We were knocked out of the CL by Ranieri's Chelsea, never mind Mourinho's.
@ Tactics, not everyone considers possession football entertaining I consider it boring- Why pass the ball 30 times when you can achieve the same thing passing it 3 times? Economy of effort thats what it's all about.
Mourinho was dead right let them have the ball in areas of the pitch where they can't hurt you and then when they're pulled out of shape by some cavalier attacking- Bam, the sucker punch.
I hate Barcelona they're essentially a one man team and Wenger was a naive fool trying to ape their style on the cheap as everyone can now see, the possession game requires players of a high calibre of technique and you can't get that from kids and freebies.
This is the wrong style for us to try and play at this time in our development with the budget we're on and in the league we play in.
You are quite correct in saying the counter attacking style is generally more successful (especially in cup competitions), Ajax achieved limited success in the European cup until teams learned how to deal with them then it was dominated by Bayern Munich Liverpool and AC Milan, on the international stage for 30 years it wasn't Holland and Brazil who were successful but the pragmatic disciplined and physical Germany Italy and Argentina.
Spain won the last world cup with a bizarre style, it was possession based but it was also defensive and and very negative.
But at the end of the day its a results based game and the aim is to score goals stop the opposition scoring and win games and so any style or tactics that achieve this are acceptable and no style is "boring" negative" or "anti-football" but the style that best fits your circumstances.
