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Richard Jolly on Manchester United v Tottenham; Ole Gunnar Solskjaer v Jose Mourinho
It is Jose Mourinho’s past against his present, the Portuguese against the successor who positioned himself as his opposite. Manchester United versus Tottenham, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer against Mourinho, offers a chance for vindication or vengeance.
Mourinho boasts a higher win percentage as United manager and likes to cite league table from his time at Tottenham, showing they took the fourth-most points from his appointment until the end of last season. But United were third and, since the older man’s November arrival, Solskjaer has four more points from one fewer game. Perhaps more surprisingly, Mourinho has even been outperformed by the Mourinho United sacked: he has 49 points from 29 matches in charge of Tottenham and took 51 from his last 29 in his previous post.
But if Sunday’s game is about two Mourinhos, the broader picture suggests the great divide is not the United version against the Tottenham variant but the pre- and post-2015 Mourinhos, between the Special One and the less Special One.
When Chelsea became champions in 2015, it was Mourinho’s third Premier League from five full seasons; he finished the others in second and third. Since then, he has had only two full campaigns, coming sixth and second, but has been sacked in 16th and sixth; Spurs were fourth over 26 games last season and eighth after three.
There is a case for saying Mourinho’s numbers have gone downhill every since his first season, of 95 points and just 15 goals conceded. He lost only 10 of 120 league games in his first spell at Stamford Bridge, but the summer of 2015 marks the greatest turning point. By then he had won 69 percent and lost just 9.6 percent of his Premier League games. He averaged 2.29 points per game, which equates to 87 per season (indeed, Chelsea were champions in 2014-15 with 87).
Since then, he has won 49 percent of league matches and lost 25 percent. His points-per-game average of 1.73 amounts to 66 over a campaign; enough for third place for Solskjaer’s United last season, but Mourinho’s United only came sixth with 69 three years earlier.
Mourinho’s team score fewer goals and concede far more than their predecessors. Perhaps the deterioration in defending is most marked. He constructed statistically the best defence in the history of English football, even if his record got worse in each of his first five seasons, from 15 goals against to 22, 24, 27 and then 32. But up until 2015, Mourinho’s teams conceded an average of 25 goals per season.
Since then, it is 40. It is a difference between 0.64 goals against per game and 1.05. That average is raised by his final few months at United; in two full campaigns, his side were breached 29 and 28 times, but then they let in 29 goals in his final 17 games. But he has conceded more than a goal a game with Tottenham and, indeed, five more goals than Solskjaer’s United have done in the equivalent period.
The difference in attacking output may seem less dramatic. Mourinho’s sides’ average goals is down from 1.83 to 1.58. But that is an average of 60 per season and no one has finished in the top four with as few goals since Manchester City got exactly 60 in 2010-11.
That Mourinho’s teams have got less potent in an era when rivals have become more prolific is both damning and suggests football has changed. Liverpool brought up 400 Premier League goals under Jurgen Klopp on Monday; they came in 185 matches, an average of 2.16 per game that translates to 82 in a season. City have 388 in 174 games under Pep Guardiola, 2.22 per match, and both managers’ average is brought down by initial periods when they were shaping their sides. Mourinho has mitigating factors – such as taking over after Louis van Gaal’s United had mustered a miserable 49 league goals – but the numbers indicate he is a man out of time.
And not just the scoring statistics. In 2015, Mourinho’s Chelsea were champions with 54.1 percent possession. Then came the great outlier of Leicester winning with 44.7 percent. But the last three champions have had a minimum of 59.6 percent of the ball, whereas no Mourinho Premier League side has had more than 55.0 percent.
His brand of football may be anachronistic. Maybe the table does not lie. Mourinho oversaw five title challenges in his first five seasons in the Premier League. Since 2015, it is a moot point if he has had one. United came second in 2018, but 19 points behind City and when the data suggests they were flattered by that finish. Their expected goals for was only 59.04, the sixth best, while, thanks to David de Gea, they outperformed their expected goals against by a remarkable 15.54.
It suggests Mourinho has lost his greatest strength, the defensive excellence that contributed to his reputation as a superb strategist who had an aura of invincibility. But it is harder to appear invincible when you are losing 25 percent of your games, which Mourinho has done since that summer of 2015.
Odds correct at 1815 BST (30/09/20)
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