3 things we learned: Mourinho can still play the old hits

The latest match week saw United impose their game plan against Liverpool , while all other top six teams won out. Things continue to get extremely interesting at the bottom of the table where West Ham continue to slide.

Mourinho’s playbook reigns victorious again

Love him or hate him, Jose Mourinho has built his illustrious career on an uncanny ability to have his team not only prepared but successful in big games. With wins over Chelsea and Liverpool that reputation continues to  grow. Saturday was no exception as United was able to neutralize Liverpool’s most potent attacking trio in the Premier League and benefit from effective finishing — clinical, you might say — in front of the net. These are the ingredients that make Mourinho’s brand of football pragmatic, effective and most times victorious. Simple enough, yet so hard to put in practice.

Once United went up two goals in the 24th minute you knew the result was never in doubt. Scoring first is Mourinho’s kiss of death, it gives him the ability to play his favorite hits: shut down the game by closing down all the passing lanes and suffocating the opponents in the defensive third of the field. May not be pretty but it sure is effective, especially of late.

Burnley’s bench — the real heroes of the 3-0 drubbing over West Ham

West Ham continue to embarrass themselves, the last chapter being a 0-3 home loss to Burnley that saw the Hammers slide down to 16th place, only three points above the relegation zone. The real story of the game was the crowd trouble that resulted in a pitch invasion. As the frustrated home fans were looking to mete out vigilante justice by confronting the players, some young innocent bystanders almost found themselves the victims of the whole fracas. With extreme presence of mind the players on the Burnley bench realized that the situation could have dire consequence and swiftly took three young kids away from danger and into the safe confines of the away bench area by inviting them to sit on their bench. Kudos to Phil Bardsley, Jeff Hendrick, Sam Vokes and Dean Marney who gave up their seats to the young men, avoiding a potentially ugly situation. Safe to say Burnley outclassed West Ham on and off the field.

Passing handwritten notes makes matters worse for Bournemouth

Passing out actual handwritten notes to players during a game seemed to be a lost tradition and for good reason judging by the impact such a note had on the Bournemouth. We’ll never know what was written in the note that Jermain Defoe handed Dan Gosling upon entering the game but things only got worse after, as the Cherries gave up two more goals in the last ten minutes finishing up on the wrong end of a 4-1 Tottenham win at Vitality Arena.

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It must have been quite the tactical analysis as Dan Gosling, the recipient of the note spent a good 30 seconds reading it intently and giving his teammates instructions. The whole scene seemed quite bizarre.  A more common approach involves short instructions barked by the player subbing in to teammates with various degrees of interest in the things being yelled at by the incoming messenger.. Perhaps Defoe brought with him a love letter that could not wait until the end of the game. What’s certain is that Bournemouth were down one goal and very much in the game pre-note and promptly gave up two goals after the note was handed out and read by Gosling.