Chelsea

[Assassin]

While I can see what you are saying coming second in the Spanish league when you are managing Real Madrid isn't really an achievement it's probably the minimum they would expect.

IMO anyone on this forum could have achieved this with the squad they have available

[RichC]

His record at Madrid is good but taken in context he's not managed to excel there, obviously having to face Barca needs to be taken into consideration as well but for Madrid he I am guessing met their minimum requirements.

I'm also not saying that his achievements there are bad but the way he goes about it and the way he left gives an insight into why he's a) successful short term but perhaps not so much later in his tenure as manager.

The guy is a good football manager, one of the best out there over the short haul but his faults seem to make it hard for that style of management to be successful over a long period of time.

[Darkon]

But there is a difference between excelling and having a good record, I believe he has the later, but as you say it's not better than good. But not excelling is IMO far from the same as being a failure, which is claimed a lot. Averaging a trophy a season and having 3 CL semi's under the belt is pretty darn succesfull no matter where you are, even at Real that havn't won or been in a final in 12 years or so.

And my point is just that he doesn't have a bad record or is a failure as such, still achieved more than most managers have done there for a while

[Assassin]

I think his second spell at Chavski will end in tears

[Robbie-9-Fowler]

Luiz imo, Mata and Torres don't look the type that would rock the boat.

Was my first reaction but wouldn't he be a Portuguese speaker?

[Arn]

I think his second spell at Chavski will end in tears

Depends if you are a Chelsea fan or not. If you are then I agree with you.

I even think that he could get sacked after the coming season.

[Shaggy]

I think he failed. I agree with this:

Jose Mourinho lost the dressing room at Real Madrid and failed in the transfer market

The standards by which Real Madrid managers are judged mean Jose Mourinho's time at the club was considered a failure. He failed to permanently topple Barcelona, and he failed to deliver the club’s 10th European Cup.

By Pete Jenson, Madrid

2:30PM BST 03 Jun 2013

Ask what lies behind this underwhelming legacy, and the answer has generally been that new Chelsea manager Mourinho lost the dressing room.

Famously combustible, he had a series of public arguments with his players, Iker Casillas and Cristiano Ronaldo among them. But there is an argument that these were battles which Mourinho needed to fight, that he was justified in doing so.

Instead, the really uncomfortable truth for Mourinho is that he failed in the transfer market. Despite Madrid’s financial muscle, he could not build a team to conquer Europe.

Those who say the bust-ups with senior players, who believed they had a divine right to start matches, were the problem are ignoring the fact that keeping the superstars happy did not save any of his 25 predecessors, hired and fired over the past 25 years.

Had Mourinho built a European Cup-winning side no one would have minded who he upset. But the team who were knocked out of this season’s Champions League semi-final by Borussia Dortmund were no better than the one who fell at the same hurdle in his first season – £127million was spent during Mourinho’s time in charge but progress was not made.

If criticism of Mourinho’s judgment in the transfer market during his time at Chelsea was largely drowned out by the sound of trophies being won, it cannot be ignored in any assessment of the last three years while he was at Madrid.

Mourinho never managed to solve some of the key problems he inherited, and he overspent on players who were never going to make a difference in the biggest matches of the season.

An astonishing £25million was blown on a left-back, Fábio Coentrão. He had the same agent, Jorge Mendes, as another £25million signing Ángel Di María, and neither player justified their cost.

Some of the cheaper signings – Ricardo Carvalho (£7million), José Callejón (£4million) and Diego López (£2.5million) – served short-term purposes. Three others – brilliant young defender Rafaël Varane (£8million) and German midfielders Mesut Özil (£12million) and Sami Khedira (£10million) – were good value.

But none of them elevated a good team into a great one under Mourinho. He never addressed the team’s lack of a top-class right-back. Likewise, he identified very early on that strikers Karim Benzema and Gonzalo Higuaín were not his type of striker, but failed to replace them with the Didier Drogba-style forward they needed.

Mourinho tried so hard to find a way to beat Barcelona that his one-dimensional team struggled when faced with teams who, unlike Barca, allowed Madrid possession and challenged them to break down the opposition. Luka Modric, last summer’s major signing, came good towards the end of this campaign, giving Madrid greater invention in midfield, but by that stage it was too late as other areas of the team had fallen apart, some of them because of the strained relationship between the departed manager and players.

Frank Lampard said recently he admired the way Mourinho protected Chelsea’s players in the press, but that was not his way when in Madrid. He publicly criticised full-back Marcelo for making a slow recovery from a broken foot, and then lambasted Pepe for having an operation on his ankle at the end instead of at the start of the mid-winter break.

He argued with Ronaldo in the dressing room at the end of a cup tie against Valencia and famously said of Benzema, “I don't have my dog to go hunting with so I will have to take my cat” ahead of a game in which he had been forced to pick the striker.

Ronaldo appeared to turn to the bench and shout "f--- you" in Portuguese after scoring against Malaga in May, while Pepe publicly criticised Mourinho’s treatment of Spain goalkeeper Casillas, saying: “He should have shown him more respect.”

Pepe was dropped for the Copa del Rey final but, in an incident which summed up the meltdown at the club at the end of Mourinho's reign, snuck down from the stands to sit on the bench once Mourinho had been sent off. The situation had become that farcical.

Real lost the game to Atlético Madrid, their first defeat in 14 years to the local rivals. Failure to win the cup meant Mourinho had the worst record of Madrid coaches who managed to last three years at the club.

There were great successes in the first two years, when he banished the notion that he could produce only defensive teams, winning the league title last year with a record haul of 100 points. Although Mourinho’s behaviour remained as provocative and confrontational as ever, it was only seen as a problem when the team were losing. Then suddenly it was a scandal that he left the King of Spain standing at the medal ceremony of the Copa del Rey final, that he dropped Casillas, and that he told his players to deliberately get booked to manipulate the disciplinary system in 2010.

Ultimately, what was important was that at Madrid, Mourinho, who had hitherto been seen as the ultimate winner, came second too many times.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/real-madrid/10069868/Jose-Mourinho-lost-the-dressing-room-at-Real-Madrid-and-failed-in-the-transfer-market.html

[RichC]

That is a lot of money to have been spent!

[Arn]

Luiz imo, Mata and Torres don't look the type that would rock the boat.

Mata is a BIG Rafa fan allegedly.

[Arn]

It would be interesting to see what would happen if Mourinho took charge of a club not being able to spend spend spend.

If we for example signed him up then I think he would fail big time.

[Assassin]

Depends if you are a Chelsea fan or not. If you are then I agree with you.

I even think that he could get sacked after the coming season.

WTF Arn

Chavski fan?

It will go tits up for him this time around

[RichC]

Perhaps, success though is usually dictated by how deep your pockets are. It will be interesting on that front though in his previous tenure they could blow clubs out of the water in terms of transfer fees in the PL for multiple players City will certainly not struggle with matching fees that they offer for players.

[Neil Young]

But there is a difference between excelling and having a good record, I believe he has the later, but as you say it's not better than good. But not excelling is IMO far from the same as being a failure, which is claimed a lot. Averaging a trophy a season and having 3 CL semi's under the belt is pretty darn succesfull no matter where you are, even at Real that havn't won or been in a final in 12 years or so.

And my point is just that he doesn't have a bad record or is a failure as such, still achieved more than most managers have done there for a while

You can't have it both ways. Either he is judged by the standards of each club, including budget and objectives, or he's judged by comparing him with managers at the same level. Either way he failed at Madrid, although the latter is a less black and white judgment, partly because there are so few clubs of that stature that his record can be compared with.

But if we're going to compare him to previous recent managers of Real Madrid, we need to bear in mind they all failed too.

[Arn]

WTF Arn

Chavski fan?

It will go tits up for him this time around

I'm not plastic enough to be a Chelsea fan

[Neil Young]