Jose Mourinho is not the only manager who struggles to take points off the Big Six on their travels

It has become the latest, hardest stick to batter Jose Mourinho around the head with. “Utterly abysmal” is one commentator’s description of the manager’s run of 11 English Premier League away games at “big six” opponents without a single victory.

“Buses everywhere,” wrote another pundit following Sunday’s 1-0 loss at Chelsea, implying that Mourinho had deployed ultra-defensive tactics in every one of a list of matches that tracks back to a 5-3 loss at Tottenham in January 2015. “His way, of late, is not working,” said Sky analyst Jamie Carragher ahead of last month’s goalless draw at Liverpool. “If that doesn’t improve, they won’t win the league.”

The sequence of results – comprised of six away defeats and five scoreless draws – is cited as evidence that Mourinho’s strategic approach will ultimately fail to deliver Manchester United’s first post-Sir Alex Ferguson title. It easily segues into the argument that United supporters will not tolerate defensive football in such high-stakes fixtures because Ferguson’s method was to prioritise attack. Conclusion? Mourinho is doomed to failure at Old Trafford.

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As such statistics always are the sequence is cherry-picked. It begins with the only big-six defeat (away or home) suffered by Mourinho’s 2014-15 Chelsea, omitting 1-1 draws at Manchester City and United and a 2-1 victory at Liverpool. The late-April 0-0 at Arsenal came eight days after a 1-0 defeat of Louis van Gaal’s United, allowing Chelsea to lift the Premier League trophy the following weekend – with three fixtures still to play.

The statistic, though, remains ugly. Yet just how ugly is it relative to the competition? If you’re in any way interested in Premier League football you’ll have seen it almost everywhere of late. What you probably have not seen is the context. The context is that taking league points at the stadia of the division’s six most financially powerful clubs isn’t easy. For anyone.

Mourinho’s arrival at Old Trafford coincides neatly with Antonio Conte’s at Chelsea, Pep Guardiola’s at City, and Jurgen Klopp’s first full campaign at Liverpool. Since the beginning of this era of Premier League “super managers” not a single big-six coach has taken more than nine points in total from away trips to their most prominent opponents.

The most impressive record is Klopp’s with nine points gathered from a possible 21, or less than 43 per cent. The German has two victories to show for seven big-six away dates, both (4-3 at Arsenal and 2-1 at Chelsea) were recorded during the first five fixtures of last season, a period in which Klopp’s players tend to be at their fittest due to the unusually high intensity of his pre-season training regime.

Last season, Klopp was the sole “super coach” to go unbeaten in big-six away games, his counter-pressing style proving especially suited to stronger opposition. This campaign

his team has ran less, pressed a lot less aggressively and lost 5-0 at Manchester City (the heaviest defeat of the German’s managerial career) and 4-1 at Tottenham.

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What of Conte’s Premier League champions? Characterised by Mourinho as a “super defensive team with a killer counter-attack”, Chelsea usually set up with five defenders across the width of the penalty area when without the ball, stationed two holding midfielders in front of that defensive wall and withdrew their wingers back to patrol the flanks.

From there they reclaimed possession and launched coruscating counters in patterns Conte drilled repeatedly on the training ground. Chelsea’s title was secured with two games left to play and all big-six fixtures completed, yet even with a system seemingly so attuned to succeeding in key away fixtures the champions took just four points from 15, with Guardiola’s City the Italian’s only big-six victim.

This campaign’s 2-1 win at Tottenham has elevated Conte’s away point haul to 39 per cent, a return identical to Guardiola’s. To date the Catalan has won at Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge, lost at White Hart Lane and Anfield, drawn at Arsenal. That City’s cumulative goal difference of minus two is the best of the six contenders underlines the fundamental difficulty of succeeding in such matches

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