FA Cup calls into question Jose Mourinho’s guerrilla warfare tactics

Jose Mourinho's Chelsea side currently top the Premier League. Shaun Botterill / Getty Images

May 17, 2014: it is a date for the diary. Not Jose Mourinho’s diary, admittedly. If the FA Cup final may be unmissable for others, it could be unwatchable for him. Two scenarios loom large, neither designed to delight the Portuguese agitator.

Perhaps Arsene Wenger, the man he branded “a specialist in failure” will end Arsenal’s nine-year wait for a trophy, at Wembley. Or maybe Manuel Pellegrini, another regular recipient of Mourinho’s barbs, will be celebrating, albeit in his understated way.

As Pellegrini’s Manchester City are also in the League Cup final, he could emulate Mourinho, who won both domestic knockout competitions in 2007.

So the Chelsea manager’s hopes must rest with the underdogs, led by Everton’s Roberto Martinez and Sunderland’s Gus Poyet, to ensure one or other of his favourite stooges is not crowned a success.

By then, Mourinho could already be a Premier League champion or a Champions League finalist, able to brush off his rivals’ triumph as a consolation prize. Or he could endure a second successive season without silverware, making it the longest drought of his career.

That was why Chelsea’s 2-0 defeat at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday was such a surprise. Mourinho has a proven expertise is winning the most winnable tournaments. His ruthless efficiency has tended to be illustrated in the way he has swept up honours in cups where Wenger has blooded his youngsters.

Not this year. Mourinho selected his strongest available side against City and lost; Wenger picked youngster Yaya Sanogo for a full debut in attack against Liverpool and won.

The temptation is to see Mourinho in the context of his rivals, rather than in isolation. It is the product of his managerial style.

Even the amiable Carlo Ancelotti and the dignified Pep Guardiola have been drawn in to feuds. Wenger and Pellegrini are men who would rather exist in their own little bubble, focusing on their philosophies and their passing, but Mourinho prevents that with his unwanted interventions.

He realises that football is comparative, that for every winner – which is usually him – there is a loser, and that loser often can be mocked. He is using the comparative element of the game to explain Chelsea’s season.

City are the biggest spenders, he argues, and they have the finest side. Within those broad outlines, however, are pertinent details.

Mourinho has constructed England’s tightest defence, although only when the quartet of Branislav Ivanovic, Gary Cahill, John Terry and Cesar Azpilicueta are available.

While deputising for Terry, David Luiz was culpable for both Victor Anichebe’s equaliser for West Brom last Tuesday and City’s second, scored by Samir Nasri, on Saturday.

Chelsea produced the season’s outstanding performance of its genre, marked by defensive resilience, physical power and counter-attacking menace, when they won 1-0 on their previous trip to the Etihad Stadium.

It illustrated that they may only be a world-class striker away from being the most complete team in England. Yet that is a significant caveat and Mourinho was quick to note that Stevan Jovetic, scorer of Saturday’s opener, is City’s fourth-choice forward and he scarcely came cheap. In contrast, his Chelsea counterpart, Samuel Eto’o, was unceremoniously removed at half time.

City may possess the more enviable squad, despite Chelsea’s excellent first 11 – or perhaps, given the striking situation, a first 10 plus either Fernando Torres or Eto’o, attacking greats who are now in decline.

Increasingly, the sense is that Mourinho does not trust some of his fringe players. Six months into a busy campaign, he has given only 14 footballers a start in the past five games. A decisive manager was unusually slow to make substitutions at West Brom. He was quicker to react at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday but his alterations were uncharacteristically ineffective.

Mourinho, for once, was left looking impotent. He seemed a victim of events, rather than the charismatic orchestrator of them.

In a season of rapidly shifting perceptions, this has been a week to alter his team’s image. A march to glory no longer looks an inevitability. Just when it seemed their brilliant demolition of City and Eden Hazard’s wonderful hat-trick against Newcastle had catapulted them back into a position of dominance, doubts have crept back in.

This opinion is that they remain slight favourites in the title race, partly due to Mourinho’s presence. If anything, however, the weekend may harden his resolve that the destination of the trophy will not be determined purely on the pitch.

Mourinho’s strategy of the season has been to publicly maintain an inferiority complex about his team’s chances. He pretends theirs is not an all-out attack designed to win the division; instead he engages in guerrilla warfare against his managerial rivals.

So the question if he can unsettle Wenger and Pellegrini – and, should Liverpool carry on winning league games, whether he turns his attentions to his protege Brendan Rodgers – may prove the crucial factor.

But if it fails, the worst-case scenario for Mourinho is not just that he doesn’t win, but that one of the men he has ridiculed does.

Should Arsenal and City divide up the English honours between them, that would be particularly painful for him.