Mourinho Not Impressed By Arsenal Excuses

Posted by

If the first round of punches Jose Mourinho threw at Arsene Wenger and Arsenal was a little ambiguous, the second flurry from the Chelsea boss went for the KO.

Apparently not too impressed by the noises coming out of the Arsenal camp following their elimination from all the cups and Premiership title race, Jose had this to say,

“At the start of every season we say we want to win trophies,” he said. “If we win matches and trophies we have success. If we don’t win matches then we don’t have the success we are waiting for.

“I do not say 20 times that against Porto in the last 16 of the Champions League, for example, we finished the game with three boys aged 20; we are not these kind of people. If they have a player aged 20, 19, 18 or 34 that is not the point. If we play very, very, very well and don’t win that is not the point. We have a direct approach to win and suffer the consequences of that when things are not going well.”

Zing! It’s not good when the biggest wind-up of the past three years refers to you disparagingly as “those kinds of people”, and he’s not the first to take issue with Arsenal’s attitude towards poor results this season. Want more? Jose’s got more…

“If you win, you win and if you lose, you lose. We do not protect ourselves. When we win, we win and when we don’t we come in for criticism.

“But I think that is down to club mentality. [We are] a club without a big history that has a new owner with ambitions, and who brings people in who are not afraid to fail, and assumes clear targets, desires and ambitions. If we reach them we are happy and if we don’t reach [them] we have no excuses. We just accept it in a sporting way.”

Not sure that last part is entirely true, given the first thing Jose did when he arrived in England was moan about how Tottenham ‘parked the bus‘ in front of the goal at White Hart Lane to stifle them. The simple fact that Chelsea and Mourinho’s conduct made it ok to root for Manchester United says it all. But just when you think he’s calming down a bit and getting all misty-eyed about his future in the sport, he reminds us why 11 more years just won’t be enough.