Mourinho Criticises Players Commitment: Why Paulinho From Tottenham?
By Logan Holmes
Jose Mourinho has criticised his midfield players, Eden Hazard and Oscar, for a lack of commitment so why would he want to sign Paulinho from Tottenham?
Not a team player
The Chelsea manager, Jose Mourinho, was reported in Saturday’s papers criticising his Belgian international, Eden Hazard, for not being “a team player’. This follows comments by Hazard after their Champions League defeat by Atletico Madrid on Mourinho’s counter-attacking style of play. Pointing the finger at Hazard for his part in the first goal conceded against Atletico at Stamford Bridge, Mourinho is reported in
, to have said about Hazard,
"He’s not the kind of player ready to sacrifice himself 100 per cent for the team and his mates. I’m not happy."
The Telegraph were reporting on Sunday that the Chelsea manager was not happy with his Brazilian international, Oscar, who is to miss the final games of the season with injury, suggesting that he was more concerned about playing for his country in the World Cup rather than his club. On Oscar, Mourinho said,
"….I can imagine, in a couple of weeks, he will be in a high and during the World Cup he will be in a high. There are things you can’t resolve."
Paulinho
Paulinho
Such comments about lack of commitment by Mourinho, make the rumours that the Chelsea manager is interested in signing Paulinho from Tottenham to help bolster his midfield seem rather out of place when you consider the Brazilian’s performances for Spurs this season. He may have scored 7 goals from midfield but Paulinho after a promising start has failed to impress in the second half of the season, yet he is a crucial member of the Brazil team for the World Cup.
If Paulinho and his agent have ambitions of completing a transfer to Chelsea, as was suggested during the week, he’d better hope that Jose Mourinho wasn’t watching Match of the Day on Saturday night. He would have been aghast at Paulinho’s part in West Ham’s second goal at Upton Park.
In the defensive wall for a free-kick just before the interval, Paulinho turned allowing a gap to open through which Stewart Downing’s weak shot passed, wrong-footing Hugo Lloris who had been expecting his wall to deal with such an eventuality. Not the sort of thing you want to be doing when you’re being touted around as a possible signing at a club like Chelsea.
absolutely disgusting
Alan quoted the words of David James, BT Sport’s summeriser on Paulinho and Emmanuel Adebayor, the two players responsible for the ball passing through the wall.
Like Oscar, Paulinho appeared to be more concerned about his World Cup prospects than Tottenham when he was unable to get into the Spurs team having been out with injury and was critical of manager, Tim Sherwood.
After yesterday’s defeat at Upton Park, Sherwood was very understanding when commenting about the goal from the free-kick. He said to the club’s web-site,
"It’s an error from the lads, they don’t need to be told."
I doubt if Jose Mourinho would have been so calm and reasonable if it had been a Chelsea player who had allowed the ball to pass through the wall to concede a goal at a crucial time.
Paulinho has disappointed in recent months although he showed some unexpected drive and commitment against Fulham. However, one supporter described him against Stoke, “he ran around like a headless chicken” and against West Ham he never got to the pace, intensity and tempo of the game and if it hadn’t been for his error drawing attention to himself, you’d hardly have known he was on the pitch.
While the story of a possible summer move to Chelsea may have appeared in the press, it may be more about his agent trying to raise interest from other clubs as an exit strategy from White Hart Lane.