Arsenal v Chelsea: Jose Mourinho wipes artistic merit off the game plan in search for success at Emirates Stadium

Manager was meant to bring the beautiful game to Stamford Bridge but his instincts are telling him to go back to his old ways 

 

Jose Mourinho called it “one step back”, but it was a move that made him happy. Chelsea’s reversion to solidity, caution and tough tackling was a throwback to his first reign. He turned the Christmas lights off for the night and they may not come back on.

Mourinho’s return to English football has been bumpy. All across the game you hear people theorising that he is not the same man who left these shores in September 2007. He is not diminished, exactly, but seems less decisive and sure of his destiny. With this 0-0 draw, though, he was back in a safe familiar place.

For this London derby Mourinho occupied the coaching zone from the kick-off, writing notes, jabbing his finger at positions he wanted his players to occupy. His expression was grave and often grumpy. He was trying to shape the game in his defeat-phobic image, as he so often did during his first spell at Stamford Bridge.

Maintaining his unbeaten record against Arsène Wenger was a great pleasure. Ten games have passed between the two without a Wenger win. Mourinho would view that sequence as a vindication of his own less romantic view of how the game should be played. The contradiction in his second reign is that his brief was to generate excitement while his instincts are driving him back to the old ways.

Chelsea’s line-up for this rainswept winter struggle spoke of a craving for clean sheets and a touch less melodrama. While Juan Mata and Oscar watched from the bench John Obi Mikel, Frank Lampard and Ramires were all available to help screen Mourinho’s back four.

With their manager urging them on, Chelsea were noticeably more intense in their tackling and hounding of Arsenal’s midfielders, with Mikel fortunate to stay on the pitch after a dangerous spearing lunge at Mikel Arteta.

For a few weeks now there has been a growing sense that Mourinho is becoming bored by the notion that Chelsea must evolve into a thing of beauty. Art for art’s sake was never his bag. Why should he start now?
Afterwards he spoke of building a team for the long term but confessed to a pragmatic willingness to “go back” to conservatism. He promised “creativity” at some future date but was not convincing.

His first five months back in the Premier League have been packed with mysterious utterances and political statements. Only this week he laid out his own 12-year plan, culminating in the Portugal job. No other leading manager looks this far ahead. Certainly no employee of Roman Abramovich has felt confident thinking in decades rather than months.

At the same time Mourinho told us he had taken a pay cut to return to London. One more thing: he was at pains to point out that he left Spain because “he wanted to” and not because Real had given up on him bringing them a coveted 10th European Cup.

We ought to mention too the decision to let Romelu Lukaku join Everton on loan; his coded grumbling about his shortage of reliable strikers; the marginalisation of Mata and David Luiz; and finally his loss of faith in Ashley Cole, who again played backup here to César Azpilicueta.

By any standards this has been a highly eventful second coming. The hard part is knowing whether the humbling experience of trying (and largely failing) to tame Real Madrid’s plutocrats has left some permanent scar on him.

Chelsea fans expected him to resume where he left off and push the other big names around. There is no deep crack in his management technique or in Chelsea’s prospects for the second half of this campaign.
But there was not the old feeling that he knew exactly what he wanted. In the last few days Mourinho has called the “1-0 win the easiest thing in football”, as if he would be much happier winning that way.

Now is the time for Chelsea to know their best team and know their style of play. Those basic conclusions will be harder to reach if Mourinho has a low opinion of too many of these players. His biggest private gripe will have been the continuing fixation with Fernando Torres, a £50 million monument to the owner’s interfering nature.

Management by eccentricity and force of character is as risky as it is compelling. For the first few months he recited the mantra of change, of putting things right, of reprogramming players previously coached by Rafa Benítez.

Now, he radiates impatience that his team cannot guarantee him the defensive solidity of his title-winning years at Stamford Bridge, or, in some cases, the relentless industry of his Inter Milan teams. One clean sheet in 11 league games was anathema to him.

Since August, Mourinho has seen Liverpool rise, Manchester United drop back, Arsenal regain some of their old rhythm and Manchester City start to display their attacking potency. He was desperate to tighten his hold on Wenger and send Chelsea into the Christmas and New Year fixtures with the air of a conquering force.

They certainly showed the intent – and tackling — of a team who will care less and less about artistic merit as the season wears on. Mourinho wants domination first. Deep inside he must be stalked by a fear of two consecutive managerial postings not quite working out.

This may yet explain the changes in him as a man. A lot of megalomania is underpinned by insecurity.

Source: The Telegraph