• Mourinho’s league leaders face Chelsea on Sunday
• Lampard will come up against his former manager
For José Mourinho, the equation is simple. You manage at a big-spending club and there is pressure to win trophies. More than that, it is an obligation. The Tottenham manager has felt it himself previously, including at Chelsea, where he delivered three Premier League titles in his two spells in charge. As he said a few years ago, having left the club under a cloud the second time: “Judas is still No 1.” No other Chelsea manager has won the league more than once for them.
It is different at Spurs where a relatively low transfer spend equals less pressure, less expectation. Mourinho says he enjoyed his first summer window at the club, in which he leant on the chairman, Daniel Levy, to sanction a net spend of £56.2m, excluding loan fees. It brought seven players and greater balance and options. In this kind of project, Mourinho says, there is no margin for recruitment error.