a few wins on the spin, Mourinho’s Manchester United currently appear no likelier to put such a run together than David Moyes’ Manchester United or Louis van Gaal’s Manchester United.
United have already lost three league games this season, the same number as Leicester suffered in the whole of last season, and the same number as Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham combined this term.
For all the talk after Monday of Jose Mourinho’s shutdown of Liverpool, his side has shipped more goals than West Brom and 17th-placed Middlesbrough. They conceded as many goals in 90 minutes at Stamford Bridge as Tottenham have in their first nine games.
If a Jose Mourinho side isn’t functioning defensively, there are problems. Throw in a serious-looking injury for Eric Bailly and there is the very real prospect of things getting worse before they get better. Although maybe Wayne Rooney will turn out to be a good centre-back and kill two birds with one stone.
The good news for United is that having travelled to Liverpool and Chelsea back-to-back the fixture list is slightly kinder over coming weeks, with their tougher-looking games between now and Christmas against Arsenal, Everton and Spurs sandwiched by gentler propositions.
That’s not the case for Spurs, whose failure to find a way past a resolute Bournemouth meant they missed the chance to go top and then saw subsequent results drop them all the way down to fifth.
Mauricio Pochettino sounded genuinely concerned by his side’s lack of energy in the goalless draw at the Vitality Stadium, and now faces seven matches before the end of November against Liverpool, Leicester, Bayer Leverkusen, Arsenal, West Ham, Monaco and Chelsea, as well as an international break when his players will scatter across the globe. It’s a run that could make or break their Premier League and Champions League challenge.
Liverpool, on the other hand, now sit level on points with top-of-the-table-crisis-club Manchester City having already played four of last season’s top five and facing a run of league games against Crystal Palace, Watford, Southampton, Sunderland, Bournemouth, West Ham and Middlesbrough before a festive Merseyside derby at Goodison. It could be a very merry Christmas for Jurgen Klopp.
Spurs were far from alone in feeling a European hangover, with gleefully logic-defying football anarchists Leicester the only side able to back up continental efforts with a victory at the weekend.
With a fag paper separating the top five, Chelsea and Liverpool’s lack of European football could be the decisive difference that propels either side to the title.
So perhaps Jose Mourinho will have played a decisive role in the title race after all.