Opinion
Mourinho can guide Tottenham to the League title, says football analyst Merson
Jose Mourinho is the key to any potential Tottenham title bid this season, Paul Merson, a football analyst and columnist, says as he also praises Harry Kane’s transformation, before going on to suggest another possible surprise winner of this season’s Premier League…
Tottenham briefly went top of the Premier League on Sunday for the first time in six years thanks to a 1-0 win at West Brom and I think the north London club can challenge for this season’s title with Jose Mourinho at the helm; I also back Chelsea to compete for the league
Mourinho knows what it takes to get Spurs over the line
It’s a hard question to answer (can Spurs win the league?). They are going to be very reliant on Harry Kane.
But, to be fair, results like the win at West Brom, they win you league titles. You look back on results like that and come what may, you remember it as a difficult game against one of the teams down at the bottom, who couldn’t win a game but turned up on the day, and it turns out to be an important win.
That’s what you are up against if you want to win the Premier League. You watched West Brom against Fulham and they were atrocious. You start to think Tottenham have only got to turn up on Sunday morning and as long as they don’t forget their boots, they’ll win the game and move on.
But in the end, it was a very hard game and Mourinho is probably sitting there asking himself why they didn’t turn up and play like that against Fulham. That’s how hard the Premier League is.
Can Spurs go on and win the title? It’s not impossible and that’s because they’ve got a serial winner as a manager. They’ve got a chance because Mourinho is in charge and has won it before. He knows what it takes to get over the line.
Can the players keep producing week in, week out? Only time will tell, but having Mourinho at the club gives them an advantage.
Mauricio Pochettino was a good manager, don’t get me wrong. However, they’ve now got more chance of winning the title because of Mourinho. He knows what you have to do week in, week out and then all over again.
I think Spurs have more chance of winning the title under Jose Mourinho than previous boss Mauricio Pochettino (left)
You have to be there or thereabouts all the time. You cannot be giving teams six, seven or eight-point head starts, and they are right in the mix at the moment.
A word of caution, though. Everyone’s talking about the title and because it is November, people think we’re nearly halfway through the season. Usually we’d have played about 15 games by now and that’s a massive difference, but we’ve only played seven or eight games.
But when Mourinho won the title at Chelsea, they always got off to a flyer. He’s the only manager I know who treats every game like it is the last of the season. Every point mounts up and Mourinho always flies out of the stalls in a title-winning year.
Jose’s not here to entertain, but to win
I’m one of Mourinho’s biggest fans, but I have been critical of him.
When I was critical, it wasn’t about him as a manager, because you cannot knock someone who has won all those trophies. It doesn’t matter when he won those trophies, he’s won them. They are on the CV.
My only question mark was whether Kane would be able to get 30 goals in a season being in a Mourinho team.
Mourinho is a winner. He doesn’t mind winning games 1-0. He’s not there to entertain people, he’s there to win football matches. If they entertain and end up winning 3-0, then fair enough, but he is one of those managers that wins a game 1-0, puts it into the back pocket and moves on to the next.
Fans will moan that it was only 1-0, but Mourinho won’t care, and that comes with experience.
But now, with Kane on fire and the other attacking players they’ve got at their disposal, they’ve got a chance. A real chance, but, for me, I just can’t see past Liverpool.
Harry Kane has transformed his game
Kane is a special player. He’s changed his game a bit now as well. He starts drifting off into the No 10 position and he can spray the ball around the park. He’s showing he’s got vision and it is like he’s the all-round package.
There are not many players about who can go up front and be a target man, be strong, put his body in the way, score goals and then in the game, he can drop off and hit a 30-yard ball through the eye of a needle and knit play together.
There are not many of those players around, if any.
It’s like having Alan Shearer, who played up front as a No 9 and then there’s Teddy Sheringham as a No 10, and Kane can play both of them. Shearer couldn’t drop off and play as a 10 and I don’t think Sheringham could play the Shearer role.
For Kane to be able to do both, and they were special players, is remarkable.
Summer signings show Mourinho at his best
I hail the signing of Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg
This is where Mourinho is special. He sees things others don’t. He sees what he needs, and he doesn’t just go out and buy players for the sake of it.
In Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, they needed that ball-winning midfielder to break things up and then there are the full-backs.
I couldn’t believe Wolves let Matt Doherty go. For the price Wolves let him go for, I didn’t get that one at all.
That’s where Mourinho is so good, and I as I said earlier, as long as he’s in charge, they’ve got a chance. It’s not impossible at all, but again, we are only seven games in, and you could not write the script of the league so far this season.
Don’t rule out Chelsea for the league either
If we are going to talk about Tottenham winning the title, then Chelsea are right in the mix. If Spurs can win it, then for sure, Chelsea can win it.
Frank Lampard has now got who he wants in key positions and you can really see the difference.
Thiago Silva is world-class. They’ve got two full-backs who are as good as any in the league and for me, they [Reece James and Ben Chilwell] are the two England full-backs, in my opinion. They are outstanding. Silva is also only going to make Kurt Zouma a better player and the goalkeeper Edouard Mendy is solid.
I know Sheffield United are down at the bottom at the moment, but they are a hard team to play against. They are organised and when you go 1-0 down, you know it’s going to be a difficult evening.
However, they literally dismantled Sheffield United. They made them look like a proper relegation team, which I don’t see that because I think Sheffield United will be okay this season. They made them look distinctly average and that’s a sign of a good team.
Lampard does have one problem though…
Frank Lampard will need to somehow keep all his players happy this season
It’s coming from everywhere too. Hakim Ziyech has got a left foot that can open a can of worms, Timo Werner scores plenty of goals, Tammy Abraham looks like he’s getting better and then there’s Mason Mount. They’ve just got so much attacking talent.
The problem is going to be keeping everyone happy and that’s going to be the hardest job in the world. You are going to have top, top-draw players not playing, and that’s hard.
Kai Havertz wasn’t even in the squad because he was unwell and Christian Pulisic is injured too. Mateo Kovacic played on Saturday, but he hasn’t been playing. That’s going to be the problem Chelsea have to contend with going forward.
Is the squad too big? It depends how far they go in certain competitions, but that is where Mourinho was great. If you look at his Chelsea team and the squad he had at Stamford Bridge, you never heard anybody moaning.
From the outside, you always thought, ‘wow’! How do you keep all those players happy? There’s got to be an art to it because when you’ve got that quality of player, to keep them all happy when they are not playing is a major skill.
It’s alright people saying they get £100,000-a-week, they get paid well or whatever, but they want to play football. As a player, you want to play football and that will be Lampard’s biggest challenge going forward.
They also have to play a better quality of opponent in the games coming up, but everything at the moment looks good.
Paul Merson ( Columnist and Football expert)
twitter: http://twitter.com/@PaulMerse
Opinion
(Opinion) Oyo Assembly trespasses over illegal suspension of Oyo East LG Chairman
(Opinion) Oyo Assembly trespasses over illegal suspension of Oyo East LG Chairman
Like executive, like legislature in Oyo State, rascality is now the order of the day as Oyo State is now synonymous with illegality and power exuberance. The only Governor which condemned Supreme Court landmark judgment on local government autonomy is the Oyo State fanatical emperor; Governor Seyi Makinde as the Oyo State House of Assembly was reported on Thursday October 31, 2024 to have also suspended the Chairman of Oyo East Local Government, Olusola Oluokun, over a viral video that was purportedly obnoxious and unbecoming of a Chairman of a local government. While the Governor deliberately attacked the Supreme Court judgment to discredit the then Chief Justice of Nigeria who hailed from Oyo State, did the Assembly also want to discredit Alaafin of Oyo Empire symbolizing Yorubaland which Oyo represents?
To be sincere, apart from Ladoja/Akala regime which witnessed thugs’ incursion into Oyo politics, the current administration is the most ruthless that even elevated hooliganism in the State and made thugs of undisciplined people disciplinary committee Chairman of Transport Arms of the terror network. An absurdity of highest order to the Pace Setter State!!!
Actually, the atmosphere in Oyo State House of Assembly since 2019 has shown that the house is either full of political puppets or novice in legislative duties, No wonder, the house members do not even know their limit in law making nor know the laws they are supposed to superintend. There was a day I even asked my own Assembly member from Orelope State Constituency copy of a Law passed when he joined the House but I was surprised that he said he did not have a copy of the bill apart from political brag by telling me he did not know the person he was responding to despite introducing myself formally as usual before making my request. As activist, I did not know more than 65% of people I have attended to their cases. They only got my contact and when they explained their situations, I proffer the solutions where there was no need of seeing me. And once they got result, that is the end. If an honourable has no copy of the law he was part of the makers, do we need to ask them what oversight functions they perform when they do not even know what to do?
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If the House of Assembly is constitutionally informed and literarily exposed, it would have known it is not only illegal for house of Assembly to suspend or sack a local Government Chairman the Same way the National Assembly cannot suspend a Governor or impeach him but that it smears ill of the constituents of that Assembly. The legislative functions of the councilors at the local government include screening and approval of local government budget, nominees of local government chairman such as Supervisors, special assistants and advisers, suspension or removal of local government chairman among others and to conduct oversight functions on the entire local government departments and Units where allocation of resources was made during the financial year. Ohhhh, let me ask Oyo Assembly o, is it the National Assembly that helps you perform your roles? If not, why hijacking the local government administration just because they were selected by you boss?
So, if at all, there is any kangaroo law at the State level which empowers the State Assembly to suspend or sack a local government, that law exposed the mediocrity of those who made it and or implement it as not being sound intelligently in the task of legislative functions. This is because if the National Assembly doesn’t have power to suspend a Governor, the State House of Assembly should know it trespasses and subverts local government administration independence which the Supreme Court has affirmed. Is Oyo Assembly now reversing Supreme Court judgment as a result of power abuse or display of sheer ignorance of the laws?
According to 1999 Constitution of the FRN (as amended), it provides in Section 4 (5) “If any Law enacted by the House of Assembly of a State is inconsistent with any law validly made by the National Assembly, the law made by the National Assembly shall prevail, and that other Law shall to the extent of the inconsistency be void” and section (7) provides “The House of Assembly of a State shall have power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the State or any part thereof with respect to the following matters, that is to say- (a) any matter not included in the Exclusive Legislative List set out in Part I of the Second Schedule to this Constitution; (b) any matter included in the Concurrent Legislative List set out in the first column of Part II of the Second Schedule to this Constitution to the extent prescribed in the second column opposite thereto” In all of these provisions, the State House of Assembly only has power on revenue allocated to a local government or budget made in respect thereof of any thing having to do with education among similar objects. At no point was any administrative power over local government administration vested in the State House of Assembly. Therefore, the suspension of the Oyo East local government by the Oyo State House of Assembly is ultra vires by the application of Doctrine of covering the veil. Without requiring litigation, the House should reverse itself as quick as possible except it wants to make mockery of itself and the occupants of that House
Luqman Soliu
Abeokuta, Ogun State
(Opinion) Oyo Assembly trespasses over illegal suspension of Oyo East LG Chairman
Opinion
Farooq Kperogi: World Bank’s 15-year death sentence on Nigeria
Farooq Kperogi: World Bank’s 15-year death sentence on Nigeria
The World Bank’s Senior Vice President by the name of Indermit Gill, who is originally Indian, incited mass panic in Nigeria on October 14 when he said Nigeria would need to sustain its current soul-sucking, agonizingly punishing, and self-destructive “reforms” for “at least another 10 to 15 years to transform its economy.”
Gill’s speech at the 30th Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja—which read partly like the smug, cloying, self-congratulatory bluster President Bola Tinubu would write and partly like the intentionally obfuscating gobbledygook of dubious experts who want to conceal the truth from the uninitiated—elicited verbal and nonverbal expressions of fervent disapproval from the well-fed elites of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group and the Ministry of Budget and National Planning (who planned the event) when he said Nigeria must continue this path of national self-incineration “at least another 10 to 15 years.”
Gill was compelled to wonder aloud if the murmurs his callous exhortation triggered were a signal of disagreement or agreement from his audience. The camera zoomed in on people nodding discontentment or using their fingers to gesture disapproval. If he is smart, he would know the answer to his question.
But the soulless, blood-sucking economic vampire was unmoved. He insisted that enduring “terrible hardship across the breadth of Nigerian society” (his words) as a consequence of the gutting of petrol subsidies is the only way to “become the engine of growth in sub-Saharan Africa.” “It is very difficult to do these things,” he said, “but the rewards are massive.” What massive rewards can come out of policies that take both lives and means of livelihood?
The phrase “at least” suggests that 10 to 15 years of piecemeal national mass immolation is the irreducible minimum required to achieve prosperity. That is, 10 to 15 years is the smallest possible national self-annihilation Nigeria has to endure to “transform its economy.” Since the least possible effort can’t always guarantee success, it means it would take more than 15 years (possibly 50 years— or even eternity) to achieve prosperity through national mass annihilation.
Well, since President Tinubu can’t rule longer than seven more years (assuming he wins a second term in 2027), the World Bank has effectively prepared the perfect, ready-made alibi to explain away the irrecoverable harm its loathsome and baleful prescriptions will visit on Nigeria in the next few years.
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Tinubu’s successor, whoever that may be, would be insane to continue with this mass obliteration of the populace they call “reforms.”
If he or she has brain cells in his or her skull and reverses this ruinous course, the World Bank would say, “Well, we told you that you needed to incinerate yourselves for at least 15 more years before you can have a chance at living. Since you brought yourselves back to life after only eight years of being in the burner, you are not sufficiently cooked, and we are not responsible for the burns and devastation that eight years of incineration brought to you. You see, you can only live if you burn yourselves alive, which you refused to do.”
This caricature might come across as grotesque and transgressive of the bounds of reasonableness, but it faithfully captures the logic of World Bank economic prescriptions for developing countries: you need to die before you can live.
If not, how could anyone celebrate the democratization of privation? “The price of [petrol] has quintupled since the subsidy cuts, imposing terrible hardships across the breadth of Nigerian society,” Gill said with a triumphant tone.
Well, one of the unspoken, unacknowledged but nonetheless far-reaching consequences of the quintupling of petrol prices is the slow but sure death of what remained of Nigeria’s education. Because of the dire existential precarity that the unaccustomed and ceaseless hikes in petrol prices have caused, many children are dropping out of school like leaves abandoning a tree before the storm hits.
A National Assembly member told me a few days ago that a prominent emir in Northwest Nigeria confided in him that he was alarmed by the sheer number of young people who are dropping out of school (at all levels of education) in his traditional sphere of authority because parents can’t afford to feed, and they consider paying the school fees of their children a burden they can’t shoulder.
This tragedy, this conscienceless assassination of the future of our youth in the service of the World Bank, isn’t limited to the North.
Two weeks ago, a close relative of mine who lives in the Southwest requested my assistance to pay the school fees of five children who were roaming the streets because they had been sent home from school for failure to pay their school fees.
Their father disappeared without a trace before he couldn’t cope. Their mother, a petty trader, manages to feed the children once in a day on a good day. But they used to get by before Tinubu’s “economic reforms” upended their lives.
We in the North are in a worse state because we are already behind the rest of the country in educational attainment. Now we are sliding even further as the sting of Tinubu’s World Bank-instigated “reforms” disrupts lives.
When a “reform” rolls back gains in school enrollment and effectively jeopardizes the future of the youth and of the country, you have to wonder why you need to implement it for at least 10 to 15 years to “grow.” It’s like pulling bricks from the foundation of a house in the name of building a taller roof. What good can possibly come out of that?
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What sort of “reform” contracts the economy, diminishes the productive sector, reduces the purchasing power of the people, reverses growth in education, and even kills people’s will to live?
Tinubu has repeatedly assured Nigerians that the dark tunnel of his “reforms” will produce light during his presidency and that Nigerians only have to endure a temporary penance. But the World Bank, his puppeteer, has undercut his message. It says it will take at least 10 to 15 years of maintaining these “reforms,” which extend beyond the time he is constitutionally allowed to rule, to see any benefits.
In other words, Nigerians are condemned to unmitigated anguish and deprivation for a deferred benefit that will never come since Tinubu won’t be around for the next 10 to 15 years, and his “reforms” would probably ensure that Nigerians don’t elect another neoliberal World Bank/IMF flunkey who will tout mass starvation of the citizenry as praiseworthy “reform.”
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: history offers too many cautionary tales of developing nations that have followed this very same script, only to find themselves worse off. Argentina in the early 2000s, for instance, stood on the precipice of ruin after blindly swallowing the IMF’s bitter medicine. With a wild, neoliberal, anarchist wacko of a president called Javier Milei, Argentina is back in the pit of World Bank/IMF hell.
Ecuador, too, suffered a devastating financial crisis when it adopted policies that hollowed out its middle class.
The World Bank and its cadre of international experts rarely account for the peculiarities of each nation’s economic and social dynamics. What they offer is a one-size-fits-all solution that has often wreaked havoc on the most vulnerable.
Nigeria is being told to trust this path, but development doesn’t emerge from policies that wipe out the middle class, impoverish the population, and render a nation’s currency barely worth the paper it’s printed on.
True development is rooted in fostering economic diversity, building local industry, and safeguarding the purchasing power of ordinary citizens. It’s about listening to the rhythm of the local economy and respecting its complexity, not bulldozing over it with a neoliberal agenda crafted in the halls of Washington.
No doubt, Nigeria’s economy has long needed repair. But it is one thing to call for reform and another to advocate for policies that feel like economic warfare on your own people. Tinubu may believe that this is a necessary sacrifice, but the logic of endless suffering in the name of eventual relief is deeply flawed. Countries do not develop by punishing their citizens into submission.
We must ask ourselves: how much longer can Nigeria afford to endure policies that erode its very foundation? For a nation whose citizens have weathered so many storms, the path forward must be built not on external dictates but on an understanding of Nigeria’s unique strengths and vulnerabilities. And while the World Bank preaches patience from afar, Nigerians know better than most that promises of future prosperity mean little when the present is unbearable.
A leader worth following is one who understands this. A leader who places the needs of the people above the dictates of international financial institutions. Nigeria cannot afford to pay this price much longer, and Bola Tinubu’s legacy may well rest on whether he is willing to listen to the cries of his people—or whether he will remain a distant echo of the world’s technocrats.
Farooq Kperogi: World Bank’s 15-year death sentence on Nigeria
Farooq Kperogi is a renowned newspaper columnist and United States-based Professor of Media Studies.
Opinion
Does it still make sense to trust Tinubu? by Azu Ishiekwene
Does it still make sense to trust Tinubu? By Azu Ishiekwene
This was tough to write. My heart resisted it, but I yielded to my head. The petrol in my car, a 2.0-litre 2012 Tokunbo Camry, was at half-tank the day before writing.
When pump prices went from 195/litre to 617/litre between May and June 2023, I parked my Jeep and, despite being occasionally mistaken for an Uber driver, opted for the saloon, which, as of the third fuel price increase by September this year, cost about 65k to fill up.
After petrol pump price went up again by about 15 percent last week, it would now cost about 80k to fill up the saloon, depending on where you bought petrol from and how badly the pump was rigged.
The changes in petrol price and energy costs have affected everything else, from the price of fish to milk and the cost of bread and grains. Essential medicines are a different thing altogether. Life was hard. But it’s been a nightmare for millions more since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government was inaugurated.
Generation crisis
In July, The Financial Times said the hardship under Tinubu has triggered “the worst cost of living crisis in a generation.” The newspaper gave the president credit for tackling two of the most malignant economic problems in decades – the petrol subsidy and fixed exchange rate – but said the shock therapy was so disjointed that calling it “Tinubunomics” would be a joke.
But Nigerians hardly need a foreign newspaper to render their misery in torrid colours. They know this was not the life promised. Tinubu pledged to prioritise security and jobs, tackle the mounting debt, and improve infrastructure when he took office. He came with a pro-business credential and a track record of success in Lagos that was difficult to ignore.
In the last year, however, with millions impoverished by the government’s economic policies and two major nationwide protests against hunger and bad governance, Tinubu’s reputation has taken such a severe beating that promises of light at the end of the tunnel have been brushed aside.
Turn of excuses?
His government has explained that the rot was worse than expected; that whereas previous governments since 1973 said oil money was not the problem, but how to spend it, President Muhammadu Buhari handed his successor an empty treasury, to which the response has been: yours is a continuation of the APC government, deal with it.
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Complaints about post-Covid-19 supply chain problems, long-standing structural problems, the protracted legal challenge to his election, and a hostile opposition have also been dismissed as untenable for a man who said it was his turn to govern.
Temptation
Yet, I wouldn’t write off the government, however tempting. If Tinubu’s shock therapy has been disjointed, and his economic policies severely criticised by a despairing public, the tax-and-spend remedy by The Financial Times, the West’s standard response to budget deficits – apart from the added trope about transparency and corruption – is hardly the cure in Nigeria’s case for at least two reasons.
Apart from severe loopholes, rampant poverty makes it difficult to expand the tax net or improve the yield, except if the government wishes to levy taxes on blood. Poor industrialisation, even de-industrialisation, and heavy dependence on imports, especially food imports, compound the problem and further reduce wiggle room to raise badly needed cash.
For Tinubu to dig Nigeria out of its current hole – and I believe he still can – efforts to restructure government income, including taxes, by repurposing the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) must be matched by policies that create wealth.
Options for compound problems
The government should intentionally target industrialisation and food production, with reduced foreign input. Unfortunately, widespread floods have piled on insurgency and kidnapping to reduce farm supplies and worsen food inflation.
Yet, while elites like me complain the most and the loudest, the measure of Tinubu’s success is not how much petrol I’m able to buy in my car but the impact of government policies on the rural poor, mainly farmers, who make up the bulk of the country’s 220m population.
Tinubu must work with Nigeria’s state governors, who collect security votes monthly before thinking of what to do with it to fix the security problem so that farmers can return. The country needs a system to incentivise farming, one far better managed than the Anchor-borrowers’ scheme under which the Buhari government staged occasional shows of huge grain pyramids that disappeared as soon as the events were over.
Examples from elsewhere
There would be no easy options. Examples of countries that have turned things around show that their leaders defied the norm in pivotal moments. Deng Xiaoping reversed Zedong’s isolationism by introducing market reforms and imposing a one-child policy.
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Lee Kuan Yew ignored Western prescriptions of democracy, even laying down markers for the foreign-owned Strait Times, limited protests, and restricted strikes and industrial actions.
Those who obsess about diversity and size would find India a good example. To the displeasure of the elite, Indira Gandhi focused on rural India. She achieved self-sufficiency in food production, reducing poverty and laying the groundwork for long-term national development.
One thing common to all three but lacking in Tinubu’s government is energy and speed of execution. For example, three months after he announced an interim measure to remove tariffs on grains and essential pharmaceuticals, the Customs have yet to get the memo – or perhaps they have, and it’s been washed up by red tape.
Sitting on the mines
Sadly, oil isn’t about to take the backstage soon. Yet, our assets, especially oil mining leases in seven blocks, including OML 111 and disputed Pan Ocean assets, have been poorly managed by NNPCL. The corporation that ought to be alarmed at divestments from the upstream and midstream is too busy piling on the government’s debt by brokering crude-for-loan deals to think of what to do with massive, fallow oil assets that it has cornered since 2009.
Experts estimate that prudent management of these assets could increase Nigeria’s production quota by between 500kbpd and 1mbpd and improve the pool of investible funds. How and why, despite his experience in the oil industry, Tinubu indulges NNPCL’s damaging and scandalous incompetence, only he can explain.
Eat that frog!
But I’m not giving up on him yet. I’m hoping he was playing politics when the political pressure group, the Patriots, led by the statesman Chief Emeka Anyaoku, visited him, and he said he needed to fix the economy before restructuring the country.
Except he prioritises that, the current system, which puts revenue sharing ahead of innovation, competition, production and reward, but instead creates a phantom of Abuja as Father Christmas, will continue to retard the country’s progress.
It’s not Tinubu’s fault that the states are yoked to Abuja. However, he cannot make any lasting changes, keep his election promises on security, jobs, the economy, or infrastructure or even inspire the states to depart their waywardness without changing how the country is governed.
He starts to lose me, not when I pay a higher petrol price but when his actions show, irretrievably, that despite his solid credentials as an advocate of restructuring, he is determined to put the cart before the horse.
Does it still make sense to trust Tinubu? By Azu Ishiekwene
Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book Writing for Media and Monetising It.
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