So Chelsea have wrapped up the Barclays Premier League, touted before the season kicked off as the most open and competitive ever, with time to spare. Yet credit for this accomplishment on Sunday has been through teeth so tightly gritted that one would be forgiven for mistaking the Stamford Bridge press box for a ventriloquist convention.
Those who don’t admire manager Jose Mourinho find him as irritating as all hell – and people who are irritating are all the more so when they are proved right. Jose Mourinho has got it right more times than his rivals and their only comeback is to jump on the ‘style of play’ bandwagon. Even Brendan Rodgers, an assistant to Mourinho during the Portuguese’s first spell at Chelsea who, presumably, bought into his boss’s style of play back then when he was a winner by association, has turned detractor.
What Mourinho does, and others seem incapable of doing, is play the conditions. Just as a cricket batsman, even a great one, would be unwise to constantly get on the front foot to drive a quick bowler on a lively pitch, Mourinho knows when to rock back on his heels and settle for a single to mid-on. He knows he can still score a century, but it will be a different one to the one he’d score on a slow and arid dust bowl.
When Jose Mourinho was still “Jose Mour-who?” at Porto, Arsenal won the EPL by 11 points in 2003/4 and suffered an unprecedented zero defeats, making them strong favourites to take the 2004/5 title. Several pundits predicted an Arsenal ‘dynasty’ that could potentially extend into the next decade.
In the very next campaign, Jose Mourinho’s first season in England, his Chelsea won the same title by 12 points, amassing a record 95 points. To counter accusations that Mourinho-managed teams always play dour, pragmatic football; check out these facts:
Only Arsenal outscored the west Londoners (87 – 72) in 2004/5. Following their season’s only reverse that season, a 1 -0 loss at a not yet mighty Manchester City, Chelsea scored four goals in six of their next nine matches and two of the remaining three in the sequence saw four goals shared. That’s at least four goals per game in eight out of nine consecutive matches. Mourinho boring?
So far this season, Chelsea have again only been outscored by one team, but Manchester City, who were dead level with Chelsea after 20 games, have massively capitulated since. Despite scoring more goals in the next fifteen games, City have somehow contrived to fall thirteen points behind. What price entertainment?
‘Boring Chelsea’ have been involved in a 6-3, a 5-3, a 4-2 and have knocked nine goals past Swansea, who are expected to finish an impressive eighth or higher. They played their fair share of shots for the camera, to return to the cricketing analogies, but flamboyant strokes get you dropped from the team if you lose your wicket through recklessness and your team ultimately loses.
Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ season in 2003/4 quite rightly prompted plaudits for that team’s solid defence, but in the following season, Chelsea conceded a massive 21 fewer goals. Indeed Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ conceded more goals in their 18 home games than Chelsea did in all their 38 matches the following season; surely a lesson that there is another way.
Nothing should detract from Arsenal’s achievement back in 2003/4. No team has remained undefeated before or since in Premier League history. But once remaining undefeated became a realistic possibility, only Nigel Pearson’s ostrich would suggest Arsene Wenger didn’t batten down the hatches to ensure his side’s place in the history books. Wenger’s pragmatism in early 2004 is little different from Mourinho’s in early 2015. Indeed, one could argue that Wenger shut up shop with less at stake, since the title was already in the bag. Anyone remember the refrain “one-nil to the Arsenal” to the tune of Village People’s “Go West”? Many called the Gunners boring back then, but they were winners and the Premier League is primarily a competition.
In Chelsea’s 2004/5 season, none of their acknowledged rivals even mustered a goal at Stamford Bridge where Chelsea kept 14 clean sheets in 19 fixtures. Dour, but who better to prevent amassing points than those rivals capable of challenging you? Use your best bowlers to stop the top order batsmen from scoring freely.
Fast forward to 2015. Before Chelsea had to face Man Utd and Arsenal, their main rivals, in successive weeks last month, much had been made of the impressive recent form both had been showing. I daresay many hoped one or other of them could stick it to the arrogant Portuguese, Mourinho.
Few mentioned that Chelsea had failed to win just one league match since their humiliating 3-5 New Year’s Day loss to Spurs; the last time Mourinho would risk playing expansive football. Few mentioned that in two seasons back in English football, with only Liverpool to play at Stamford Bridge next week, no serious rival for the Premier League, that’s Man Utd, Man City, Arsenal or Liverpool, has managed to defeat Chelsea in the league – that’s two seasons! Echoes of 2004/5?
Since the Spurs defeat, Chelsea have won 13 games out of 15 with the other two drawn. Arsenal have indeed been impressive over the same period, but the fact they mounted a late surge up the table has made them look better than they really were. They have played one less game than Chelsea, but have already recorded a loss to add to the recent draw with the Blues. Chelsea have therefore amassed 41 points compared to Arsenal’s 37 since New Year’s Day. So why was all the talk about Arsenal’s impressive form in 2015?
Defence is just as much a part of the game as attack. Perhaps it is because I played American Football, a sport in which everyone defends when the time comes, that I can appreciate defending as an art unto itself. I stand up and applaud great defending like others stand to applaud great shots at goal. Defending entertains me because I’m watching a contest taking place over the entire field of play. If in their anxiety to break down a defence, an opponent leaves an opening to be exploited, should we call it a lucky break? When this scenario is repeated, at what point should we acknowledge it as tactical acuity on the part of the exploiter?
I remember back to a time when friendlies truly were convivial affairs and players would showcase their skills and, more to the point, be allowed to do so. Who can forget Peru goalkeeper Rene Higuita’s scorpion kick? In a competitive game we are denied such spectacles.
A friendly 6 – 6 draw showcasing skills and attacking prowess in spades is great for the fans and the TV networks, but at least half of the players are there primarily to defend, and defenders like to look good too.
La Liga currently boasts two players who routinely score fifty goals per season, yet neither has proved particularly prolific against English defences. Should we conclude that the English Premier League needs more inept defenders to satisfy critics’ craving for entertainment?
If you can win and entertain, do so by all means. But there is an attendant greater risk of losing, and some managers, just like some fans, don’t have it in them to take such risks. Jose Mourinho is just such a man. If, as a player, you are purely there to entertain, you are a luxury he cannot afford. I cannot disagree.
I have many Arsenal fans as friends, and my favourite wind-up when their players pass the ball a dozen times in the opposing penalty area when the pragmatic, and probably effective approach would be to shoot, is to whistle the tune “Sweet Georgia Brown”, the theme tune of basketball’s Harlem Globetrotters, famed for their tricks rather than their trophies.
Until they start awarding style points in football, success in the standings and on the balance sheet will be achieved by outscoring opponents or, here’s radical, not allowing your opponents to score as many as you. Fans love to see 5-4 results, but they give coaches palpitations. They, and at least half the players on the pitch see clean sheets as a thing of beauty.
No. Mourinho’s Chelsea played the right shots at the right time. There were prettier strokes played by others, no doubt; but those wickets were given away by injudiciously repeating the same shot to a different bowler. Next season will be different again. Someone needs to tell Messrs Wenger, Pellegrini et al that at the end of the season when the gongs – and the cheques – are being handed out, nobody in the pavilion will care how high they managed to hit the ball.
