The Mourinho Thread

[Chelsea Legend 11 4,062]

Spot on. I too get this feeling that this isn't his team yet.

He is used to having physical players in the middle. This is the first time he has

Fabregas

Oscar

Willian

Hazard

Ramires

Even Azpilicueta

All these players in the starting line-up can't win aerial duels or physically dominate people like ballack essien and lampard used to.

Mourinho can't physically be dominant again, so if any team puts us under pressure and our passes are not going, we can't make powerful drives like essien and ballack used to do, we can't even score a goal from a cross and header from openplay. We are not direct, we hate taking shots unless we're infront of the keeper, We can't defend and prevent teams from getting chances again.

So this type of team have not been used by Mourinho before, he must be worried.

The problem with all this is loads of investment has been made to get the team to play a certain way. Jose said so himself 'the profile of the team has changed.' The long and short of it is this, Jose has to work on getting the balance right. There are times when sitting back and playing compact will be very useful it just can't be our default set up with the squad we have.

This is the team the owner wants. He, above all else wants to win! However, a close second is how we win. For the most part this season we've been playing fantastic football, lately we've been scuffling results and not utilizing our strengths.

Maybe this style is a little foreign to Jose, he's being asked to tweak what he feels is tried, tested and true. The bottom line is we can't rely on one set of tactics to get us results, profile of the club is very different.

If Jose is going to teach defensive principals to attack minded players then he must also learn how to implement an attack that plays to their strength. It's about balance and lately we've been a little too one sided. Truth.

[petre.ispirescu 4,928]

I'm a long time admirer of Jose and this won't change after a couple of games, but he has to change something in his approach. Do the double this season, get his pressure of his shoulders a bit and then change the shape of the team. Sell the deadwood, make a smart buying campaing, play a high line from next season and be proactive.

Football evolves and he has to do it also. You can't always win by speculating your opponent's limits. He is a great manager at reading others flaws and he can make it into a truly legend if he can implement an attacking approach to this team.

Lately the atmosphere was tense at the club and last night it was all about fighting at trying to go through "at all costs". Diego Costa's job is to score goals, not to harras others and be a completely jerk. It is his nature, I know, but he would not be like that all the time if he would not be instructed to do so. Football is not war, it's about giving your players the pleasure of playing this game. This is why Barcelona looked so good under Guardiola. And now Bayern looks the same. They are told to go out there and ejoy their football. Something Chelsea has missed lately I'm afraid.

Wanted to enter this discussion whole morning just to come home and find my apartment robbed, which put things into a bit of perspective. Perspective - that's all we need in those situations Peace all and let's win the PL and then we'll see.

Sorry to hear that. Hope they didn't steal anything important.

[iseah100 5,612]

Bayern won 7-0. Why can't we win convincingly like that against top opposition?

[Special Juan 27,439]

Bayern won 7-0. Why can't we win convincingly like that against top opposition?

We played PSG, they played Shakhtar.

[Atholy 1,293]

We played PSG, they played Shakhtar.

I agree for 50%

They show some balls and play with confidence at their home ground... we play like a 4th division team against a EPL top of the league team in the FA-cup Quarter Finals!!

[iseah100 5,612]

We played PSG, they played Shakhtar.

Would we have beaten Shaktar 7-0? We can't beat any team 7-0.

[bababoom 4,478]

What frustrates me is that last season we pressed high against certain teams at home (Swansea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Gala etc) and we looked good. This season i see no evidence of us doing that, we may have spells like yesterday for the first 15 mins where we actually pinned PSG back and won a lot balls in their half, after that for some reason we sat back and looked lethargic. I know with JT's lack of pace it's hard to implement a full press but surely against 10 men we dont have to worry about that? i get that Jose is the type of manager who looks for the oppo' weaknesses and tries to exploit that but what is he trying to implement here? recently the tactics in big games is to just sit deep and hope we score a goal on the counter... it's not been good enough. I love Jose and we need stability but i'm just confused as to what team he wants to create here.

[Chelsea Legend 11 4,062]

On the match yesterday, I knew it was a disaster the moment i saw a red card.

This meant our players didn't know whether to stick to the original plan of defence and counter or attack because the opponent had red card. Mourinho should have told them to stick with the pressing, stick with the quick play but he clearly told them to slow down. I don't know why, but that's what it is.

If Mourinho's only tactics is to soak pressure and hit people on the break, then fabregas is useless to him. He can't defend and can't run on the counter so he should have been subbed off and not oscar. This is one of the reasons we've become worse than last season in the big games, we're playing with one less defensive player instead of the huge luiz - Matic pivot, we now use fabregas and ramires who are far smaller for midfield battle. PSG were big players and instead of having luiz or mikel to defend setpieces we now have fabregas or Ramires. Mourinho should get more physical players if he wants his current big game tactics to work. This team is the weakest team in defending, height and jump he's ever managed imo.

As for the reaction, If we lose while playing well, the fans can have something to hold onto. But if we lose while playing terrible the coach has to take whatever comes to him so Mourinho deserves every criticism he gets.

Ramires is actually pretty good at defending set pieces, gets his head on a lot of corners.

[didierforever 7,349]

Tactics. Wrong tactics in given the particulars of the game.

how?

i think the starting team was what i would have played except for zouma for cahill but thats a 50-50. we started well, zlatan got a red and suddenly we looked clueless as to what to do?

then after HT, we came out with changed tactics. we were playing 4-1-4-1 with rambo and cesc trying to curb veratti and motta (very unsuccessful). also, pastore owned matic last night. our whole midfield got over-run by a man down PSG, not cos of tactics but cos of the players who could not care to give a fuck. i honestly cant see what cesc or rambo or hazard were done or had done in the 2nd half. i just dont see what jose got wrong yesterday?

we did not lose cos jose got the tactics wrong. we lost cos PSG showed a lot more character than we did. we beat this same psg team with a lot worse team. difference - spirit, character, defiance, and BALLS!!! last night, the players lacked each of those things.

[hamad138 190]

After Ferguson retired, winning Premier League is not about being the best it's about being the least bad of the bunch.

City was that team last year, and Pellegrini capitalised .

Now it's Mourinho's turn.

Top five English clubs are in such a bad shape, it's unbelievable. Mou can dominate for the years to come if City enters in our post 2010 transition, as it seems.

Nevermind, kudous to David Luiz for telling that Mourinho is not special, and proving it on the pitch afterwards.

We have a football problem. I saw 17-19 young olds from Schalke, who was running riot in Madrid. They dribbled past varane and pepe like there was no tommorow.

Just look:

https://vine.co/v/O9zJ1egl0AQ

English teams needs to give youth a chance!

[Adnane 1,101]

We don't dominate against big teams anymore, never will probably under Jose. So that is Everton, Spurs, Arsenal, Liverpool, MU, Man City, PSG this season that had more possession than us. Actually I am really interested in finding out when was the last time in a big game we ended the match with more possession than the opposition, must be rare or never under Jose.

Pretty recent actually, we dominated both Liverpool in COC here and Everton when Willian scored.

[The Chels 2,502]

What frustrates me is that last season we pressed high against certain teams at home (Swansea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Gala etc) and we looked good. This season i see no evidence of us doing that, we may have spells like yesterday for the first 15 mins where we actually pinned PSG back and won a lot balls in their half, after that for some reason we sat back and looked lethargic. I know with JT's lack of pace it's hard to implement a full press but surely against 10 men we dont have to worry about that? i get that Jose is the type of manager who looks for the oppo' weaknesses and tries to exploit that but what is he trying to implement here? recently the tactics in big games is to just sit deep and hope we score a goal on the counter... it's not been good enough. I love Jose and we need stability but i'm just confused as to what team he wants to create here.

If we played a back four of Azpi-Zouma-Terry-Luis our pressing game would instantly be so much better.

Pretty recent actually, we dominated both Liverpool in COC here and Everton when Willian scored.

We might have had more possession but we did not dominate either of those teams. Lukaku missed a sitter for Everton and we only had to hang on for a few minutes after Willian scored. Henderson also missed a sitter for Liverpool after we scored and they definitely created the better chances in the first half.

[Tomo 21,733]

I am truly lost for words about some of the shit that has been spouted about Jose every time we get a bad result.

Critisism? fine, not agreeing with his choices? fine, but atleast keep up a level of respect, my problem is I have seen Liverpool fans show Hodgson more respect that some on here (you know exactly who you are) show the best manager in the club's history.

Do you think Tottenham fans would ever (or have ever) call(ed) Nicholson a coward for example? exactly.

[Blue Colored Sky 1,807]

I completely agree with the first paragragh but I'm not so sure about the second. How many of the first 11 players does Jose not really consider one of 'his' players? I'd argue very few (if any) even if he didn't buy them all. Last year he kept talking about how it was all about 'next year' and that we would have a phenomenal team. Well here we are 'next year' and we've actually regressed significantly in the big games/CL.

I've been moaning about the issues you mention (disorganised pressing, huge gaps, poor transitions, relying on luck) for a while because it was obvious it would prove costly in the CL. I think a lot of fans want us to dominate possession and constantly be on the front foot in the big games. Personally I was never expecting that because that's not Jose's style. I would be more than happy if we just showed some intensity off the ball and if we showed that we were defensively solid. The way we just allow the opposition to move into dangerous positions, the willingness to allow crosses in (even if it's causing mayhem at the back) and the number of times we allow big gaps to develop is what I consider most disappointing. Cech/Courtois have been our MOTM far too often. The part of Jose's game which is supposed to be his strongest (organising defensive systems) has been letting him down and we've seen the same amateruish mistakes repeated all season.

The bottom line is that our attacking play in the big games has been almost non-existent this season but we've still somehow taken the lead in pretty much all of them. If we knew how to defend a lead properly (defensively solid, play on the counter as the opposition becomes more desperate) then the performances would not look anywhere near as bad come the end of the game. Being unable to attack well is poor, being unable to defend well is poor, being unable to do either is horrific.

A quality post and I agree 100%. I already picked you up that you're talking the most sense here and don't just jump on results band because the results could have been easily the other way around if we were bit unluckier. I also thought that we will be find out finally, it's a pity that was at the biggest stage. But if Real, Barca and Bayern would be in full flow while we face them it would be bad for us, so blessing in disguise I guess.

So you ask why I think there are so many non-Mourinho players but the reverse question is why we think that they're Mourinho players ? Just because he plays them doesn't necessary tell the whole story. He was playing Ramires and Lampard last season for majority of first part, then he bought Matic who replaced Lampard. Then we bought Cesc who replaced Ramires. Also Mourinho clearly showed that he hasn't got as much faith in Oscar as would suggest selling Mata & KdB. You heard that there were offers for Sneijder ? It means that Mou was searching for another option. He also wanted to sign Tiago very much, one of Portuguese journalist who I follow on Twitter said that Mou really pushed for this transfer but his co-ownership was an issue. Also you might think that Cahill is indispensable ? I'm sure that we sign proactive CB in the summer. Maybe even Ivanovic may be casualty. We didn't have opportunities to clear all the issues in this squad yet. We tried to buy crucial players to beat flat-track bullies, and they helped us so far. However there's more to be done. Chelsea have a mania about FFP, I think they were scared that they could be really punished. There was 2 ballast that we carried, one was about 50m deficit Chelsea made in 2012/13 season (which doesn't count from next season, because there'll be new monitoring period) and the other one was Torres (which is also dealt with). Now, without 2 ballast to think of I assume we can really spend big of the other necessities we need. I read things here and there and I'm really expecting big summer.

[kellzfresh 7,229]

Ramires is actually pretty good at defending set pieces, gets his head on a lot of corners.

But compared to a lot of our former CMs, he's physically weak

[Adnane 1,101]

José didn't say Big Team.

He said next year, I will be ready from day one to tell you we are challenging for the title, and we seem pretty close to getting it.

He delivered.

We aren't a Europe big 4 team yet, I thought we was in the first half of the season, but we were all mislead, next year we might be, still need to correct those result managing tactics and learn to outplay bigger teams ( because yeah, even though we got great results against them last year doesn't mean we dominated them as some of you are suggesting ).

Pretty young team, huge European stage, still a lot to learn, ans as the best manager in our history said, we'll move on quickly.

[Adnane 1,101]

And what really makes me think so is 2006.

Knocked out against Barcelona and had pretty much nothing to do about it, people writing us off even though we dominated the league, criticizing our negative football.

Reaching the semis in 2007 and 2009, finalists in 2008, winners in 2012. So yeah, i don't really worry for this team on the big stage, just gonna take some time.

What really got us atm us supporters is ourselves, we thought we had what it takes to be both serious Premier League and Champions League contenders, we fell from high, that's just how it is.

[LukakutoStamford 779]

The players have to take the lions share of responsibility.

People want perfection and football doesn't work like that. We've lost three matches all season, it happens to even the best managers. Let's not lose perspective.

Sorry, as a former coach in a much more individualized sport the manager is responsible for putting the players in the best possible position to win and Mourinho failed to do that.

Sure, the players have to execute but Mourinho is benefitting from having the far superior side in almost every match played.

He's also overworked his rotation and it has shown with lethargic performances in the second half of the season.

People aren't upset that Chelsea lost, they are upset with how Chelsea tactically pursued the game especially given the red card scenario.

To be frank Chelsea is talent deficient in certain areas of the team, but part of that deficiency is brought on by Mourinho's shell game anytime he's trying close out a win.

Very rarely does Chelsea step on the gas pedal when they have an opponent in a tough spot.

Just look at how Liverpool was able to make a good title run in 2013-2014. They'd blitz their opponent early and take them out of the game.

Chelsea takes its foot off the gas and allows the opponent to salvage a result with 10-15 minutes of desperate play.