Battle of the Bosses: Mourinho's mind games, misery for Pep

Paul Clement must have had high hopes walking into the Liberty Stadium for his first Premier League match in charge of Swansea City. He was only in the dugout for a matter of minutes for the game against Crystal Palace as the Swans fought back to claim three points, so imagine what he could do with a full 90 minutes.

Well, in the space of 90 minutes Swansea suffered a heavy 4-0 defeat to Arsenal, with Clement’s side contributing two own goals. All that positivity gone, with the South Wales side sinking to the foot of the table. The point of no return might have been reached. Maybe it wasn’t all down to Bob Bradley after all.

“I don't know and the club doesn't know anything about the reports of Costa to China,” Antonio Conte shrugged when asked about reported interest in Diego Costa from China following Chelsea’s 3-0 win over Leicester City. “The truth is what I told you before.”

But do we really believe that? Consider that Conte’s best player and top goalscorer hasn’t trained since early last week and the Italian hasn’t made the short walk upstairs at Stamford Bridge to ask what is going on? Look at how Conte moves around on the touchline. You think he wouldn’t make the effort to walk up some stairs?

Jose Mourinho is like an elephant. He likes to stomp around, make a lot of noise and he never forgets anything. So after watching Liverpool sit deep for the final 20 minutes of Sunday’s match at Old Trafford he was never likely to let it go, especially after the criticism he took for doing the same thing at Anfield earlier in the season.

“We attacked and Liverpool were the team that defended,” Mourinho said after the 1-1 draw, adding that he wanted to “see if the critics are fair” and that the visitors to Old Trafford were “happy with a point.”

Mourinho excels at this kind of thing, prodding away at his rivals until they break. He did it with referees earlier in the season, scrutinising their every call, making them conscious of their every whistle. Man Utd have since benefitted from a number of dodgy refereeing calls. After all this time, Mourinho is still better at these games than anyone else.

Given the manner of both managers, it was no surprise that Mourinho and Klopp ended up in each other’s faces during Sunday’s clash between Manchester United and Liverpool. But what did they say to one another?

Klopp said it was over Mourinho’s calling for a yellow card to be shown to Roberto Firmino, also taking a dig at his rivals for their underwhelming programme notes and poor choice of beverages. But what if it was something juicier than that?

“Mkhitaryan likes me better than you,” Mourinho might have whispered into Klopp’s ear. “I’ve got James Milner as a left-back and you still can’t beat me,” the German could have retaliated. A draw off the pitch, a draw on it.

Sulking on the bench as his Manchester City side were being thumped at Goodison Park, the music of Simon and Garkfunkel ran through the head of Pep Guardiola. “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again.”

Indeed, the darkness has become Guardiola friend this season. At least since October, when a 3-3 draw with Celtic snapped a 10-game winning run and ultimately broke Man City. Who would have thought that Brendan Rodgers be the man to show the rest of football how it’s done. Or that Ronald Koeman would be the one to inflict the heaviest ever league defeat on Guardiola.

Come to Manchester, they said. You’ll find it easy, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. Guardiola has the look of a man who has already grown tired of the challenge - like someone who has embarked on watching all six Lord of the Rings films, including the director’s cuts and Hobbit spin-offs, but is already bored midway through the first one.

This was the weekend Spurs got real. Moving past Liverpool into second place in the Premier League table, Mauricio Pochettino’s side have taken on the role as primary challengers to Chelsea’s supremacy.

They’ve got everything - the best centre-back pairing in the league, the best full-back duo in the league, one of the best central midfield units in the league, one of the best young players in the league and arguably the best out and out striker in the league. So given all this it makes sense that they would challenge for the league.

Of course, Spurs still have a long way to go. They need to build some consistency and forget what happened to them at Wembley not so long ago. And it’s difficult to forget that when their own stadium currently looks like Bane has ripped through it.