Wednesday 17 March 2010

José namechecks MCFC

In the post-match press conference last night José Mourinho said his approach was inspired by Kevin Keegan's Manchester City. No, seriously:

Afterwards Mourinho said he had based his approach to the game on one of the few times a side had come to Stamford Bridge during his time in charge there and held out for a draw. Unusually, he picked out the performance of Manchester City in February 2005 during his first year at the club when City came to Stamford Bridge and got a 0-0 draw. "They made David James look like Lev Yashin," said Mourinho.

And this wasn't even exciting, cavalier, early-era Keegan either. This was lazy, complacent, flaccid late-era Keegan; when we represented a final pay-day for bored millionaires like Robbie Fowler, Steve McManaman and Paul Bosvelt. It was just three games before the home defeat to Bolton which preceeded his resignation (if memories Wikipedia and Soccerbase are correct.)

So, looking back on it, a goalless draw at the Bridge was a fantastic result. Not quite as good as this though, which probably did more to inspire Mourinho's gameplan. We showed that, with Ashley Cole and José Bosingwa injured, and John Terry ageing, Chelsea's back four probably defends further up the pitch than it ought to. Carlos Tévez and Craig Bellamy hit the space in behind to great effect. And last night Inter's main aim was for the masterful Wesley Sneijder to put Samuel Eto'o and Goran Pandev into the same positions. Which is precisely how they scored.

3 comments:

Woody said...

That side was not a bad defensively though; Dunne and Distin clicked, the full backs could defend (Thatcher, Mills.) SWP had his best ever season for us. We leaked very few goals and after Keegan left we went on a 10 game unbeaten run with Pearce only just missing out on UEFA place when Fowler missed that penalty. The only problem with that side was the lack of creativity and our over reliance on SWP.

CheadleBlue said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

I was wondering whether anyone had been reading my Wikipedia articles on seasons gone by. I guess now I know. Thanks. If you want to make a guised reference to my work on the pre-1900s articles I've been writing recently, I'd like that too ;)

In all seriousness, though, that's certainly some interesting news. No doubt Bluemoon will go nuts about it, personally I wonder what exactly inspired him to highlight us. Could it be that our recent win at Stamford Bridge has reminded him of our good (comparatively) record in recent years against Chelsea?