Actually he dreams of a team with one Petr Cech, nine Jamie Carraghers and one Didier Drogba. His football is dull. Archaic. Yes it can be effective but surely even Chelsea fans can’t enjoy watching that all season.
What gets me is the hypocrisy of their manager. After West Ham held Chelsea to a 0-0 draw at Stamford Bridge, Mourinho was his usual outspoken self. We’ve all heard his diatribe aimed at The Hammers: “It’s very difficult to play a football match where only one team wants to play, very difficult… A match is about two teams playing. This match was only one team playing and another team not. I told Big Sam that, because they need points, to come here and do it the way they did… Is it acceptable? Maybe yes… I cannot be too critical because, if I was in this position, I don’t know if I would do the same. But at the same time this is not Premier League. This is not the best league in the world. This is football from the 19th century.”
Well the football Chelsea played yesterday was from the 18th century. They didn’t so much park a bus as a whole fleet of them. Were Mourinho to manage England, I would give the national team a decent chance of winning the World Cup. The problem is, no one would see it because we would all have fallen asleep by the quarter finals.
Players time wasting from the second minute, ten men behind the ball and an abundance of long balls is certainly not easy on the eye and the fact that a team playing this way is going to finish in the top three in the Premier League is like a size 18 woman being a contender for Miss World. Maybe this style gets results but I’m glad I don’t have to watch it every week.
There have been murmurs that Brendan Rodgers was perhaps naïve to not play for a draw but it is attacking, expansive football that has got us in contention for the title so why change now? Besides, with Crystal Palace a potentially tough game, it was right to go for a win yesterday, as we would have had breathing space in our next two matches. They are now both must-win. This campaign isn’t over yet and how fitting would it be if Everton were to take points off Manchester City next Saturday to put the title back in our hands. In the words of our captain… WE GO AGAIN.