Mourinho and Lampard: Mind Games or Mindless Rambling?
It can sometimes be confusing with professional footballers and managers to distinguish the intelligent mind game from the mindless rambling.
From Chelsea we had first Mourinho, who would generally be accused of the latter, and now Lampard, extolling the lack of virtue in the fixture sequencing, from their perspective.
So here’s how their case goes:
Chelsea have too frequently had to play their weekend or midweek Premiership fixture after Manchester United had already completed theirs, hence heaping pressure on the Blues to deliver a result.
As I can just about hear your brow furrowing I’ll now attempt to explain the “logic�. You see when Manchester United win first, Chelsea know that they MUST win to maintain the chase and therefore are under greater pressure to deliver. Now don’t all start talking at once….let’s list the rebuttals logically:
- In World Cup/ European Championship qualifying and finals groups, for the final set of matches they always schedule the games at the same time. Why so? So the team playing second does not already know the score of the first game and so have an unfair advantage. This flips the Chelsea argument on its head.
- Ergo, if you play second you have the incentive to win if you know your main rival has won or the additional adrenaline rush of knowing you can close the gap, if your rival has failed to win.
- If you play first you have to assume your rival will win later and go all out for the win = added pressure.
- In the case of Manchester United and Chelsea this season, both will always assume the other is going to win. It has been the case for weeks now that both camps have felt that they need to win every game to win the Premiership so whether your rivals have played earlier and won makes no difference to the psychology.
Foul! I hear Chelsea cry. What about the one time Utd played second, against Portsmouth, and lost! Proof of what we are saying! Q.E.D.!
Now I can feel rebukes bursting from every corner but let’s just go with “one swallow does not a summer make.� Such a conclusion will have statisticians everywhere breaking out in a cold sweat or diving for cover to hide their blushes while shouting their unanimous verdict on the issue: “Nonsense!�
The scary thing is that in this instance I don’t believe either Mourinho or Lampard are trying to engage in mind games.
Mind boggling, isn’t it?
It’s more like them playing the media.
And it’s a bit rich of us to think of the football players and managers as being flawless individuals. Jose Mourinho may be a genius, he may be a power-hungry, attention-seeking maniac or he simply may be paranoid.
The public eye does a lot to a man…makes him lose his sense of perspective.
Makes us lose perspective as well…
I resent the implication that I, as a member of the media-consuming public, have lost perspective. It makes me want to run amok, hitting people willy-nilly and writing abusive messages in their guest books. Apart from that yes, I think Ahmed Bilal has a point.
I don’t think it matters who plays first or second, each has its pros and cons, and at this level its all nonsense, if your wetting your pants because your rival has just won yesterday find a shrink…
This is stupid. Of course each team is going to try to win everygame, regardless of whether you play first or second. Aren’t they supposed to be proffesionals?
Rylie - I think THAT is exactly his point…
or is it?
Any way you see it. It’s just about giving good results.
chelsea plays simulteanously with man utd mostly. not withstanding, they are different entities chasing a single goal so who plays first matters not.