Jose Mourinho has questioned Arsene Wenger’s managerial credentials yet again, according to the latest report.
Mourinho and Wenger have had their fair share of disputes over the years but this latest edition could top the lot.
After the Mail revealed he said he would find Wenger “outside a football pitch and I will break his face”, Mourinho has opened up on the transfer of Petr Cech from Chelsea to Arsenal.
Cech joined the Gunners in the summer of 2015 when Mourinho had just won the Premier League at Stamford Bridge.
Mourinho was pretty clear he didn’t want to let Cech go to the Emirates and revealed he wanted Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Theo Walcott in return.
Mourinho said the former Southampton duo were “s***” under Wenger but he would make them top players.
The 53-year-old wrote in an email: “Mister Wenger wants Cech and he thinks about money…he is wrong!!!
“What I want is to f*** him…Want Cech?
“OK, I want Walcott or Oxlade-Chamberlain!!!
“Want a top goalkeeper?
“OK, I want a young player, s*** with you but I can make him top.”
In one respect, of course, José Mourinho is right. Modern football is forever trying to read too much into too little. One bad week – three poor results – is nothing compared to his previous career. Manchester United supporters, perhaps, will welcome his belligerence in attacking the “football Einsteins” who have “tried to delete 16 years of my career”. After a start to the season in which he has at times seemed slightly cowed, Mourinho has shown that there is fight left in him.
Others will wonder, though, whether an edgy 3-1 win in the EFL Cup against a third-tier team is really the platform on which to be mounting such a ferocious defence of his position.
What does that say about how hurt he has been by the criticism of the past week? What does it say about the self‑confidence that was once his trademark and one of his key attributes?
The Einsteins line is intriguing. Even said sarcastically, it is a strange insult to choose.