Former Premier League footballer Michael Gray has criticised Jose Mourinho’s lack of influence on his Tottenham team after seeing his side get beaten by Southampton on Wednesday.
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Mourinho’s men have won just one out of their previous four league games since winning four of the Portuguese’s first five Premier League matches after he succeeded Mauricio Pochettino in November.
Speaking on TalkSPORT, ex-Sunderland defender Gray suggested that Mourinho should have been capable of delivering a winning performance against the in-form Saints, and has been left rather worried by the team’s recent performances.
He said: “He’s had enough time now, with that squad of players, to maybe look at them and think, ‘I know what my best XI is’.
“But the Norwich performance I watched – they were quite fortunate in that game. [The Southampton game was fairly similar] but they got nothing out of it.
“Has Jose changed anything to what Pochettino had? Pochettino loses his job for the reason that performances weren’t good, they expected to be in the top four challenging around the top two or three in the table – they’re nowhere near that at the moment.
“But they’ve got to be going to places like Southampton, and you think even without playing well, they should have enough to actually win that match.”
Gray may have been critical of Tottenham’s inability to see off Southampton, though the Saints’ victory over Spurs on New Year’s Day merely continued the good form of Ralph Hasenhuttl’s side – making the result more of a mild surprise rather than a major shock.
That said, one would imagine that Spurs’ squad – which will take part in the Champions League knockout phase next month – will have had more than enough resources to see their opponents off.
Whether the blame for that lies at Mourinho’s door is debatable – though it appears the wave of form that followed his arrival has dissipated given their own recent results.
With Spurs still firmly in the running for a Champions League place and Mourinho just over a month into the job, perhaps Gray is slightly harsh on him, though it was nevertheless a needless setback for the team to contend with at the dawn of the new year.
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