PREMIER LEAGUE
Mourinho calls on Spurs to show 'fight' in crucial West Ham clash
Jose Mourinho has seen Tottenham bail out of a title battle and slide into mid-table, but he believes a top-four finish is still attainable.
Jose Mourinho has told his Tottenham players to "make me look good" in Sunday's clash with West Ham and insists a top-four finish can still be achieved this season.
The Spurs boss has never lost to a David Moyes team, having won nine and drawn six of his past meetings with the West Ham manager.
Moyes has also never faced a manager so many times and not registered at least one win. Yet with West Ham currently six points ahead of a faltering Tottenham in the Premier League, there may never be a better chance for the former Everton and Manchester United chief to end that long wait.
Tottenham have lost four of their last five Premier League games, as many defeats as they suffered in their previous 28 games in the competition, and head into the weekend sitting ninth in the table.
Questions linger over how long Tottenham will be patient with Mourinho, and another setback at the London Stadium would be a major blow to hopes of playing Champions League football next season.
It will be Mourinho's 50th Premier League match in charge of Tottenham Hotspur and his points-per-game average of 1.65 is the lowest of any Spurs boss since Juande Ramos (1.17).
"The table always gives you what you deserve, and I think it's very premature to think about the definition of the table," said Mourinho.
"We have to fight and we have to wait until the last match to see what happens, because anything can happen.
"We can finish in the top four, we can finish in the top six or we can finish outside the top six. We must make sure the best possible thing is going to happen."
Tottenham won 4-1 in Budapest against Wolfsberger in the Europa League on Thursday evening, a timely boost ahead of a big London derby for Mourinho.
The former Chelsea and Real Madrid boss said: "Special teams win lots of matches. We coaches are as good and as bad as our players make us. We depend a lot on that, especially coaches with lots of experience and long histories.
"We went through every possible experience and go through stages in our career where we feel much more stable and much more humble, and we realise with all the experience we have that the ones who are really responsible for our career are the ones who play for us.
"Hopefully this weekend the guys have a great performance and can make me look good, because they're the ones who make us look good or bad."
Tottenham made Mourinho look good for a long while against West Ham in October, surging into a 3-0 lead inside barely quarter of an hour before West Ham hit back sensationally with three goals in the final 10 minutes to snatch a 3-3 draw.
Such fallibility reflects negatively on the team and the coach, and Mourinho felt that afternoon was to some extent an encapsulation of Tottenham's campaign.
"The first game against West Ham was a little bit a reflection of our season and a reflection of some of our problems," Mourinho said.
"We played really, really well in that match, but we didn't win it. I think the team played so well but made mistakes.
"This team many, many times plays very, very well and should get different results, but for different reasons we don't get it."