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The forecast is for rain and 4C or, to put it another way, the kind of midweek evening in Stoke that asks a particular question of visiting players. For José Mourinho and his Tottenham squad, who are coming to town for their Carabao Cup quarter-final on Wednesday, there is a consolation. At least their dressing room will not be a pigsty.
The state of the facilities for away teams at the Bet365 Stadium have been on Mourinho’s mind for a while. The Middlesbrough manager, Neil Warnock, brought them to public attention at the start of the month, saying his players had to change in a portable building with blocked toilets, leaky showers, no heating, water on the floor and fumes coming in from an engine outside. “It was a pigsty – and the pigs would’ve run away if they’d been there,” Warnock said. Stoke dispute some elements of his account.
Mourinho being Mourinho, his intelligence went further, taking in footage of the scene from one of his many insiders at other clubs – not necessarily Middlesbrough. It is fair to say that it angered him.
“I have a video of it, a video made from a colleague that works for another team that recently played against them,” Mourinho said. “It should not be a question for me. It should be a question for the authorities, all the authorities – football authority, safety authorities. I am not going to be the bad guy that is going to make comments about Stoke’s away dressing room.”
Stoke have upgraded the provision and Blackburn became the first visitors to enjoy it on Saturday. It remains outside the stadium and is now a type of marquee that is spacious and well heated. Stoke cannot accommodate visiting teams as they normally would because of coronavirus social distancing rules but Blackburn had no issues with the arrangement.
One thing to say is that numerous clubs in the Football League have reconfigured their stadiums to host their opponents and the results have sometimes been comfortable, sometimes not. Has gamesmanship been at work? Warnock felt so and it would not be difficult to guess Mourinho’s thoughts on the subject.
Mourinho is always looking at angles, seeking an edge, and what he wants at Spurs is to shape a mentality that can draw strength from any challenge. The most immediate one is to bounce back from the home defeat against Leicester on Sunday, which followed the loss at Liverpool and the draw at Crystal Palace – a sequence that has tempered some of the optimism around Mourinho’s results-orientated, counterattacking style.
It was interesting to hear Jamie Vardy’s take on how his Leicester team executed their 2-0 win. “We felt we could let them come up to the first third and then, when they came to the halfway line, we could put the press on, find space and create chances,” the striker said.
It is plainly a risky strategy to press Spurs high, given their pace and desire to break into the spaces this can leave. Remaining more compact, as Leicester did, is surely the way to go. They gave up very little on the counter and Stoke would have taken note.
Mourinho has a love affair with the League Cup, having won it three times at Chelsea and once at Manchester United. He did so in his first seasons at both clubs – with the former in 2004-05, the latter in 2016-17 – and he came to prize it not only for the success it represented but for what it could do in terms of the collective belief; what it could lead to.
If Mourinho could win it at his first attempt with Spurs – he joined in November 2019 when they were already out of the competition last season – it would be a cause for celebration, mainly because of the club’s lack of trophies (three in 35 years). It would also go a long way towards vindicating Mourinho’s appointment.
It is strange to say Spurs are 90 minutes from the semi-finals, having won only one tie; they were given a bye against Leyton Orient after a Covid outbreak at the League Two club. But the lone win was significant, against Chelsea on penalties at the end of September, providing an injection of confidence amid a crazily cluttered schedule.
Mourinho juggled his resources expertly that night and he learned a lot about his players. Eight of his starters have come to be considered as first-choice picks and he introduced Pierre-Emile Højbjerg and Harry Kane for the final push. Mourinho intends to “give a little bit of a rest to two or three” against Stoke but his lineup will be strong.
“To win this tournament we need to win three matches,” Mourinho said. “It is a difficult competition to win. But going in the direction from what we are saying from the beginning of the season, the next match is a match we want to win and the next match is Stoke.”
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