Eunoia JC

I have a theory for Eunoia

During my time the top 5 JCs all had their own image.

Raffles Junior College is the JC for the Raffles gang - the anglophone go getters.

Hwa Chong JC (or whatever the fuck it's called these days) is the JC for the sinophone go-getters.

Victoria JC is the JC for the less bookish but nevertheless smart outgoing bunch.

Temasek JC is the sinophone version of Victoria JC.

National JC - well maybe somebody out there understands what their image is like. So to speak, a grey blur to me. (Pls correct me)

We don't yet have a JC that caters to the arty farty, pretentious bunch. That hipsters are to be found everywhere in art schools is a given, but there's no real JC that caters to hipsters. The closest is VJC. Now, you have Eunoia, because somebody needs to take Innova JC's mantle of the "dumbest sounding JC name". It has to be about hipsters.

Jose Mourinho sacked again

Jose Mourinho’s season thus far has been pure comedy gold. You think that Brian Clough’s 44 days at Leeds are legendary, but this is just like Brian Clough at Leeds, except that the team of champions he’s tearing down are his own people.

The highlights are many. Petty squabbles with his assistant doctor, and getting sued in return. Saying “no comment” 8 or 9 times to the reporter after a match. Proclaiming that he’s the best manager Chelsea has ever had (unfortunately this is still true). Bitching about the referees. Bitching about the ball boys. Complaining about Eden Hazard. Complaining about Diego Costa. Trolling a reporter about playing badminton. Calling Arsene Wenger a specialist in failure. Seeing all his three nemeses at the top of the table (Ranieri, Pellegrini, Wenger). Telling everybody that he still has the dressing room. Then losing the dressing room. Anyway, I still find this pretty hilarious:

Jose Mourinho has been lucky with his first great Chelsea team. The spine of that side had a mentality strong enough to put up with his bullshit. Drogba, Cech, Lampard, Terry, maybe Ballack. But Mourinho has always been suspect at managing people who were not strong in the head: Torres, Balotelli, Fabregas, Matic, Hazard.

Mourinho is a shock jock and after a while, his shock tactics lose their effect and no longer deliver the results. But of late he’s also been alienating his own dressing room, which is not something that usually happens earlier in his career.

The first time he was fired from Chelsea, it was a huge mistake, but I’d have loved to know what it’d have been like if he were around for long enough to get Chelsea out of his first slump. Perhaps he’d have succeeded, or perhaps it would have failed and he’d have been forced to leave anyway. The second time he’s fired, I don’t think anybody would say he doesn’t deserve it.

Mourinho’s next gig will be the most crucial gig of his career. If he fails at his next job, his career is over. With Mourinho, there are only two possibilities: spectacular success or spectacular failure. When he was first installed at Chelsea, perhaps around the time when he called himself the "Special One", he had just come off a shock victory in the Champion's League with Porto. Maybe that was the best of times for him. He had entered the Premier League at a most fortuitious time: Manchester United were at a low ebb. It was the only period of time since they claimed their first Premier League title in 1992, that Man U spent 3 consecutive seasons not winning the title. (If Man U fail to win the title this season, this will only be their second long barren stretch.) Jose Mourinho, in fact, hadn't come to knock Man U off their fucking perch. He had come to knock Arsenal off their fucking perch. Ranieri had laid some foundations, for sure, but quite a few of his star signings - Mutu, Veron, Crespo, Parker, Bridge - would play none or at least a marginal role in Mourinho's Chelsea. He still had that unknown quality, that made him such an effective shock jock. He hadn't completely pissed off everybody else - Benitez, Wenger, Abramovich. But as the years passed, Inter Milan would be the last gig where he was an unqualified success, and even then, he didn't leave behind a great legacy there. In Real Madrid, he managed to alienate Ramos, Ronaldo and Casillas. He ended up poking Tito Vilanova (RIP) in the eye. He got trashed in a classico. His aura of invincibility evaporated. Even in Chelsea, there was only 1 great season, even though in fairness, he had been building up to that one good season. His first reign in Chelsea, he had left behind Drogba, Terry, Lampard and Cech, who were the spine who maintained the great success Chelsea had for years. Perhaps Chelsea's greatness was as much down to those four as it was to Mourinho. In his second stint, he didn't have Drogba, he had to phase out Lampard, Terry and Cech, with varying degrees of success. The new spine of Courtois, Ivanovic, Fabregas, Matic, Hazard and Costa was less sturdy and as time goes by, we won't see them as firm a foundation as Terry / Cech / Lampard / Drogba. I'll be surprised if that gang is still intact after 2-3 more seasons.

Sometimes I think about shock tactics, and I realize that I cannot always be shocking people all the time, and even then, I cannot always be shocking people the same way all the time. It doesn’t work that way. Personally I should stop all my shock tactics or change something a little more fundamental in my life.

Also, Rio Ferdinand has opined that Manchester United must quickly get Pep Guardiola. What's likely to happen is that Pellegrini and Van Gaal are going to be replaced in the near future, and one of the Manchester clubs gets Guardiola and the other one will get Mourinho. If you don't want Mourinho, you'd better grab Guardiola fast.