I see José is backin the news

[sean]

You'll be busy this week, Cobs.

Did Robson call him a fogg-ot?

Edited March 6, 2006 by sean

[Stevie H]

spat at by the socios this morning apparently. i laughed.

[floyd]

When Barca knock Chelsea out, I excpect Queenie to do one, like that Quaterback in The Last Boy Scout, and crack up and start popping everyone off with a Smith & Wesson

[madaboutlfc]

a Barca fan I know said they were shouting Translator to him.. apparently it winds him up..

[John am Rhein]

When Barca knock Chelsea out, I excpect Queenie to do one, like that Quaterback in The Last Boy Scout, and crack up and start popping everyone off with a Smith & Wesson

 

Perfect outcome

[Figaro]

He had a certain Barca fan (theatre manager to boot) throw him a couple of tickets...

 

Other theatre owners have offered on the net to give him free seats to any show he would care to see

 

Mourinhois very, very clever - all the attention has been shifted away from his players...exactly what he wanted...

[Coyler]

You'll be busy this week, Cobs.

Did Robson call him a fogg-ot?

I thought that myself too, when he was waiting for him to 'come up the tunnel', as it were.

 

Sure he was probably fecking pissed, the brain-damaged, slurring, straight lush.

[Ripley]

Whatever he is doing in Barcalona, which may be diverting attention from his players, that's not what he was doing during and after the game on Saturday and he continues to look like a man who is sliding out of control.

 

Do Oliver James or Raj Persaud come on this board?

[matty]

Mourinho's got attention away from his players because the whining 7 year old can't stand not to have the attention on him.

 

Rather like when he ostentatiously strolled off the pitch after Porto's European Cup win. "Look at me, look at me!"

[Bailo]

Mourinho's got attention away from his players because the whining 7 year old can't stand not to have the attention on him.

 

Rather like when he ostentatiously strolled off the pitch after Porto's European Cup win. "Look at me, look at me!"

Pish.

 

Don't you know his family were in danger? So he HAD to go straight to a Sky reporter and to Peter Kenyon.

Edited March 6, 2006 by SuperDjibril

[Stevie H]

Whatever he is doing in Barcalona, which may be diverting attention from his players, that's not what he was doing during and after the game on Saturday and he continues to look like a man who is sliding out of control.

 

agree with this. think his ego is beginning to get the better of him.

[AE]

agree with this. think his ego is beginning to get the better of him.

 

He is starting to believe the hype he has created.

[sutty]

Can people stop calling him queenie? Please.

[Herbie von Smalls]

agree with this. think his ego is beginning to get the better of him.

not so sure it's that so much as his ego is his greatest weapon, but also the chink in his armour.

[Stevie H]

not so sure it's that so much as his ego is his greatest weapon, but also the chink in his armour.

 

oh definitely. the possibility that he's neither as cool nor as good as he thinks he is can be used against him. i hope barca f***ing tonk them.

[jfogarty]

If he keeps up his current antics he is going to get killed

[Herbie von Smalls]

the tide seems to be turning lately in the press. where he was previously revered as 'a breath of fresh air'. one reads more and more of his 'hot air'.

 

mind you it's taken the dailies long enough to extricate themselves from his a******.

[Earl Hafler]

The FA shouldfine them for their behaviour on and off the pitch on Saturday.

 

And the way their players behaved and tried to intimidate the ref. Terry might be a very good central defender but he is also a 24 carat c**t.

[sean]

I actually though Terry was one of the beter ones.

Don't get me wrong, there's none that isn't guilty of this type of thing, but it's becoming a bit of a nonsense. He's Wenger & Ferguson look like angels

[Eskimo]

Pretty good read....

 

The Times March 06, 2006

 

 

I predict a riot - rather too often

 

 

JOSÉ MOURINHO HAS REACHED THE stage of the blonde woman in the red dress in the party scene in Sunday Bloody Sunday. As things don?t go her way, she first picks a fight, then throws a scene and finally rips her clothes off in a melodramatic fit. An observer sighs: ?Not those tired old t*** again.?

Yes, José. What was once thrilling, attractive and dangerous is now the most frightful bore. It?s no longer amusing. It?s no longer even interesting. Put ?em away, José, we?ve all seen them before and we?re no longer so terribly impressed. It?s been getting on for two years, now. We have reached a state of Pout Fatigue.

 

 

 

I could almost have forgiven Mourinho for Saturday?s performance against Bryan Robson away to West Bromwich Albion but for the smirk. It was a moment that forfeited all sympathy. It?s all gone too far. Pout all you like from now on, strip off in the Nou Camp, but I?m no longer thrilled.

 

Mourinho kept the Chelsea players in the dressing-room for too long at half-time, as a piece of up-yours gamesmanship that he now seems to employ at every match he plays. I think the strain is rather getting to him. Robson, the West Bromwich manager, had words, whereupon Mourinho gave his insufferable smirk. I do what I like, you do what you must. This is because you are a lesser being, yes?

 

So afterwards he refused to shake Robson?s hand ? is there a manager alive who has had the honour of shaking Mourinho?s hand after a match? Certainly, his politenesses are more honoured in the breach than the observance ? and then, to make the point that he was Making A Point, he shook hands with all his players.

 

The trouble with all this is that it was only ten days since his ludicrous reaction to the woes he suffered against Barcelona ? a first-leg home defeat in the Champions League. Mourinho claimed, absurdly, that Lionel Messi had faked his tumble to get a Chelsea player sent off. To make this still less sympathetic, Arjen Robben, of Chelsea, had made a grotesque dive a couple of weeks earlier. What?s more, Didier Drogba gave us yet another example of the diver?s art on Saturday.

 

Mourinho was good fun when he arrived: stylish, witty, ironical, clever, amusing and effective. Management is easy. Easy for me, anyway, although obviously that isn?t true for ordinary people. His poses and postures and ? then strictly rationed ? pouts added to the gaiety of football.

 

But it really doesn?t do to overplay your favourite gambit. People stop taking you seriously. They stop listening to what you are saying. If you seek to exploit shock tactics, it?s best not to employ them every week.

 

Mourinho, it seems, has a problem. His mind is trying to bridge the interstellar gap between his sense of what should be and a distant place known as reality. In short, Chelsea are not playing well enough to sustain Mourinho?s impossible level of self-belief.

 

That Champions League match against Barcelona may turn out to be a watershed occasion, a real confidence-breaker. Certainly, on Saturday he was rattled enough for self- parody. The second leg tomorrow requires a serious performance, and from the Chelsea players rather than the Chelsea manager.

 

A non-handshake, a press conference rant, a series of accusations against the referee or his opposing manager or his cheating opponents ? we?ve had all these, and rather too often. It would be nice, would it not, if we were to talk about footballers next time Chelsea play football. But bearing in mind this will be in Barcelona, the chances are not high.

 

Some hints, then, for José. Cut down on the pouts. Ration yourself to one scene every six weeks. Try to give an impression that you respect more people in the world than yourself and Sir Alex Ferguson (for whom Mourinho?s devotion is largely ironical). Don?t ignore reality every single match ? it?s more effective if you save these things up. Try occasionally to accuse somebody of a crime he has actually committed ? it means that wild accusations would carry a bit more weight. Try to stop stealing every scene, every time you come on stage. The novelty value is wearing off.

 

And try, above all, to keep that red frock on. Because you are becoming your own cliché.

[Guest Red Mist]

I wished the Barca fans had dragged him away and bludgeoned him to death. Or at least, given him a stern talking to.

[Eskimo]

I've been told that he sarcastically applauded the Barca fans at the airport.....

[Stevie H]

james lawton's piece in the independent today is very good.

 

James Lawton: Robson's rage should give Mourinho cause to pause over his behaviour

http://sport.independent.co.uk/football/ch...ticle349504.ece

 

Perhaps it was the growth of tension before tomorrow night's ordeal by Ronaldinho and Messi at the Nou Camp. Maybe it is that Jose Mourinho truly believes that his success as a coach has put him beyond the judgement of mere football mortals. But, whatever the explanation, he would be wise to review film of his performance at West Bromwich Albion.

 

He should dwell particularly on the evidence of the outrage his behaviour and that of one of his key players, Didier Drogba, had clearly etched on the face of a rival manager and - here we will be a little cavalier with our terminology - fellow football man, Bryan Robson.

 

Although sometimes Mourinho seems to imply that the world game was in a state of rather primitive development before his graduation from translator and lackey to Sir Bobby Robson to Special One, surely he must have some respect for great figures from the past and an awareness that, in his adopted football land, few men carry the cachet of Robson.

 

As a manager at Middlesbrough and West Brom Robson has been touched by both success and failure and now, with his shoestring resources, he fights for survival again at The Hawthorns. Last season he performed a unique feat, leading a team bottom of the table at Christmas to salvation in the relegation battle. This, it might be argued, was an achievement that in some way was as worthy of respect as leading a Chelsea team built on the foundation of Roman Abramovich's wealth to the Premiership title.

 

However, this is academic. Mourinho, no one can argue, has shown a superb talent for motivating rich footballers at Stamford Bridge, and before that he won the Champions' League with relatively slender resources at Porto. There is no argument here; large aspects of Mourinho's talent are not in question, only his understanding of what might be reasonably expected of a man in his position when football is so riven by cheating and arrogance.

The point about Robson's rage, his willingness to exchange rough language with a fellow manager, is that it flew against his nature.

 

We know of Mourinho's liking for touchline capers. The finger to the lips, the fist to the sky, the thumbing of his nose. That is his style and, within limits, it can be accepted, far more easily certainly than his outrageous double standards when passing judgment on his own players and those of the opposition, not to mention casually and untruthfully blackening the name of a match official who had provoked his ire. But none of this is the game of Robson, the former Captain Marvel. Robson was a great player, a great warrior and he would no more cheat than he would refuse to accept any challenge offered to him by the game that has been his life.

 

This is the perspective Mourinho would be wise to consider if he sees again the contorted face of Robson. The West Bromwich manager was most angered by Chelsea's imperious arrival for the second half three minutes late, Mourinho's apparently amused reaction, and then Drogba's portrayal of serious injury right up to the moment when he was next obliged to touch the ball. Robson alleged that this was an attempt to have his player, Jonathan Greening, sent off.

 

No doubt the Football Association will consider reports on the behaviour of both managers and they will surely look at film which depicts their raw anger on the touchline, including Mourinho's ironic applause of Mark Halsey when he sent off Arjen Robben for a two-footed tackle on Greening.

 

Mourinho and his supporters were outraged when in the wake of the Anders Fisk affair last season he was accused of being an "enemy of football" by a Uefa official. That was a heavy charge indeed. But then if you look at the latest evidence it has to be asked: was that the behaviour of a friend?

[Eskimo]

I wonder how much longer Abramovich will but up with his antics....

[Tosh]

As long as chelsea win...