Tottenham Hotspur are going backwards under Jose Mourinho

It was perhaps fortunate that no fans were present at Tottenham Hotspur's 0-0 draw with Bournemouth in their last Premier League fixture. Thanks to various breaks, the game lasted just over 100 minutes. Not one of those minutes was memorable.

No one deserved to spend any money watching that game, and even those who watched it at home may feel that they were robbed of a couple of hours of their day. In those 104 minutes, Tottenham Hotspur failed to have a single shot on target. This was a first for Bournemouth in the Premier League, five years after they were promoted.

This was a Bournemouth side that had lost seven of their last eight league games, not kept a league clean sheet since mid-December, and had looked all at sea since the restart. Instead it was them who pushed for the winner here, with a brush of Josh King’s hand first denying them, before Hugo Lloris was called into action to keep out Harry Wilson.

The biggest criticism you can have of this Tottenham Hotspur side, is that they are quite simply boring. Under Mauricio Pochettino they were a must watch, regardless of whether they were winning or not. Under Jose Mourinho, they are slow, predictable, and no fun to watch at all. It may be acceptable if they were getting results, but they haven’t been.

Of course, the obvious thing to do would be to blame Mourinho for this, and although he is at fault to some extent, there is far more to it than that. When Pochettino was sacked in November, Tottenham Hotspur had won just three of their opening 12 games, and were 14th in the Premier League. Even towards the back end of last season, they went on a run just as bad, although that was masked by the dramatic run to the Champions League final.

Relationships have been fractious with the board. Pochettino went 18 months without bringing in a new player, surely something that wasn’t to his approval. The fact he was able to get on with his job without reinforcements is a testament to his talents as a manager.

Even last summer, when Tanguy Ndombele, Ryan Sessegnon and Giovani Lo Celso all came through the door, there was still a feeling that this wasn’t enough.

Pochettino was able to move on Kieran Trippier, but the likes of Christian Eriksen and Danny Rose were among those still there at Tottenham Hotspur, even though it was obvious that they wanted out too. Chairman Daniel Levy is infamously difficult to deal with when it comes to both selling and buying players, and this is likely to have had some bearing on the transfer muddle.

This hasn’t changed under Mourinho. The cost of the new stadium, coupled with the financial strains that will be placed on all clubs because of the coronavirus pandemic, will mean the self-proclaimed Special One, won’t have many funds made available to him this summer to get badly-needed new players to Tottenham Hotspur.

Tottenham Hotspur really need a refresh in terms of the its squad. That was the issue Pochettino faced in his last seasons at Tottenham Hotspur. He had taken that group of players as far as he could, and the time had come to move on players and bring in some new faces. He wasn’t afforded that opportunity.

Tottenham Hotspur badly need reinforcements

Mourinho will need to do the same. He is looking at a squad that potentially needs additions across the back four, in wide areas, and a backup to Harry Kane, at the very least. That’s without looking at the issues between the manager and record signing Tanguy Ndombele, and whether the two can be reconciled.

The transfer budget has rarely stretched far in recent years for Tottenham Hotspur when things were going well on and off the field. In these unprecedented times, with the possibility of no European football at all, the budget will certainly not stretch to that level of rebuild.

The club even attempted to put some of its staff on the government furlough scheme at the start of the pandemic, though this decision was reversed after a backlash from the fans. This will not be a summer of spending at Spurs.

This was not the way things were supposed to go. The move to the new stadium, one of the finest in Europe, was supposed to signal a new era for Tottenham Hotspur and take them to the next level as one of the biggest clubs in the world.

Tickets in the new ground are some of the most expensive in the country, topped only by those down the road at Arsenal. Yet, fans are now seeing a weaker Tottenham Hotspur team than they had in the latter years at White Hart Lane, that is nowhere near as entertaining, and you get the feeling that this isn’t going to get better any time soon.

This isn’t the Mourinho of a decade ago, who was pragmatic in his management style, and would produce the type of tactical battles that would have us glued to the screen. And he would normally come out on top.

The game feels like it has passed the Portuguese manager by, he is no longer at the top of the sports, and he is no longer coming out on top in these tactical battles.

One of his former players, Frank Lampard, became the first manager to do the double over Mourinho in the league in his whole career earlier this season.

This new breed of managers has moved ahead of Mourinho tactically. His appointment was supposed to guarantee success for Tottenham Hotspur, as it has done at all of his previous clubs. Yet success looks an awful long way away for Tottenham Hotspur at this stage.