Guardian: Mourinho will not have January transfer funds

One of the hallmarks of Jose Mourinho’s tenures at other clubs is that he was almost always given a large chunk of transfer money to play with in order to start molding the club into the image of the way he wants them to play. Well, according to one report, he might yet get those funds... but it won’t be until the summer.

David Hytner, writing for the Guardian, reported today that Mourinho will not be given any transfer funds for the January transfer window, meaning the Special One will need to make do with the players that he has right now until the summer window opens up on May 16.

That could be why Mourinho, in his opening interview on Tottenham’s website, talked so effusively about how much he likes the squad he now has in place at Spurs. It probably benefits him to say that... because there isn’t a dang thing he can do about it for another six months! That’s a cynical reading of his comments, admittedly, and Carty Free’s Jake Meador has already written about how certain players on Spurs’ roster could excel in Mourinho’s tactics in the coming weeks.

And maybe it’s true! There’s certainly a lot of talent on this Tottenham roster that for whatever reason hasn’t been performing up to the level of ability or potential. We don’t have a handle yet on the reason for the slump in performance and results, though we can certainly make some pretty good guesses that involve dissatisfaction with former manager Mauricio Pochettino.

There’s also a secondary, even more cynical view that the reason Mourinho isn’t being provided a transfer kitty in January because Daniel Levy already spent it to buy out Mauricio Pochettino’s contract and pay for Mourinho’s £13m/year salary. That’s probably part of the picture, but it doesn’t really matter since Spurs have historically never been active in the January window anyway.

But whatever the case, Mourinho is going to have to bootstrap this underachieving mess of a club out of the bottom half of the table with the pieces he already has in place at Spurs. Now, it’s altogether possible that Mourinho and his new team could finance a move or two for players through sales of want-away players, but if we’re going to believe Hytner (and we probably should) I wouldn’t bet on it.

Hope you’ve limbered up your arms, Jose because you’re going to need to put them on a lot of player shoulders over the coming days.