Special One’s tantrums are tainting the Beautiful Game

YOU know, I don’t.

That’s deadlines for you. No use tiptoeing gingerly through this minefield hoping no words will jinx our slender chances.

I was curiously uninvolved during last week’s game anyway. I’m having the odd private difficulty, and the football isn’t helping.

When numerous friends say “you should speak to someone about it” that’s a bad sign. Being a middle-aged Northern male that conversation would consist of two words, one extremely unpleasant.

Another kind of psychology dominated the news last week, with Mourinho the deranged ringmaster. The game I once loved is reduced to this: a screeching variation of WWF chest-beating and name-calling, with words devoid of meaning and facts superfluous.

You can fight with logic. If you claim to have forgotten the ‘ghost goal’ why bang on about it? And what right have Chelsea of all people to lecture about big clubs when they were randomly selected from an oligarch’s helicopter? A waste of time. No one’s interested. Sound and fury, signifying nothing. That’s all football is about in the 21st Century. Because a Champions League semi-final needs a little boost doesn’t it?

While The Special One dances on the coffin lid, the latest Grotesque to be feted by lazy, thrill-seeking hacks who don’t have to do a stroke of work when the circus is in town. This crap writes itself.

One tantrum after another, and no end in sight. What I really hate is the myth that it works.

Think back to the day Keegan wigged out. Newcastle had already lost the key games in the title race, but it didn’t rein in Ferguson’s malice or the press elevation of Mind Games into an art every bit as vital as skill or courage.

Now the devil is getting uptight about the miscreant child he himself spawned. Mourinho is Ferguson’s creation.

He’s also a coward. He took United on and got spanked: not so special after all, eh? “I don’t doubt the moral integrity of any player”, he said when someone asked if Neville’s goal might be seen as questionable.

For the record, Liverpool players did not get Didier Drogba booked and Everton are about to profit from Rooney’s success. Cluck, cluck, cluck.

Everyone pours through the morsels of every last spew, but I’m not sure there’s even a point to it any more. People become addicted to mayhem and any original purpose is lost.

It’s not just managers either. One doesn’t like to point a finger at others on this page, but ‘accents’? Seriously, you want to go down that road? I’ve nuffink further to say on the subject.

I’m too old for this nonsense. Manager talks drivel, better team wins equals mind games worked. Spare me.

Liverpool were lucky to get the nil in the first half, while they had Chelsea’s own chronic caution to thank for a ‘rejuvenated’ second.

There’s Shevchenko and the REAL Footballer of the Year up front, yet they were settling for 1-0. That goes some way to explaining why Abramovich seeks change.

Pre-match jibes about what constitutes a “big club” were dismissed because of the source, but isn’t there a valid point lurking beneath the bile? Can a team that includes Bolo Zenden be given serious consideration as a football force? Saturday’s no-show at Portsmouth gave the claim further validity. Everyone knew how it would be, so nobody cared and the result wrote itself.

Should similar results emerge this autumn, even when the manager has decided such games DO matter, he will stand trial soon enough.

United v Milan was wonderful to watch. You have a go, as we did in Istanbul, and these teams aren’t what they’re cracked up to be.

“You didn’t win but at least you tried”. It’s not much of a consolation but it’s a straw to cling to.

“You didn’t win but you kept the score down” is deeply unsatisfying.

You have to respect Chelsea because they could tear you apart on the rare occasions they feel like it, but turgid visits to Middlesbrough, Villa and City (amongst others) hardly make Rafa a worthwhile beneficiary of any doubt that’s going.

If we have shown the same courage as our kids displayed at Old Trafford to win another Youth Cup, then last night may have been another one to remember.

If we’ve taken Jose’s psychology, torn it to shreds and laughed in his saggy-lipped gob then we’ll have done Football itself a big favour. Hardly likely though, is it?

Leave the battle of wits to the witless and may the best team win, even if it happens to be someone else.