For those who are unaware with the career of Jose Mourinho, his managerial tenures typically follow a pattern. The first season is usually great, the second season is usually better and his team wins a championship, and then in the third season, Mourinho completely loses the plot, he leaves the team, and it winds up being worse than when he was hired in the first place.
Mourinho is on season three with Manchester United and, like clockwork, Mourinho has lost the plot. Currently seventh in the Premier League, United is 16 points behind the top spot and are closer to the bottom of the table than the top. In addition, their two biggest rivals are in the top two spots and are both unbeaten, while United keeps dropping points. Mourinho has been critical of the media for not focusing on his title winning past and criticized the team, including executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward, for not supporting him in the transfer market to buy players (even though United is already one of the top spending teams in the world and Mourinho wants to replace players he himself had signed for lots of money) in order to make the team better.
In the latest version of Mourinho’s woeful third season saga, he is going after MUTV, his team’s in-house media network.
In an interview with the network, Mourinho got a bit frosty with the reporter when discussing injuries ahead of their Wednesday clash with Arsenal. According to The Independent, Mourinho admitted there would be difficulties after Luke Shaw, Phil Jones, and Romelu Lukaku were injured last weekend, adding to an already long list of injuries, but didn’t want to give out any more info for fear it would give Arsenal a leg up on them.
“I don’t want to update you, I would like Arsenal TV to make the same questions but they don’t, they hide everything from the inside, so why should I answer to you.”
“We are going to be in difficulty again to build the team. We are again going to have to make adaptations and compensations to try to give some balance to the team.”
“But then I believe we are again going to have the spirit to fight and to try to win the match.”
Mourinho has a valid point in that he doesn’t want to reveal anything that may give Arsenal an advantage, but it’s just that this type of manager/reporter exchange is the kind of thing done with an independent member of the media. It takes a lot to do this with the in-house network. You know, the team owned outlet that’s pretty much PR and is likely going to try to put a positive spin on whatever Mourinho says because everyone is all on the same team. When you’re losing your own team network, what’s next?
