The contrast of Pep and Jose

Niall Quinn questions Jose Mourinho’s criticism of his players and how it contrasts with Pep Guardiola’s defence of Claudio Bravo and the approaches of Sir Alex Ferguson and Howard Kendall…

The Champions League proper starts up this week and suddenly, for last season’s top four Premier League clubs, it seems like everything which has happened since mid-August was really just a clearing of their throats.

Now is the time to hit all the right notes.

Of those who start their campaigns over the next two weeks you would imagine that Leicester and Spurs will be extremely happy to get through to the group stages. Anything else will be a bonus. Arsenal’s spending patterns haven’t made a convincing case for them dominating the continent.

Manchester City, who kick-off against Borussia Monchengladbach on Tuesday night, might be a different story.

City’s performance on Saturday at Old Trafford wasn’t perfect for 90 minutes but there were times when you wondered how Pep Guardiola had brought such changes to a group of players whom he hasn’t been working with for more than two months.

They were quick, confident, expressive and even without Sergio Aguero there were times when they just sliced United open. Guardiola’s team deserved their win but his presence on the sideline also overshadowed Mourinho on a day when onlookers might have been expecting the Portuguese to strut like a peacock.

Guardiola was in constant contact with his players, micro managing the game. You could see that these guys who have been playing football all their lives suddenly find themselves starting out on a tough and intensive post-graduate course where they are going to have to learn a lot of new stuff. 

I wouldn’t exactly say that Mourinho threw his men under the bus with his post-match comments that included ‘sometimes players disappoint managers’ but he certainly gave a couple of them a bit of a shove out into the bus lane.

If there’s frank talking planned at the training ground this week Mourinho might begin by explaining how he managed to put such a subdued looking team out and why it took him so long to figure out how to deal with David Silva and Kevin De Bruyne.

United had their moments in the second half when they changed the midfield system but it was an afternoon when Guardiola responded quicker to every tactical change.   

Mourinho, for all his showmanship and managerial genius, must have been left with the …

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