Jose Mourinho would have been hoping for the dream homecoming in Manchester as his new Spurs side took on United at Old Trafford last night.
It is exactly one year to the month that Mourinho was sacked by the Red Devils and replaced by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer back in December 2018.
He took some time away from management before accepting the Spurs call when Daniel Levy and the board chose to sack Mauricio Pochettino during the last international break.
Spurs started off well under the Special One, winning three out of three games, including a match against Olympiacos that booked their place in the Champions League knockouts.
However, the same old problems cropped up last night in Manchester, highlighting a potential issue with the players, rather than the man in charge of the team.
Mourinho believes that Man United were the better side for large parts of the game, but claims he thought Spurs would win it at one point.
He said (Football London): “For 30 minutes they not just better than us, they were much better than us. They were better in intensity, in aggression, they were winning first balls, second balls, 50/50 duels, but we were lucky. Then in the last 15 minutes of the first half we were us and United were in trouble. We scored a goal and I thought in the second half with some adjustments we did at half-time, I thought we were going to win it. But the second goal is not easy to process. Probably everybody says it was a penalty.
“I prefer to say it was a throw-in, because the penalty was later. It is a throw-in in the first minute in the second half and that for me is really hard. You go from the 1-1 and you want to go there for the three points and you arrive in the second half and they play the game that they want to play. They dropped the block, they defend, they got fouls, a couple of dangerous counter-attacks, closing, closing, closing. Then we had the ball in the last third, the goal could happen, but didn’t. I think they deserved to win.”
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