PA Images
The more erratic that Jose Mourinho's behaviour has become over the past few years, the more inscrutable his motivations. While it used to be fairly apparent what Jose was trying to achieve with his intense, manipulative and compellingly calculating approach to human interaction, he now seems to be lashing out left, right and centre, purely on chaotic whim. Where he used to critically motivate his players, he now stomps all over their confidence in his post-match press conferences. Where he used to use euphemism, nuance and insinuation to make referees do his bidding, he now finds himself using about as much subtlety as a 150-tonne bulldozer and being fined anything up to £50,000 as a result.Perhaps the most worrying thing of all is that Mourinho doesn't even seem to relish pissing off Arsene Wenger anymore, when it was previously his motive to get up in the morning, his spiritual and managerial raison d'être. Indeed, Jose seems rather disillusioned with football, to the point that he tries to get sent to the stands pretty much every other week. That was certainly the case when Manchester United took on West Ham on Sunday, and a booking for a laughable dive from Paul Pogba led to Mourinho going all Eric Cantona on a water bottle, an act of petulance for which a nonplussed Jon Moss dismissed him from his technical area. While some United fans were quick to complain that only Mourinho would get such harsh treatment, it should be pointed out that they weren't half as indignant when the same thing happened to the inimical Wenger not so long ago.There is perhaps something in that 'only Mourinho' mentality which Jose wants to cultivate at United. Maybe, in an effort to take the pressure off what is quite clearly an inadequate team, he is attempting to foster an image of himself as a man who has been singled out for harsh treatment, both by the national media and referees. The problem is, owing to his increasingly volatile behaviour, the average United fan seems to have difficulty maintaining a facade of sympathy for Jose. That is the crucial difference between himself an Alex Ferguson, a man who had the unqualified love of the crowd and who Mourinho now appears to be imitating in sporadic fashion, though currently with far less success.With Jose now facing a potential two-match ban for his actions, there are few who would argue that his bottle kicking antics weren't a needless distraction to the detriment of the team. Not only could his silliness see him barred from the touchline, it could also ensure that we see even more of Rui Faria in his post-match pressers, with Mourinho's long-time coaching assistant perhaps the only man more sullen than Mourinho himself. We can only assume that, in needlessly booting that innocent bottle, Mourinho was attempting a battle cry that ended up falling seriously flat. Either that, or it was a deliberate act of self-sabotage, and he's hoping he'll get a full stadium ban so he doesn't have to watch United scrape up disappointing home draws against teams like West Ham.
Advertisement