How to beat Newcastle

Apart from sending out a random reserve side of course, which was how we got beat in the shambles of a game last night.

This is actually the detailed notes Jose Mourinho put together before Chelsea played Newcastle. It sort of makes sense now why he's so good at his job. He (or his scouts) obviously spend a lot of time looking at the opposition to work out how the best ways to exploite their weaknesses are, and the detailed notes about how Shearer and Owen play off each other is pretty interesting. I wonder now that Owen's fake to the back, break to the front runs are in the paper, he might try just going for the back post.

I wonder just how many of the top managers today go to this sort of length to prep their players? I have a strong feeling Keegan just used to gee up the side, get them believing they were the best players in the world and send them out to have fun. One manager I did hear about doing lots of detailed work was Iain Dowie over at Crystal Palace, although you're still essentially limited by the quality of the players you have to work with.

And how much notice do players take of these sort of instructions? You spend 90 minutes frantically running round the pitch - are the really good players the ones who have natural talent, or the ones who can do what the manager tells them with a decent amount of efficiency? Or maybe a bit of both. I somehow have a hard time believing that Tino listened to anything before he went out to play (or randomly pulled out his shotgun of course).

Anyway, I was never fit enough to run round for 90 minutes, or good enough to get any proper coaching, so it will probably remain a mystery.

Mirror.co.uk - Sport - EXCLUSIVE: THIS IS WHY MOURINHO IS KNOWN AS SPECIAL ONE