If Jose Mourinho is ever going to be the ‘Special One’ again, and he’s still young enough to do it, then he has to realise his old-school approach to man-management is a problem.
His mentor at Barcelona, Sir Bobby Robson, was anything but old school in that respect.
But Mourinho will still have learnt some very British traits from him about ‘roll up your sleeves’, ‘take personal responsibility’, that football here is as much about desire as it is tactics.
What Mourinho does is what virtually every great manager from these shores, from Sir Alex Ferguson to Jock Stein and Don Revie, has done over the years, which is turn on his dressing room from time to time.
All of them would throw the occasional grenade, barking about how useless their players were and how they needed to pull their fingers out, and Mourinho did it again last week after Tottenham’s draw with Newcastle.
“Same coach, different players,” he said, when reminded that his teams usually know how to defend a lead. The problem is, players just don’t respond to that kind of treatment, so I’m not surprised we’ve heard suggestions that some in the Spurs dressing room are unhappy as a result.
I never particularly responded well to the boot camp mentality but plenty of players did – the Alan Shearer, Teflon types who’d run into the North Sea or drop and give a coach 20 press-ups the second they were told to.
That worked for them. But I go back to a conversation I’ve told you about before with the great John Robertson, which took place through a plume of cigarette smoke outside the Aston Villa tunnel.
Robbo told me how much things had changed, how you can’t treat pros in the way we were treated, and Mourinho doesn’t seem to have ever got that memo.
I’m not saying he bullies players, which was often what used to happen, but he demands players show him their mettle. I do wonder if anyone has ever suggested he just try bringing players with him instead.
I saw a haunting picture of Danny Rose on Twitter last week and I hope he’s all right, because it reminded me a bit of the way Luke Shaw looked when he was struggling under Mourinho at Manchester United.
I got a bit of stick from United fans for saying Mourinho’s treatment of Shaw was wrong back, then but look at him now.
We’re dealing with a different generation of players.
(Image: PA)
I mean, Jude Bellingham was just one when Liverpool won the Champions League in Istanbul, for goodness sake. I know it’s a bit cliched, but Mourinho is a victim of his own success and his words last week were clearly borne out of frustration.
But they were also the kind of words we’ve heard from him a lot in recent years and if he keeps going then he is going to talk himself out of another job sooner rather than later.
The only thing that will keep him at Tottenham is that Daniel Levy can’t or won’t pay however many millions it would cost to get rid of him.
So Mourinho needs to change although, sadly, I don’t think he will.
Instead he’ll probably go through another five or six clubs in Europe, trousering another £250million-odd before becoming Portugal manager.
Which is a shame because we don’t need 10 Pep Guardiola teams in the top 10, we need that little bit of difference.
And that difference can be a Jose Mourinho team at his very, very best because, as he has proven time and again, he knows how to get results and win trophies.
