No time for Jose Mourinho? This interview might change your mind

THE FA insist they had to issue Jose Mourinho with a suspended stadium ban because £101,000 in disciplinary fines since 2013 failed to improve his behaviour. Chelsea’s Portuguese manager, who returned to Stamford Bridge two years ago, was fined £50,000 — in addition to the possible ban — for saying referee Robert Madley had been ‘afraid’ to award a penalty in a 3-1 defeat against Southampton. And the FA have published the written reasons for their decision. ‘It appears to us that increasing levels of fine are not on their own going to be a reliable deterrent for Mr Mourinho against improper comments to the media. ‘We have in mind particularly that the more than doubling of the January 2015 fine as compared with the May 2014 fine has not deterred him from this latest and more serious breach. ‘In our judgment the fair way to impose this deterrent is to suspend the ban so that Mr Mourinho is able quite easily to avoid its ever coming into effect. The matter is in his hands.’ The FA’s three-man panel threw out Mourinho’s comments on English not being his first language. ‘His English is far too sophisticated for that to affect our conclusion, as the interviews themselves demonstrate,’ they said. Ahead of tonight’s Champions League game against Dynamo Kiev, Mourinho insisted Chelsea could complete a historic quadruple despite a poor start to the season. The 52-year-old said: ‘We can win all four. I think we can win all four but also lose all four. Everything is open, we are in October.’ Defeat in Kiev would leave their hopes of a second Champions League title teetering. Mourinho has targeted four points from two games against Sergei Rebrov’s men but with a side short on confidence, that will be easier said than done. ‘First of all we are losing 24 hours, like we did in Porto,’ he said. ‘When you play Tuesday, the fact one team plays Friday and the other plays Saturday means we are already losing 24 hours of important recovery. ‘We have a tactical plan to compensate for that. We need to keep the tactical awareness, the tactical discipline, the spirit, the effort, the concentration.’