WHEN THE DRESSING ROOM IS LOST
And why it’s happening to Mourinho
What does ‘losing the dressing room’ mean?
REDKNAPP: It’s that change in atmosphere. When you’re winning, you can’t wait to see your teammates and the manager. There’s respect and camaraderie and you don’t even notice it. It’s only when things turn that you can tell and the paranoia sets in. Splits emerge and cliques can develop. Players from different countries start to stick together. There can be a lot of whispering and it is not a healthy environment.
CARRAGHER: It can mean a few things. It can be a breakdown between the manager and the players; it can be relationships breaking down or players stopping listening to orders they were given. It can also be that something goes missing from a player’s game and performances noticeably drop.
KEOWN: It’s like a light goes out on everyone. Any good spirit in the group is lost. People may not even realise it but the effort may not always be there. Often it’s because a manager loses the respect and love of his players but they can’t aafford to neglect the emotional side of the game. Because football is full of emotion.
HaveH you ever been in a dressing room where that has happened?
CARRAGHER: The first thing I would say is that I cannot believe players would actually go on to the pitch and not give everything. I don’t see how you could do that. I understand the term ‘not playing for the manager’ but, as someone who was never signed for a club, it didn’t matter who the manager was. I was a Liverpool player, so I gave everything for Liverpool. In terms of my own experience, I never saw a manager lose the dressing room.
One of the most difficult years we had was in 2009-10, in what proved to be Rafa Benitez’s final season. There was a definite change in the atmosphere around the place but that is what happens when results don’t go well. But we still came close to finishing in the top four and reached the semi-finals of the Europa League, so it was nothing on Chelsea’s scale.
REDKNAPP:
I’ve seen it lots of times. It never happened at Liverpool but I’ve been at clubs where the owner asks for a chat to try to find out what’s going wrong and how they can change things. That happened at Tottenham but sometimes it can be so hard to turn around. Inevitably it’s the manager who goes.
I understand what Jamie means about players giving 100 per cent but not every player is like that. Sometimes it’s not that players aren’t trying, it’s more a question of: are they ‘really’ trying? If they are 1-0 or 2-0 down, are they really going to push that extra bit for their manager?
KEOWN:
I remember being relegated with Aston Villa when Billy McNeill was the manager. He would say ‘ Bingo’ every time he made a point throughout his team talk. It became the joke among the players, who counted how many times he used the word and christened him ‘Billy McBingo’. The lads would smirk each time he said it and then emerge giggling, saying: ‘That’s 31 times today’. That was a lost dressing room.
At Leicester, I heard the manager say: ‘ That’s not a Micky Adams type of performance,’ after one match. But when he has set up the gameplan and given you detailed instructions, it was! You can’t detach yourself from the problem because then you become a part of it. You have to all pull together.
Do you think a ‘lost dressing room’ is what has happened at Chelsea?
KEOWN:
Mourinho has driven a wedge between himself and his players by publicly humiliating them. And it’s been brewing since day one. Arsene Wenger used to say you do your talking on the pitch but Jose Mourinho talks too much. Do that and eventually you’ll say something people don’t like.
Talk of betrayal this week is bad but I was astonished when he referred to ‘rats’ in the camp back in October. It may not have been directed at anyone specific but I’m sure the players took that personally. There has to be trust and a human touch but I don’t see it.
And if he is trying to rectify it with ultra- detailed preparation and dossiers of information, how about a reassuring pat on the back? That’s far better than a pile of paperwork.
CARRAGHER:
Something is terribly wrong at the minute and I do not see how Chelsea will compete for the major trophies they want while the manager and the players stay as they are.
The club, whatever you think of them, has been a success story since Roman Abramovich has been owner and if they want to get back to those levels, something has to change. At the minute there is a startling disconnect.
REDKNAPP:
Yes but it hasn’t happened overnight. It’s been going on all season. The atmosphere has been extremely uncomfortable and Jose Mourinho has a lot of work to do if he wants to heal those wounds.
The spine of the team — John Terry, Nemanja Matic, Eden Hazard and Diego Costa — have all had issues with him and I was stunned by what he said after the Leicester defeat. To claim he was responsible for winning the league, rather than it being a collective effort, crossed the line.
If he hadn’t already lost the dressing room, he has now.