Football news - Paul Parker: Why did Tottenham appoint 'moan, moan, moan' Mourinho?

Has the phrase ‘the grass isn’t always greener’ ever been illustrated as well by Tottenham’s current plight? They thought they were moving onto somebody who guarantees trophies at the first time of asking. But they ignored the big problem – he brings baggage. And lots of it.

The fans must be kicking themselves for helping force out Mauricio Pochettino – a man who delivered them to a Champions League final. It was too easy to hit him with the old adage ‘he’s lost the dressing room’, but he wasn’t given a chance to turn it around and help players out of form. Instead, he was blamed for causing problems at the club and was dismissed.

OK, he was silly to make statements about potentially wanting to leave, but you don’t know what game he was playing with Daniel Levy. He knew the squad needed strengthening to challenge properly.

So they turned to Mourinho, a man who always causes massive problems. We’ve seen it already at Spurs and we’re not even four months in. People can argue that he should be protected from criticism as he wasn’t there at the start of the season, but he knew what he was going into.

Mourinho doesn’t get on with the job. All he wants to do is moan, moan, moan, and find reasons to blame other people. He’s not willing to accept what he has at Tottenham and all that’s doing is demoralising a lot of players at the club. It’s not helping.

It’s totally wrong that he called out Tanguy Ndombele. You can get frustrated by the way he’s playing, but you don’t express it like that. It will only make the other players think ‘hang on, he could do that to me’. In today’s hyper-connected world, it’s embarrassing for them. It’s not just going in the local newspaper or a fan forum, it goes everywhere – especially when most people love nothing more than to listen to the latest Mourinho excuse-ridden rant.

You can say that players should be tougher – and I agree with that – but old school management doesn’t work anymore. Mourinho should see that and adapt, but he doesn’t seem to want to go down that road. You can’t call people out in the press. It wasn’t done in my time by managers and you definitely can’t do it today.

I loved the way Pochettino’s side played over the past few seasons, their fast counter-attacking football was brilliant to watch. Every club has a DNA, the way their fans believe they should play, and Tottenham’s tradition is to play exciting, attacking football. That’s now disappeared.

They were never going to get that with Mourinho as manager. We saw at Manchester United that his football was negative and boring, where players were being questioned because they were being asked to do stuff they weren’t used to doing.

But Daniel Levy ignored all of that and parked the club's footballing DNA in pursuit of trophies. A nice shiny stadium needs a nice shiny trophy, he thought. But that comes at a cost...

It’ll be interesting to see how much money he gives Mourinho in the summer when he knows any players he signs are unlikely to excite the Tottenham faithful. Mourinho desperately wants to bring in players who will do what he wants - i.e. not typical Spurs players.

As I said, the grass isn’t always greener in life. And it isn't always greener in football.

Spurs need to revert to the football their players are used to. How can they do that? Change the coach. Only a change at the helm can help them progress.

But that isn’t going to happen.

And that’s a problem because if Spurs aren’t in Europe, how can they keep their top talent? Harry Kane has been there since he was 11, but we have to be logical and say he won’t want to be at Tottenham if he’s not able to play in the biggest tournaments. That’s what he will want – all the top players are like that.

The same could be said for Son Heung-min, who might be chased by more clubs than Kane. Not only is he one of the top players in Europe but he’s also a marketing tool. It’s a big thing in the modern game and a lot of clubs are going to want him.

If Spurs were to lose those two on the back of not being in Europe, then it says Levy made the wrong decision to sack Pochettino and appoint Mourinho. If there’s no trophy, how can it be worth it?

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