Roy Keane was right when he told Jose Mourinho to stop moaning.
Mourinho complained about Manchester United’s fixture congestion following the 1-0 victory over FC Rostov in the Europa League last-16 game last Thursday.
Keane called him out on it, and rightly so.
“I’ve never heard so much rubbish in my life,” the former United captain said on ITV.
“Why do we have to listen to that garbage? It’s utter nonsense what he’s talking about. He’s the manager of Manchester United, one of the biggest clubs on the planet.
“The squad he’s got, the players… and he keeps moaning about fixtures and fatigue.”
Roy Keane tearing into Jose Mourinho pic.twitter.com/gzTjGZQ36X
— Colin Cranmer (@Colin_Cranmer) March 17, 2017
When Mourinho was linked with the manager’s job at Old Trafford, in 2013 and again in 2016, one of the main reservations about him getting the position was the defensive style of football associated with his teams.
That fear hasn’t exactly been realised. The current United team are now better to watch than Louis van Gaal’s often dour side, and Mourinho appears to have granted the players more freedom than he did during his second spell with Chelsea.
But the moaning, paranoia and conspiratorial nonsense has followed him to Old Trafford. And it’s already wearing thin for football fans.
International breaks are a drag, but they usually mean two weeks away from Mourinho complaining. Not for this break though.
The former Chelsea manager has sat down for a wide-ranging interview with France Football, and it’s full of complaints. Two of which prove that he really needs to give it a rest.
Mourinho was asked about how he prepares his team for games, both mentally and tactically, and used it as an opportunity to complain about Southampton having longer to prepare for the EFL Cup final at Wembley.
“Take the example of the EFL Cup final. I said to them: ‘Okay, how do Southampton play normally? So, we are going to work on their characteristics’,” Mourinho said.
“But it is a team that had just spent 15 days in Spain to prepare themselves. Without playing. Without pressure. Without the media. We, during that time, had played four times. They, for two weeks, went to Spain. Okay.”
The interview took place after United won the final 3-2, thanks to two goals from Zlatan Ibrahimovic – a world class player reportedly paid more than double that of Southampton’s highest paid player.
The Saints’ last game before the final was 15 days previous. In that time, United played three games – two in the Europa League against St Etienne and another in the FA Cup against Blackburn Rovers.
United won all three in relatively comfortable fashion. However, even if they had lost those games, Mourinho has no grounds for complaint. They were involved in them because they advanced in both competitions.
Southampton had the advantage of extra time to prepare for that one game, but United had the advantage of a better squad with more depth.
Mourinho’s team also has the highest wage bill in world football, and are the fourth highest in all of sport.
In their book, Why England Lose: & Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski detail the relevance of a club’s wage bill with regard to results.
They write:
“We studied the spending of 40 English clubs between 1978 and 1997, and found that their outlay on transfers explained only 16 per cent of their total variation in league position.
“By contrast, their spending on salaries explained 92 per cent of that variation. In the 1998-2007 period, spending on salaries by clubs in the Premier League and Championship still explained 89 per cent of the variation in league position.”
Never mind what they pay in transfers, a wage bill is the true indicator of a club’s success. This season Mourinho’s team have mostly been marooned in sixth, and have desperately underachieved by this metric.
United have a squad of internationals, enough good players to field two teams, and as such Mourinho should never complain about fixture congestion. Especially not after the team have overcome any perceived disadvantage.
In April, United are due to play nine games. From April 3, 1999 to May 1, 1999, Ferguson’s United played eight games and it’s difficult to remember many complaints from the team.
They played a great Arsenal team twice, a great Juventus team twice and had a trip to the hostile Elland Road to play Leeds United.
They came through it to win the treble. Could you imagine the complaints from Mourinho if his team had to go through this series of fixtures?
Mourinho also complained about his predecessor selling Angel di Maria, Danny Welbeck and Javier Hernandez. He even detailed how he would instruct Di Maria, if he had had the opportunity.
“I could have said to Di Maria, who was faster than an arrow: ‘You do not dribble, you play with one touch, you pass the ball, because I do not want to lose’,” Mourinho said
“But I prefer to play with the qualities that my players have.”
In other words, he’s paying for the mistakes of the last guy. A manager complaining about not having a world class player just doesn’t sit well.
You’re a coach, Jose. Your job is to improve the players at your disposal, not moan about the players who used to be at the club.
When has Mauricio Pochettino ever complained about Tottenham Hotspur selling Gareth Bale? Or even letting Gylfi Sigurdsson leave?
He hasn’t. He gets on with his job, improving the players in his squad and making the team greater than the sum of its parts.
Mourinho is possibly trying to distract from the team’s position in the league, but his complaints are now past the point of tiresome. Give it a rest, Jose, you’re fooling no-one at this stage.
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