Jose Mourinho back to his former self at Tottenham Hotspur

Latest bust-up for Jose Mourinho proving that the old Mourinho is back and nothing has changed.

Tottenham hired Jose Mourinho to replace Mauricio Pochettino in late November. It has taken less than two months for the wheels to fall off. Spurs’ loss at Southampton appears to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

His comments following the defeat were vintage Jose Mourinho and if history is anything to go by, then it’s going to be a long second-half for both him and the team.

During the game, the Portuguese manager was shown a yellow card after he went over to the Saints’ bench and said something to Andrew Sparkles, the goalkeeping coach.

According to The Guardian, when asked about the yellow card, Mourinho said,

"“I think the yellow card is fair because I was rude, but I was rude to an idiot. For some reason I was rude. But I was, and because I was rude I deserve the yellow card. Basically, I had bad words for the guy.”"

But it doesn’t stop there. Mourinho also had some choice words for the Southampton ball boy because he felt he was wasting too much time. He said they were well coached in delaying the game.

He also had some words for VAR but at this point, almost everybody has. But that’s a discussion for another time.

To complete the cycle, it appears that Mourinho has also found the player on his team that he’s going to criticize for any reason whatsoever. Unfortunately for him, it’s Tanguy Ndombele.

According to ESPN, he said,

"“He is always injured. He’s injured, he’s not injured, he plays one match. We are full of hopes and this is since the beginning of the season.Of course it’s a concern — you think you have a player , you think the player is an evolution process, he plays very well against Norwich, you think today he is ready for it and he is not ready for it.”"

This criticism towards a player on his team is nothing new. With Real Madrid he did to Iker Casillas and at Manchester United he did it to Luke Shaw and to a lesser extent, Paul Pogba. He’s become well-known for doing this.

Mourinho seems to believe that “tough love” is how you motivate a player. After it not working in his last stint, he appears to not have learned from it during his time off.

The changes he preached when he first took over have disappeared as things are not going well for either him or Tottenham. Having won his first few games the helm, the team has struggled especially on defense.

If there was anything Mourinho was known for it was establishing a strong defense and being difficult to open up. But he hasn’t been able to come anywhere near close to that since returning to the Premier League.

Given the lack of spending by Daniel Levy, it is unlikely the club is going to be active during the winter transfer window. If they are, it’s to move on from players who are finishing out their contract.

Reinforcements aren’t coming so Mourinho is going to have to make do with the players he has at the moment.

Usually it would be the third year where Mourinho would go off the rails. Now its happened after less than two months on the job. Spurs are in need of new players but as mentioned, that’s unlikely to happen.

Both Mourinho and Spurs need to get their act together. They sit five points behind Chelsea for fourth place and they have the Champions League to worry about soon.

With how much they shelled out to get him, Mourinho is going to get a lot of leeway from Levy. If his latest comments are any indication, we’ve only scratched the surface on how his tenure at Tottenham may go.