Mourinho rues England’s poor Champions League start
JOSE MOURINHO was delighted that Chelsea made a winning start to their Champions League campaign yesterday, but said he was not happy that Manchester United, Manchester City and Arsenal had all lost their opening matches in this season’s competition.
Chelsea, who have made a poor start to the defence of their Premier League title winning only one of their opening five matches, cruised to a 4-0 win over Israeli champions Mac-
MANCHESTER UNITED
MANCHESTER CITY PORTO’S 18-year-old defensive midfielder Rueben Neves is being lined up a January transfer target for Chelsea.
FORMER cabi Tel Aviv at Stamford Bridge.
They were the only one of the EPL’s four contenders to win after Manchester City were beaten 2-1 by Juventus and Manchester United lost 2-1 to PSV Eindhoven on Tuesday.
Arsenal were also beaten 2-1 at Dinamo Zagreb yesterday.
“I think it is sad and bad and I am not happy about it,” said Mourinho. “I want Man City, Man United and Arsenal to lose in the Premier League but I don’t want them to lose in the
IChampions League.
“It is not good for us. Season after season, it is difficult for English teams to be successful. At the start of the week if you can make 12 points (with all four winning) and you make only three, that is bad news.”
Although the group stage has only just started, English clubs’ records in Europe’s top club competition in recent seasons has been patchy and could impact on how many teams get spots in the tournament. T’S been fun watching the Special One squirm. We’d never seen it before; never seen him lose so many matches so quickly, never seen him lose what briefly looked like the plot.
We’d never seen even the barest hint of complacency, never seen him fail to get his man (John Stones) or score such a shocking public relations own goal with one of his staff (Eva Carneiro). It was quite a spectacle.
But after the easiest ride the Champions League has to offer, our schadenfreude could be short-lived. Maccabi Tel Aviv turned out to be the whipping boys needed to get a bit of confidence back, hear his name sung again and get ready for Arsenal tomorrow lunchtime.
Never mind the feeble quality of the opposition, this was more like it. First there was the haircut – his “fighting” cut, as he called it – followed by a permanent scowl. No more nonsense about being ‘the Happy One’.
A dire start to the season demanded it. He has an unexpected battle on his hands and it was time to get serious, take the gloves off and shake things up. Finding himself in an unfamiliar corner, he wielded the axe on his best and most trusted lieutenants.
As always with Mourinho, even that was double-edged. The missing four – John Terry, Branislav Ivanovic, Nemanja Matic and Diego Costa could all reappear against the Gunners with the advantage of being both chastened and refreshed.
Costa, of course, ended up playing most of Wednesday’s game after an early injury to Willian, but any tiredness the Brazilian-born Spaniard feels will be more than compensated by the boost in confidence from his superb goal.
Ces
England, Spain and Germany currently have four clubs eligible according to the coefficients UEFA use to determine how many clubs a country is entitled to enter into the competition.
There are five Spanish clubs this season as Sevilla entered as winners of last season’s Europa League.
The top three clubs in the Premier League advance directly to the following season’s group stage, while the team finishing fourth enters Fabregas will also have benefitted from a goal and an assist (for Costa’s goal) after performances that were crying out for a demotion. They were the gentlest of touches - a tap-in and a lob - but he looked more like his old conniving self with Oscar alongside him. But, still, you wonder why Juan Mata was sold?
But the biggest bonus for Mourinho and Chelsea was that the all-round feelgood factor was back. There’s nothing like a win and four goals to boost morale and with Arsenal contriving to lose to the so-called patsies of their group, Chelsea will be favourites on Saturday.
Another win over his old rival Arsene Wenger will be uppermost in Mourinho’s mind now and he’s gone some way – with a little help from Olivier Giroud and a card-happy referee in Zagreb – to achieving it. After defeat at Everton, Arsenal next up was looking a make-or-break fixture. The bookies certainly thought so, making the Portuguese third favourite for the sack race.
Old nemesis Wenger would have loved to stick the knife in - and is probably not above a bit of schadenfreude himself – but the odds have shifted. An Arsenal win would still be disastrous for Chelsea’s title defence and heap the pressure back on Mourinho but, with the north Londoners’ old failings continuing to haunt them and Chelsea having stopped the rot, such an outcome is looking less likely.
It is, however, still a potentially defining game in the domestic scheme of things. Defeat, if combined with another City win, would leave the champions an unthinkable 14 points behind the leaders. And if even one of the bottom three get a result, they could be in the relegation zone.
It is still only September but the psychological damage the playoffs.
No English club has won the Champions League since Chelsea in 2012, which was also the last season an English club reached the final.
None reached the quarter-finals last season and the EPL’s right to four places could come under threat in two years time from Italy, their nearest challengers in the coefficient table, who currently provide three teams for the competition. – Reuters could make the gap insurmountable. Also, surrendering that superiority complex, hex or whatever you want to call it, over Wenger would mean a massive mood shift too.
No, I don’t think Roman Abramovich would - even in his more manic moments - be thinking of sacking his manager having paid a high price for having done so too hastily eight years ago. But some of Mourinho’s aura would be lost – with the players, owner and fans.
They have already questioned his judgment this season on one or two issues and finding themselves beaten by an Arsenal side that even Gooners don’t think is the finished article would be hard to recover from.
Mourinho knows that and usually finds a way to win the games that matter. His men will be going into it in a better mood than Arsenal’s who had to retreat from Zagreb beaten and nursing a sense of injustice. But the question has to be asked of Chelsea: would even victory signify a corner turned?
As welcome as two successive home wins would be, it would not necessarily mean all was well with the Blue world. There look to be too many problems for that to happen, frankly.
There are too many aging players and too many possible replacements never given a chance. Of the 33 currently loaned out to other clubs, are some of the Chelsea academy’s finest products – wantonly ignored by Mourinho. He gave Ruben LoftusCheek a rare chance against Maccabi and he took it – but you wouldn’t bet your house on the youngster becoming a regular this season.
Mourinho thrives with a tightly-knit squadron of devotees and thinks youth is wasted on those below 25. He has perhaps been too loyal to the old guard and maybe, just maybe – he’s not in as much control of the club as we imagine.
He was overruled and undermined over Petr Cech, the Marco Polo pre-season travels, the late start to the season and not stumping up enough for Stones. He has also made mistakes over Mata, De Bruyne, Andre Schuurle, Juan Cuadrado and Mohamad Salah while allowing Radamel Falcao to be foisted upon him.
He badly needs to win or this season could be the first one of his career that could end up being considered an unmitigated failure. Even the greatest managers can’t avoid one in their careers but what is remarkable about this is that no one saw it coming.