Mourinho fired: So many questions, so few answers

Mourinho fired: So many questions, so few answers

Chelsea have sacked Jose Mourinho with the club sitting 16th in the Premier League standings.

Never had Jose Mourinho looked so desperate, so alone and so lost for answers after Monday night’s 2-1 defeat at Leicester City. For a man that has been the definition of self-confidence and self-assurance for so long, and not without a few hints of arrogance along the way, the last few months have represented a humbling on an almost immeasurable scale.

Arguably one of the worst things about that latest defeat from a Chelsea perspective was that it wasn’t even considered a surprise. Less than twelve months ago, Chelsea were strolling towards the Premier League title, while Leicester City were rooted to the bottom and looking doomed for the drop.

How times change? Come December 2015 and Leicester are top of the tree, blowing opposition teams out of the water and going about their business with a seemingly unquenchable confidence, outplaying a Chelsea side displaying all the confidence of a rabbit caught in the headlights.

Suffice to say Chelsea’s squad was not assembled cheaply. According to the transfer-market website, 14 of the squad are worth over £10 million, with Eden Hazard topping the pile at £49 million. This is a side that should be comfortably mixing it with England and Europe’s elite teams, if not beating them, just as they have done for so many years, including last season when the Premier League title was wrapped up with several games to spare.

That season, Chelsea lost three games in the league. This time around, with the halfway mark still not yet reached, they have lost nine games. The team sit 16th in the table, one point above the relegation zone, 20 points behind leaders Leicester, and 14 points away from the cherished Champions League places. This has been a drop in form on an unprecedented scale, and after 16 games, Chelsea’s hierarchy have finally made the decision that enough is enough.

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Chelsea’s latest defeat at Leicester left them with 15 points from 16 games

 

Owner Roman Abramovich is known for being a ruthless operator who does not tolerate failure, but he will not have come to this decision lightly. Mourinho, over the course of his two spells at the club, has been Chelsea’s most successful manager in history, having led them to three Premier League titles, three League Cup’s and one FA Cup. He has also enjoyed numerous successes overseas with Porto, Inter Milan and Real Madrid.

In football however, there is only so much room for sentimentality, and the upper echelons of the club have clearly decided that if the self-styled ‘Special One’ was still the right man for the job, there would surely have been some signs of recovery by now. As it is, Chelsea started the season badly, and then got worse with every passing month. The upturn in form everyone was expecting would eventually happen simply didn’t come, and even Mourinho cannot justify such form for so long. In a result’s based industry like football, this kind of run was only going to end in one manner.

For the second time in his career then, Mourinho has been shown the exit-door at Stamford Bridge, but the questions that have dogged this season at the club will not go away, chief amongst them; how has a team gone from being comfortably England’s best into a team flirting with relegation in the space of little more than six months?

Mourinho’s behaviour towards match officials and the media has been over analysed. Mourinho has always been a combustible figure on the touchline through the good times and the bad, and has always come up with some colourful if slightly questionable remarks in post-match interviews and conferences.

What was different however was the way he threw his medical team under the bus on the opening day of the season against Swansea, which saw club doctor Eva Carneiro’s role downgraded, resulting in legal action by Carneiro against the club. Mourinho was unrepentant in his decision to publicly humiliate Carneiro and other members of the backroom staff, but there was no way for him to come out of the episode in a good light, and whilst none of his players spoke publicly on the incident, the story could not have been good for dressing-room harmony.

Mourinho's spat with Carneiro proved to be a sign of things to come
Mourinho’s spat with Carneiro proved to be a sign of things to come

Speaking of the dressing-room, it was lost on nobody that relations between Mourinho and his players were growing increasingly fractious. This was understandable given the losing run, but it was clearly not conducive to getting the club back on form.

Whether it was his public criticism of Eden Hazard, Diego Costa’s reaction to being placed on the bench, Cesc Fabregas’ view that too many players were not justifying their wage packets, or Mourinho’s belief that Chelsea’s performance at Leicester was a ‘betrayal’, the off-pitch stories kept on coming, while the on-pitch form continued to nosedive.

Chelsea’s players are known for wielding a considerable amount of power at the club, and there is a precedent for the squad to function well below their best when they have been led by a manager they do not believe in. It happened with Phil Scolari in the 2008-09 season, and again with Andre Villas-Boas three seasons later, and on both occasions, the managers were given the boot.

Some of those powerful figures may have since gone (Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Ashely Cole, Petr Cech etc), and Mourinho may have thought his recent successes would immunise him from a dressing-room revolt, but the evidence of this season would suggest that player power is alive and well within Chelsea. The dressing room had been lost, and when that happens, it is the manager who gets put in the firing line.

Chelsea’s dreadful season is not solely down to Mourinho. To think that would be to relieve the players of all responsibility for the team’s woes, and there can be no doubt that the players are equally responsible for Chelsea’s predicament.

Eden Hazard: £200,000 a week, no goals for the season
Eden Hazard: £200,000 a week, no goals for the season

Whatever they thought of their manager, they are professional players on big wages who have a duty to perform to the best of their ability for their employers, and that didn’t happen. Exactly when the dressing-room was lost is anyone’s guess, but there are some players who should be hanging their heads in shame over what has happened to the club in these last few months.

And so once again Chelsea are searching for a new manager, and it will almost certainly have to be an interim-manager, given that the likely targets such as Pep Guardiola and Diego Simeone are not going to be available until next summer at the earliest. Clearly Chelsea have considered the current situation to be so serious that it would be better to have no manager than to have Mourinho in charge for Saturday’s game against Sunderland.

It is now up to Chelsea’s players to justify their wages between now and May, or they will not come out of this soap-opera any better than the Mourinho.

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