Jamie O’Hara has claimed that Tottenham Hotspur are boring to watch under Jose Mourinho but that Spurs fans will accept the style of football as long as they win silverware this season.
Tottenham’s pragmatic style of play has attracted plenty of criticism so far this campaign but one cannot argue that it has not been effective as the North Londoners still find themselves competing on all four fronts.
Mourinho’s men overcame Brentford 2-0 last Tuesday to book their place in the Carabao Cup final in April, giving themselves a chance to break their 13-year trophy drought.
O’Hara, who was part of the Tottenham squad that last lifted a trophy back in 2008, admitted that the home side’s performance against Brentford was not too easy on the eye.
However, he insisted that Mourinho would be a ‘genius’ should he guide the club to silverware this season.
Speaking after his former side booked their place in the final, the former Spurs midfielder told talkSPORT: “We are boring to watch.
“I don’t sit in front of the TV and think, ‘I’m really enjoying this’; you’re having to watch the game and think more like, ‘this is about winning and Jose knows how to get results’.
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“We won the game 2-0 but I wouldn’t say I was really excited about watching that Spurs side. But Jose Mourinho is a serial winner.
“You can’t get away from the fact the man has won everything and he’s at SPURS. It’s no disrespect to Spurs, but Jose Mourinho has always been at one of the biggest clubs in the world, whether it’s Real Madrid, Manchester United…
“Now he’s at Spurs and we’ve got a chance to win a trophy in his first full season in charge!
“So we have to get away from wanting to ‘play the Spurs way’; this dynamic football, ‘we’re free-flowing and open and everyone wants to watch Spurs’.
“We want to win a trophy, that’s what he’s been brought in to do and the players have bought into it and adapted to it really well. They are resilient, they are resolute, they are hard to break down, they win games, they’re keeping clean sheets.
“It’s frustrating to watch Spurs at times, but as a fan you’re accepting it because if we win a trophy come the end of the season the man’s a genius.”
O’Hara said that he expects Tottenham to make the final against Manchester City a ‘horrible’ affair but admitted that he wouldn’t write his former club off with Mourinho in charge.
He added: “It’s going to be a Jose Mourinho special, they’re going to go into the game as underdogs and he will use that to their advantage, sit in, kill the emotion, it’s going to be a horrible, dogged game, but he knows how to win finals.”
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As we have seen already from the reaction of some Spurs fans to our defeat against Leicester and draw against Wolves, many only find this style of football acceptable as long as we keep getting results. If and when we go through our next rough patch, Mourinho will certainly come under a lot of flak for the team’s lack of attacking intent.
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