Jack Pitt-Brooke was at Chelsea to see Jose Mourinho saved by a 13-minute rally, but deeper issues must be addressed with some members of the squad.
When Aleksandar Dragovic scored for Dynamo Kyiv there were just
13 minutes left on the Stamford Bridge clock. And yet those 13 minutes
gave Jose Mourinho enough to believe in that he could argue afterwards –
quite plausibly – that something had changed.
The most remarkable thing about Chelsea recently – and there is a
long list – has been their mental fragility. All it takes is one
setback, one moment to go against the team, and they have collapsed. So
when they were sucker-punched from a set-piece it felt like one step
closer to Mourinho’s departure, with not many steps left.
But Eden Hazard came on, and turned the momentum of the game.
He won a free-kick from Serhiy Rybalka which Willian whipped over the
wall and into the top corner. Chelsea could have scored again. And
Mourinho was left, for the first time in a while, celebrating the fact
that his team rallied, rather than wilted, in adversity.
“From a mental point of view, it was important to provide a
reaction to a negative moment,” Mourinho said afterwards. “In other
matches we have played well, but when a negative moment arrived, the
team felt it too much, and it was difficult to emerge again in the game.
Today was perfect because we conceded a goal with 15 minutes to go and
the team emerged.”
This was one of the truest pieces of Mourinho post-match
analysis all season. What no-one knows this morning, and what will not
become clear until Saturday evening at the earliest, is what these 13
minutes represent. Is it a turnaround, a reassertion of the qualities
that took Chelsea to the title? Is it the players jamming their boots on
the bottom rung of the ladder before they slip into football oblivion?
Or is it just a blip, a small passage of play that has become the last
hope of a desperate man?
Ultimately, it is the Chelsea squad who have dragged Mourinho to
the brink, and only the squad who can drag him away from it. If this
crisis is the result of the breakdown in relations between players and
coach, only the repairing of those bonds can fix it. Mourinho has spent
the season railing against external enemies, but his own house is not in
order.
When John Terry
did the pre-match press conference on Tuesday afternoon, he said that
the Chelsea squad were “100 per cent behind the manager”. Terry, like
Mourinho himself, denied the report from the weekend that one player
would “rather win than lose”. But it was the believability of the report
that gave it its weight, and the sight of Terry telling his team-mates
in public that the single most important thing was that they “stick
together” suggested that something is awry.
Even after his spell on the bench in September, Terry remains
the great Mourinho loyalist in the squad. He spent Tuesday’s press
conference saying that the players must take responsibility on their
shoulders, away from Mourinho, punishing themselves to absolve their
boss from blame. “He is, by a long, long way, the best manager I’ve
worked with,” Terry said. “He will be in charge long after I’ve finished
playing for this club,” he added, implausibly.
But then Terry is the epitome of a Mourinho player, and not just
because they won so many trophies together first time around. Terry is
mature, robust, thick-skinned and team-oriented, precisely the type of
player on whom Mourinho built all his success at Porto, Chelsea and Inter in the last decade. Terry – and Gary Cahill – in political terms are Mourinho’s core vote.
Eden Hazard has to be won over by Jose Mourinho - PA Photos
The bigger issue, and the crux of the matter, is the extent to
which Mourinho can command the attention and respect of the younger
generation of players. Cesc Fabregas, Nemanja Matic, Oscar and Eden
Hazard are all far less experienced than Terry and these are the players
Mourinho needs to keep onside. All four have fallen out of form this
year, and while that can happen to any player at any time, when it
happens to a whole group at once, the answer must be elsewhere.
Modern players are different. They need reassurance, support and
encouragement. They want to express themselves through expansive
attacking football. They do not always respond well to what Mourinho
calls “confrontational leadership”, his approach designed to “create
some conflict, with the intention to bring out the best from them”. They
are good players, and want to be told that they are.
If Mourinho wants to stay, if he wants more than a 13-minute
rally to hold onto, if he wants to build this second Chelsea tenure into
a dynasty, these are the players he must inspire again. Even if it
means a change of approach.
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