Okay Arsenal fans, I know that I am going to get a lot of grief for this, but before you just rant at me and call me a deluded Wenger loving idiot, actually read why I think that the Arsenal boss is a better manager and has more class in his little finger than Jose Mourinho has in his whole body, and then decide if I am right.
I appreciate that Mourinho has been more successful. He has won the Champions League with two different clubs and has won the league title in four different countries. There is no denying that Mourinho has got a reason to lay claim to his self proclaimed title of the special one. BUT.
And it is a big but, if you pardon the pun. When you look a little closer into his managerial career and get beyond the stats and the bluster, all is not quite so rosy. Take Chelsea, where he is viewed as some sort of god. They have conveniently forgotten the end of his first spell, when Abramovich was so fed up with the turgid football served up by his team that he sacked the man, unless you believe the `mutual consent´ garbage that they released.
Mourinho had not won the league the previous year and was not going to win it when he `agreed mutually´ to leave, despite spending the annual budget of a decent sized country on players (something he now condemns Man City for BTW). And that is what I´m getting at. Every club he has managed has achieved initial success which Mourinho has then failed to build on. That is some talent to be fair. He has an aura and seems to take the players with him but it does not last and then things get nasty. I really believe that he might have led Man United back to glory if they had picked him rather than David Moyes last season, but it would have been another flash in the pan.
He speaks about Wenger and the fact that Arsenal have stuck with the Frenchman through thick and thin, but the door swings both ways. Wenger has stuck with us as well, even when the money was not there and the criticism came flying in. Would Mourinho have stayed? His record of not managing any club for more than three years suggests not.
Every team Mourinho has taken over have either been already in the position to win or ready to spend huge amounts of money. I am not saying that Wenger would have led them instantly to the title or Champions League glory but he did pretty well when he first came to Arsenal. However, that amazing invincibles season came EIGHT years later. Maureen would have been long gone.
I think the reason Mourinho tries to denegrate Wenger´s longevity is that he is jealous of it and he knows that it is not a string he has to his own bow. And that brings me on to another thing that separates the two managers. Wenger has had his moments of anger, kicking bottles, rowing with Ferguson, Pardew, Allardyce and even Mourinho himself, but they seem to be moments of passion, Mourinho is much more sly. Yes Wenger pushed Mourinho this season and it was not great, but he was reacting to years of provocation and the fact that Cahill had just launched a two footed studs up tackle on Alexis Sanchez. Did Mourinho tell his team to target our star man? You decide. If I was Wenger it would have been more than a push.
He is hypocritical, calculating and cowardly. If you have not seen the incident when he sneaks up behind Tito Vilanova and sticks his finger into the then Assistant manager of Barcelona, then you can see it here on Youtube at around 2 minutes 50 seconds (note the smirk when he thinks he has got away with it and remember that the Spanish FA banned him and then rescinded the ban because of the power of Real Madrid in Spain!?! And he has the gall to denounce players for bad tackles! What a C****). The video also highlights how Mourinho had turned Real Madrid from superstars into thugs, as he does with every team. Cheating, aggression and conning the officials is what we love best about football after all is it not?
I contend that no manager but Wenger could have done as well for Arsenal in the last 18 years, especially not the poisonous toad that is Jose Mourinho. Am I wrong? Is winning at all costs really better than playing well and showing class? Follow Mourinho to his next club if you think so.