Skip to main content

Nevermind the gaffer....



Cesc Fabregas's appearance on Sky with Thierry Henry last night has been seen by many as a confirmation that Chelsea players, and not the manager, are the true cause of the club's present malaise. But what Fabregas's appearance told me, quite categorically, was that the dressing room is a pernicious place to be. He was saying - and he would, wouldn't he? - that players had to take responsibility, had to lift themselves and show pride. What I didn't hear was any suggestion that the manager's behaviour had nothing to do with them being in the position they are in. This interview told me that the players recognise their responsibilities, but that it now doesn't matter how they got here and that they have to put in the hard yards to get themselves out of it. For me, rather than being a show of support for the manager, it was an interview with horrific subtexts. 

Henry, who as a consequence of his relationship with Fabregas likely knows far more about it than he can say on public television, arrowed in on this point when he suggested that whether you like Mourinho or not, he is now irrelevant and now is the time to show pride.  I have heard one fan say that Fabregas was suggesting players had "sabotaged" the season - we can't expect fans to hear anything but that which they want to hear, but Fabregas was saying nothing of the sort. Quite apart from his evident reluctance to be there, his language was, to anybody who cared to listen, damning. It is possible that Mourinho himself may have misunderstood it as well, but then, he does live in his own peculiar mental Ivory Tower.

Footballers are sensitive and precious and, above all, human. Fabregas can only go so far in what he says; and one would expect him to say the players need to show more. They do. But I found the interview painfully revealing of how they are all feeling at the moment. For football fans, the blame game is based on very, very thin lines. Right now, partly because of their adoration of Mourinho and partly because Mourinho goes out of his way to inform the narratives of player failure and betrayal, the fans are pouring a great deal of hate onto the team. Last year, when the same group won the league, they were of course pouring all the love onto Mourinho. Such is life and we have seen all this before from Jose. Some of us have always felt that Jose couldn't turn this around: he needed to take a very different course to the one he has evidently chosen, but as I suspected, that seems beyond his personality. It was fascinating (and alarmingly predictable) to hear him talk about how he elevated these players last season; I wonder if it would be scarcely credible if I were to have invented half of what he says sometimes, but with such comments, it is not difficult to see why the players probably wouldn't mind seeing the back of him.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Gelb and The Met

Having posted a piece that was kind to critics and thus risking opprobrium from all quarters, I suppose I ought to be wary of writing a piece that is sympathetic to the current opera demon, Peter Gelb.  Let us be clear, I don't know what the detailed financial situation at the Met is, I don't know how its budgets are split and allocated, I don't know how much they spend on sets and productions. I just read selective figures used negatively and that is always something we should be wary of.  What Gelb and the Met are going through is probably entirely unique in the opera world given the scale of economics involved and the accusations of mismanagement that are being thrown around are hard to reconcile with some of the realities; it is certainly true, for example, that Gelb has taken the Met's turnover from $222 million to over $300 million in eight years which doesn't immediately suggest mismanagement, but that is as glib and superficial an analysis as anything else I...

Journalists: keep it simple!

An open letter to Eva Wiseman Dear Eva I read your recent piece on the Guardian website ("Is there anything worse than a man who cries") with mounting horror. I also noted the nearly 3,000 outraged comments below it and, I have to say, you brought it all upon yourself. I have no sympathy, but I am happy to help you by explaining where you went wrong. The most important thing to note - and Eva, this will stand you in good stead hitherto should you hold it in mind - this is 2015. Why is that relevant? Well, this isn't 1928, for example, when a book like "A Handbook on Hanging" by Charles Duff could be published and people "get it". And you're no Henry Root, love, let me tell you. And can you imagine what the world would say now if Clive James's line about that Chinese president "whose name sounds like a ricochet in a canyon" was published on Twitter? There would be bedlam. You can't possibly hope to get away with writing a piece t...

My name is Jose Mourinho, and I'm not Special (at the moment)

.....The words that Jose Mourinho needs to utter to himself, the reality he has to face in order to change himself and the fortunes of his team. Such a recalibration of self-image won't be easy for a man who frequently embroiders his press conferences with 'I' and 'My' and references to his past achievements. He is a winner, not a loser and as such won't take easily to his new role, one that has to feature a cold-eyed acceptance that his magic, such as it is, has been diluted.  Mourinho is an egomaniac - not unlike many successful people - but he has an edge of narcissism that makes it difficult for him to see the success of his teams through any prism but his own greatness. When his club wins, "I" win. So when things are not as they should be, Jose takes it personally, as an affront to him, an insult, he is embarrassed. He'll take it out on players, make grand gestures by dropping his best, and he'll search for outside influences - excuses - ...