Arsenal: Jose Mourinho blathering nonsense yet again

Arsenal will be facing Jose Mourinho in another attempt to narrow the gap while the Manchester United manager is pumping out the excuses already. But they make no sense.

Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho always guarantee a wonderful pre-match press conference showdown which usually involves the Arsenal manager not giving half a hoot about his Portuguese counterpart, while the United manager dwells on how much Wenger controls his mind.

This time around, Mourinho has come up with some excuses prior to the match just in the (likely) chance that his battered United side are unable to cope with what we hope will be an inspired Arsenal squad at home.

According to Mourinho, he will be resting key players to focus on the Europa League, which continues at midweek after United put down Celta Vigo in the first leg by a score of 1-0.

Mourinho did claim, however, that they will fight. Which leads to me imagining the post-match press conference already, following a narrow 2-1 win for the Gunners. “We had to rest key players, so if you really think about it, the fact that we only lost 2-1 makes it feel like we actually won.”

And then Mourinho would sleep better at night.

But his logic here is tragically flawed. Either that or his standards have fallen way off the table.

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"I don’t want to win the Europa League. It would be a big disappointment for me. I don’t want my players to feel the Europa League is our competition"

That is what Mourinho said prior to his Chelsea return in 2013.

"It’s the only competition that Manchester United have never won and it would be great to close that circle and say we are a club that won every single competition in the football world."

That is what he said more recently. You could make the argument that his ‘standards’ are dependent on the team and I’d grant you some credit for that, but that doesn’t account for his raving ambitions and how he will never settle for less.

For instance, Mourinho took yet another dig at Wenger earlier in the week, saying that fourth place is not a trophy for him, which laid the groundwork for his sudden renewed faith in the Europa League.

Sure, fourth place isn’t a trophy, but it is Champions League football, which is the greatest competition in the world, which Mourinho has always taken quite seriously.

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It’s just “The Special One” blathering nonsense again. The guy is completely unscripted, and I’d wager partially unhinged, so it always makes for premium entertainment. At least there is that.