Back in April 2015, as Chelsea coasted to the Premier League, Jose Mourinho decided the time was right to bravely confess to his issues to the Telegraph.
I have a problem, which is I’m getting better at everything related to my job since I started.
In terms of making oneself a hostage to fortune, this was the equivalent of pre-emptively printing your own 'Reward' posters. Since then, Mourinho has only had problems: appalling treatment of Eva Carneiro that led to legal action, followed by a string of humiliating results in one of the worst title defences in living memory, all ended by throwing his players under the bus he once parked, accusing his players of 'betraying him', right before being sacked.
Now he has got the United job he craved, and has spent much of it looking like a man about to be sacked in Glengarry Glen Ross, all crumpled trench coat and baleful gazes into a better version of the present.
Following three defeats in a week - 14 defeats in his last 31 games - Mourinho is beginning to look like a busted flush. One that has committed John Giles' cardinal sin in publicly criticising his players.
Today's game against Leicester is of sufficient pressure to warrant a touchline run should United win it in the last minute. Mourinho must surely not be impervious to self-doubt at this stage, and now we have his latest indignity: a defence by his arch-enemy, Pep Guardiola.
Pep was quoted in the Spanish press as saying that it "isn't fair" that managers are criticised so heavily when not winning games. He didn't drop any names, but the only managers enduring pressure other than Mou are Mark Hughes, David Moyes and maybe Slaven Bilic, it's safe to assume that Pep had Mourinho in mind when saying the following:
“I hear a lot of things that are not true about what is happening now.
For many colleagues, at the moment they aren't winning, and it isn’t fair what happens with them.
“We are only five games into the Premier League. I know what’s going to happen to me, to our club, my players, the team when we don’t win. It is impossible to win all of the games. It is impossible to put in a good performance all the time.
That’s happened with my colleagues when they lose one game and how they get pushed, so I know perfectly well that it’s going to happen to me and our team.
Eighteen months on, Mourinho has more than one problem. Fail to beat Leicester today and he'll have a stack load more.
[AS]
