HERE was a spectacle we’ve rarely witnessed in English football — Jose Mourinho pleading poverty.
As he faced up to three months without the injured Harry Kane, Tottenham’s manager conceded that his new club will never be ‘transfer window kings’.
2
Mourinho allowed himself a wistful glance back to the days when he could build a title-winning team in one summer thanks to the backing of Chelsea’s Roman Abramovich.
After that, he was able to spend a world-record £89million on Paul Pogba and preside over the Premier League’s largest wage bill at Manchester United.
Not any more. Not at Daniel Levy’s cost-efficient Spurs. Here, the one-time big spender is into rag-and-bone-man territory.
One win in five, no fit specialist striker, another long-term injury to Moussa Sissoko and the runaway Premier League leaders Liverpool strutting in to White Hart Lane this teatime.
Yet Mourinho was in tip-top political form at his pre-match media conference — a beaming Mr Brightside in front of the TV cameras, before he delivered some home truths to the written press.
He told the man from Sky: “If I speak too much about Harry, I get a bit depressed and then you are going to say ‘he is miserable’.
“It’s better to talk about things that make me laugh.”
Afterwards, though, Mourinho was only too keen to bemoan his reduced circumstances — insisting that Kane was ‘irreplaceable’ and that while he had only one true centre-forward, other major clubs had at least four.
Asked how many transfer windows a manager needs to put his own stamp on a club, Mourinho (right) responded, with a hint of envy, about Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool.
“It depends,” he replied. “If you need a goalkeeper and you go to one of the top three goalkeepers in the world, you resolve the problem in one transfer window. I am speaking about Alisson.
“Liverpool needed a goalkeeper. Did they go to an old goalkeeper? Did they go to a young goalkeeper? Did they go to somebody to compete with Simon Mignolet or Loris Karius? No.
“They went to one of the three best goalkeepers in the world. Boom!
“But we are different, we have to do it a different way.
“Amazing transfer windows, you need less time. Balanced transfer windows, you need more time and that is Tottenham’s profile.
“So for me it’s about having time to work, so more transfer windows because we are not going ever to be the transfer window king.”
Then Mourinho was invited to reminisce about his first summer at Chelsea in 2004, when Abramovich shelled out for nine players, including Didier Drogba, Petr Cech, Arjen Robben, Ricardo Carvalho and Paulo Ferreira.
He said: “Come on! But that was quite simple in the sense of ‘which one is the central defender that I want? That one, thank you very much!’
“Of course, it’s a different challenge now.
“For me, though, it’s very enjoyable. I came to the club so happy. One of the reasons I was so happy was because everything was crystal clear.
“Nothing was promised to me that, in this moment, I say, ‘Oh, it was not the truth, I am disappointed, we didn’t know’.
“And the only thing that I promised is what I’m giving. I arrive every day at 7.30am. I leave every day at 6pm and sometimes I don’t even leave. Sometimes I sleep here at the training ground and I am here for over 24 hours.
“When I arrived here, the train was already on the run. I don’t think it’s fair for me to make comments about what happened before.
“It’s the situation I got and the situation I decided to accept and it is the situation I have to try to give my best to improve.
“When I came I didn’t expect Harry Kane, Moussa Sissoko, Ben Davies, I didn’t expect them to be out with important injuries. But it doesn’t change my approach.”
Asked whether he had been tempted to rest Kane, whose workload has led to fears of burn-out, Mourinho said: “No. Not really. Every match apart from the 5-0 win over Burnley, every game was so tight, so difficult. Even at Middlesbrough in the FA Cup, if Harry was available I would play him.
“There are no conditions to leave out such a good, important and unique player.”
With Spurs negotiating to sign AC Milan’s Polish striker Krzysztof Piatek, Mourinho said: “If Levy arrives with a solution to face these difficult months ahead then so be it, it’s welcome.
“If not then we will wait for the summer for the next evolution of the team.
“The January market is a strange market.
“It’s a market of opportunities. When the opportunity arrives you have the chance to do it.”
Tweet @davekidd_
2
