Since his return to Chelsea this summer, José Mourinho has by and large cut a rather more relaxed and sanguine figure – a far cry, perhaps, from the scowling, smouldering manager we’d all grown to recognise and respect, if not quite love.
We see it often, every summer and every January in fact. There are always a few huge transfers that fill a disproportionally large chunk of our nations press. You know the type of story that we like. Hugely famous, world class player rebels and demands a move. And they’re usually tens of millions of pounds involved as well, just to make it a slightly juicier story.
Thank god for that, the ‘summer’ is over and Premier League football is back on our screens. There have been 4 live matches shown on TV already from the opening round of fixtures, kicking off with Liverpool vs Stoke last Saturday. Sure, the return of the SkyBet football league a couple of weeks ago was good, but with the return of the Premier League, Soccer AM, Match of the Day and Gillette Soccer Saturday to name a few we are now very much in the swing of things again.
The launch of a new Premiership league campaign at the weekend meant that the dust had barely had time to settle on last week’s England versus Scotland clash before it was in danger of being forgotten about amid the hysteria surrounding Jose’s return, Arsène’s long wait for silverware and Wayne and Luiz’s will he/won’t he/who cares saga.
The battle lines have been drawn. It’s the fans of Coventry City vs The Owners and so far the advantage seems to be with the fans. By default the owners have all the power, but the fans are claiming it back.