good article on Mourinho's comments, the lies and the reasons.
Wenger’s hard line kick-starts the Mourinho whine
The last word: Brave vision to rebuild Arsenal starts a war of words before a ball is kicked, writes Ian Bell
The surest sign that a new football season is on the way comes, these days, when Jose Mourinho opens his mouth. Business cannot properly resume until the Chelsea manager has done an exhibition bout of whining. You could call it a pre-season unfriendly.
Mourinho’s forte is self-pity. Forget the titles won; overlook the tens of millions Roman Abramovitch has showered over Stamford Bridge. For Jose, life is just so unfair. Everything can be explained by the fact that everyone is out to get him.
The frequency with which he repeats the claim renders it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It may be, for example, that Chelsea did not meet the highest standards of behaviour in the Ashley Cole affair. It may be – a tiny technical detail – that Mourinho himself was fined £200,000 for his role in that unsavoury episode. But is that the issue? Not in Jose’s book.
In his belief – and you can believe it if you like – the English FA is a mere instrument of Arsenal. David Dein, that club’s vice-chairman, is on the association’s board. It therefore stands to reason, Portuguese style, that Arsene Wenger gets lots of favours and has his many sins overlooked while poor Jose is picked on.
It is rubbish, of course, but calculated rubbish. Mourinho, like Sir Alex Ferguson, never speaks before he thinks. The Chelsea manager’s remarks last week may have contained a whiff of authentic paranoia, but if you consider them as a stratagem they are altogether more interesting.
Mourinho left Wenger in the dust last season. He can throw £20 million at Manchester City in an effort to prise loose Shaun Wright-Phillips with the sort of casual confidence of which his Arsenal counterpart can only dream. The balance of power in the Premiership has shifted decisively to Chelsea . Yet which rival is given a taste of Jose’s psychological warfare?
After last week, you might call it kicking a man when he is down. In normal circumstances, after all, a coach with ambitions does not surrender his captain weeks before the start of a campaign. When the captain happens to be Patrick Vieira, a Highbury talisman for nine years, and one of the few in football delighted to face down Roy Keane, Arsenal ought to be in trouble.
Wenger appears to think otherwise. Last week Vieira was not so much transferred as dumped, albeit to Juventus, albeit for £13.75m. Apparently tired of the player’s annual flirtations with any big club that took his fancy, the Arsenal manager seems to have made a sober assessment of his captain’s recent contributions. For the first time in years, the 29-year-old had pledged himself to Wenger. Yet when the boot was on the other foot, the coach did not hesitate. If there is mileage left in Vieira, Fabio Capello was welcome to it.
Wenger later asked Arsenal fans to trust him. They have no good reason to do otherwise. The power of the “French clique” in the Highbury dressing room may now have been broken, but it has been broken, ironically, by the Frenchman who created the clique. In the process, as fans will remember, he transformed Arsenal. Once it was a byword for tedious football; now it carries a quality assurance seal.
The challenge for Wenger, as Mourinho is clearly aware, is to prove that he can do it all again. It takes nerve, and a couple of more conspicuous body parts, to dump Patrick Vieira, even after a poor season. Jermaine Jenas, at 22, looks like the obvious replacement, but Graeme Souness and Newcastle are talking in terms of £20m. If that deal proves impossible, the only obvious alternative at Highbury is teenager Cesc Fabregas.
The point remains, never -theless, that Wenger did not hesitate to dispose of Vieira. Nine years of service from a player still capable of commanding almost £14m: these were, apparently, mere details. More important than that, player power, so called, counted for nothing. Certain other coaches with their eyes on Premiership prizes might want to take note.
At Liverpool, for example, Rafael Benitez may now be satisfied that Steven Gerrard has been chastened after an argument over a new contract during which the player managed to humiliate himself. The coach must wonder , never-theless, about what he might have done with the millions he could have had in exchange for a petulant captain.
At Old Trafford, meanwhile, such self-restraint as Alex Ferguson retains must be disappearing fast as he seethes over Rio Ferdinand. A £5m salary waits to be collected, but Rio continues to tease. Or rather, given the worst-kept secret in English football, he continues to hope Mourinho will pick up the phone.
Ferdinand might be better advised to put in a call himself, possibly to David Beckham, for tips on the limits of Ferguson’s patience. He might also reflect, as Gerrard may have, that the affections of football supporters also carry a price. Heroes are one thing; young men quibbling over £5m-a-year while the cost of a season ticket rises ever upwards are another.
Vieira got the message. By all accounts he offered no arguments when Arsenal chose to be blunt. He could, theoretically, have demanded to stay at Highbury. After years of hawking himself around during the close season, he was made to realise that defiance was pointless.
He won’t go broke as a result. He will “only” be playing for Juventus for the remainder of his career. But Wenger showed real steel last week. As Mourinho clearly realises, this is not a rival to be underestimated. With luck, there will be no Premiership procession this year.
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Incidentally, Ferguson has came out today in full support of Mourinho's comments :rollani:
just goes to show what two whiners we are dealing with now.
