Mourinho and his obsessions
For reasons known only to him, José Mourinho is always glancing over to look at Pep. Far be it for me to question his achievements in the game - among them, winning the Champions League with Porto and Inter Milan. It wouldn't be fair to go down that route. But a bad workman always blames his tools and in Mou's case, that is becoming quite a worrying tendancy - as is his apparent compulsion with Pep Guardiola. He's clearly suffering a case of Pepitis. This week, his team slipped up again, and just about salvaged a draw at Old Trafford against modest Burnley, right at the death. Talking to reporters after the game, Mou felt it was the right moment to pipe up that 300 million pounds is not enough to compete with City who, he went on to note, "sign defenders for the price of strikers".
Mou's media smokescreen can't shield the facts
It was his way of diverting attention from the fact that his side had only just managed to scrape a point against a team who were only promoted two years ago. He's spent 340 million euros on seven players since he took the United job - 200 million of that alone went on Pogba and Lukaku. And that is on the back of the small fortune which Van Gaal splashed out on players - some of whom have worked, others turned out to be duds. Mou wants more; we'll see if he really is serious about bringing Dybala to Old Trafford. He's quite right that City's transfer spending has been more extreme but he seems to be blindly trying to compete with them purely on spending power rather than with ideas, tactics and football. It's as though he wants to restart the bickering and squabbling he was involved in here with Barça. Let's take a look at the bare facts - City have a 15-point lead over United and we are still in December...