Chelsea’s Jose Mourinho is facing the battle of his career after enduring Chelsea’s worst start of to a season in 37 years. Mourinho’s misery was compounded by Chelsea’s loss to an impressive Southampton who came back from behind to inflict Mourinho’s worst home loss in his career. The Portuguese was defiant about his position at the club and challenged Chelsea’s owner Roman Abramovic to sack him after the defeat.
Jose Mourinho’s showed no indication that he was ready to leave Chelsea and was mystified of suggestions that he would leave in the near future. In a day that has seen two managers leave their club, including his protege Brendan Rodgers, Jose Mourinho tenure at Chelsea is becoming increasingly untenable.
According to The Guardian , Mourinho stated , “No way I resign. No way. If the club want to sack me, they have to sack me because I am not running away from my responsibility.”
“I have my professional pride and I know that I am very good at my job, and also because I like this club very much. I want the best for my club, and that is for me to stay. So I stay. When we were champions last season I said I was going to stay until the owner and the board wanted me to leave. No club can persuade me to leave. No financial offer can persuade me to leave. I’m going to stay until the day the owner or the board tell me: ‘José, that’s enough.’ I said that when I was champion. I say that now when I’m 16th in the table.”
Jose Mourinho’s first stint at Chelsea ended with him and the club mutual terminating his contract at Stamford Bridge and that was after a two-year period as Premier League champions. His start to this Premier League is significantly worse.
After guiding Chelsea to the Premier League title, Jose Mourinho must now reinvigorate his squad after the worst defense to a Premier League title. In fact, no team has ever managed to finish above fifth after such a poor start to the season. Chelsea’s defeat to Southampton was the first time Jose Mourinho has seen an away team scored more than twice at Stamford Bridge.
Jose Mourinho has won title after title due to his tactical acumen. However, his current Chelsea team looks bereft of any strategy. Having led against Southampton, many a Chelsea team would have killed the game off, another characteristic of a Jose Mourinho’s team. However, Chelsea’s defense looks a shadow of the one that won the league last season.
Chelsea have kept only two clean sheet in 12 matches this season and have conceded at least two goals in seven of their last eight Premier League games this season.
Despite that all the troubles on the field, it seems that Jose Mourinho’s biggest problems rest off it. With the recent departure of Eva Carniero to dropping captain John Terry, Mourinho has found it tough maintaining a harmonious spirit in the dressing room. This has led to many accusing the Portuguese on his interpersonal skills due to his tendency of blaming others. To his benefit, Jose stated that he would leave should his players no longer trust him.
Captain John Terry has stood behind his manager despite rumors of a fallout between the two. Terry has also been dropped in recent weeks but, has been reinstated into the Chelsea backline.
“That is what you do in tough circumstances. I have been here a long time and I have seen managers come and go and if anyone is going to get us out of this hole it is going to be Jose Mourinho.”
Will Jose Mourinho turn Chelsea’s dismal start to the season around?
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