Chelsea board agonises over Mourinho
LONDON: Roman Abramovich continued to agonise over whether or not to sack Jose Mourinho on Wednesday night, as the beleaguered Chelsea manager took training at Cobham.
Abramovich and Chelsea directors Bruce Buck, Michael Emenalo, Marina Granovskaia and Eugene Tenenbaum held more discussions on Wednesday about the question that has hung over Chelsea’s shocking season: whether to sack the most successful manager in the club’s history.
Chelsea’s 2-1 defeat at Leicester City on Monday night was their ninth in the Premier League this season, leaving them positioned just one point and two places above the relegation zone.
Since then the Chelsea board has been discussing whether to continue to trust in Mourinho to turn their season around, or sack him two and a half years after bringing him back to Stamford Bridge.
The board is discussing, among other issues, the potential severance deal if it dismisses Mourinho, who signed a new fouryear deal on an estimated annual salary of £12 million in August.
While there have been reports that Mourinho’s contract would be paid up in full on dismissal, Chelsea’s traditional approach has been to continue to pay former managers until they are permanently employed elsewhere.
One pay-off to Mourinho in the region of £40 million would also risk jeopardising Chelsea’s compliance with Uefa financial fair play regulations.
Mourinho was at Cobham on Wednesday to take training, hoping to prepare his players for tomorrow’s home game with Sunderland.
Meanwhile former Chelsea striker Tony Cascarino believed Mourinho could be fighting to save his job amid a toxic atmosphere in the dressing room after he accused his players of betrayal earlier this week.
Cascarino believes failure to beat fellow strugglers Sunderland at Stamford Bridge could signal the end for the Portuguese coach.
“We must be surprised [that he has not been sacked],” Cascarino, who spent two years at the club from 1992-94, told Sky Sports News.
“History shows us, we’ve seen [Luis Felipe] Scolari, Andre Villas-Boas, Robert Di Matteo all make very quick exits.
“The only people I feel are still behind him are the fans, they still sing his name because they have so much affection for him but they are losing football match after football match.”
Mourinho accused some of his players of “betraying his work” after Monday’s defeat and Cascarino believes he is now on dangerous ground.
“There is a fine line, how far you take it, how much criticism you can give to your team?” he said.
“Behind closed doors you can say a lot more but when you go public and talk of betrayal you are taking it to a level that a lot of players in that dressing room won’t like.
“They’ll start looking at Jose and thinking, forget about us, what about you? They will start looking at him, and it could make a toxic atmosphere in the dressing room.”
Cascarino said Eden Hazard’s hasty exit from the pitch after picking up a knock early on at Leicester was a worrying sign.
“You have to question the desire of some players to want to play for Jose,” he said. “Take Eden Hazard on Monday night, the way he went off, he may have been injured but he didn’t make much of an effort to stay on the pitch.
“It’s a very strange atmosphere at the club. You can’t have top players not working. There must be issues in that dressing room. Every player apart from the goalkeeper has been dropped at some stage this season.”
“He has tried everything. I think it’s a last throw of the dice, they have Sunderland at home and Watford at home and anything less than six points I can’t see him surviving.”