Arsenal fans would be unwise to support Jose Mourinho’s appointment as their club manager, according to Mirror columnist, Stan Collymore.
He wrote, “Hiring The Special One would be akin to hiring a bulldozer and waving it into the Emirates. He is no longer the Mourinho of 2004 who blew into Chelsea and wowed us all. He is the guy who uses TV when he’s out of work to portray himself as clever, intelligent and incisive — all the things he was but isn’t anymore.
“The pitch doesn’t lie and Mourinho hasn’t created an exciting football team for a decade, so why on earth do Arsenal fans think he is the answer? If they want to win a Europa League or FA Cup — something, anything — then, yes, he could do that for him. But the sacrifice would be that they’d be ripping up 15 years’ worth of work in getting them to play the way they do.
“All you’d get from Mourinho is the type of football he played at Manchester United: reactive, stodgy and slow, laced with big lumps comparatively speaking when you look at the lads Liverpool and Manchester City play with.
“I wouldn’t actually be getting rid of Emery yet, I’d give him until the end of the season. And providing he kept the Gunners in the top six, which I’m certain he will, then I’d be giving him another year at least.
“If he doesn’t do that, a change is fair enough and the two men who’d top my list would be Eddie Howe or Brendan Rodgers. A couple of years ago, I wrote that Howe wasn’t the right man for Arsenal.
“They needed Diego Simeone, or someone like him, when Arsene Wenger left, someone who’d come in and bang together a few heads and kick the backsides of one or two others.
“Arsenal were Barcelona-lite and Howe’s Bournemouth were Arsenal-lite — they could beat teams playing nice football but they’d also concede fours and fives. They needed more character, more bottle, more leadership, as they still do now, but you can implement all of those things without tearing up a philosophy.
He added, “Both of those two could continue to unpick the problems left over from Wenger’s reign without forgoing the lovely football Arsenal are still well capable of playing.
“But Mourinho? Come on. I haven’t heard anything so ridiculous when it comes to a potential change of manager in English football for a long, long time.”
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