Another day, another loss. Things are becoming very predictable for Chelsea this season. Rather than wondering when next they will lose as it was last season, now it's trying to figure out where that win will come from. You look at any fixture and you can put in a great argument of them losing the game.
Dark.
I have never, in all my years of watching football witnessed anything like this. It's unprecedented. For a team to have won the league so comfortably last season to now legitimately fighting off relegation; it's truly amazing. Never before have the winners of a league looked so abject a few months on. It is truly mystifying. Hence why this goes beyond just a football problem, but something deeper and psychological.
Some have said that this all happened because of Eva's sacking. Nope, not an Anime character, she was one of Chelsea's doctors. Mourinho was not happy with her work and simply demoted her. Nothing to see here, just routine ways of the workplace. But there were rumors that she was liked among the Chelsea players and even talk of an affair with Big Booty, aka Ivanovic.
I personally pray that's all BS. If it turns out that the Chelsea players refused to give an effort and decided to brick it up because a doctor was "wrongfully" demoted, then they don't deserve to be called professional footballers. Furthermore, they should never be allowed to play for another club again and should shovel snow in an Eastern European village.
There are two elements to this. Firstly, there may have been some sort of a rift that happened in the summer which made the players turn on Mourinho.
Probably there was an argument, something he said that rubbed some the wrong way. I say some, because Willian does not seem to be affected by the Brickitis that has plagued the others. Whatever that argument was, we may not know until the end of the season or when Mourinho leaves or gets sakced and talks about it openly.
The second element has been this three year cycle that people have alluded to. I viewed it as being bogus, because a manager suddenly turning crap after three years at a club sounds more like a fantasy story than reality. But thinking about this more, there may be some truth in Mourinho not having the same positive effect after three years.
Mourinho's managing style has never been long term. He's not Van Gaal or Ferguson who pride themselves on finding young players and developing them to become superstars in five, six years after the older legends have retired. Mourinho has always prided himself on getting it done sooner rather than later. That was his mission; to be successful at different clubs in different countries. His plan was never to remain at one club for the long haul, and so his philosophy had never been about that.
I can't think of any other manager, apart from maybe Villas-Boas, who had taken short contracts at different clubs and kept on hopping and moving. Maybe some no-name, but most major managers have stayed at one institution for longer than three years. So with that in mind, once Mourinho now decided he wanted to follow Ferguson's footprint and make Chelsea his permanent home, this was new ground for him. It was the first time he was calling one club his "home."
Once you do that, you have to think about the long term. You can't just rely on the same superstars every year. Two things have to be done; replenishing the squad with new and fresh players each summer as well as using the youth system to develop youngsters to come through. The problem is Mourinho relied too much on the former and paid little attention to the latter.
His biggest mistake though, was placing his trust in some players who really shouldn't be starting for Chelsea and others who've shown they don't have the balls and character to dig deep and perform when their team need them the most. This was Mourinho's trademark that served him well. Keeping faith in a trust and closely knit bunch. But that trust has come back to bite him on the rear-end like a starving piranha.
It's not working, and it's been like this for months now. We're in December and Chelsea are yet to have one truly quality performance this season.
On top of that, their best player and the one who was voted the footballer of last season, has not yet scored this season. These are the kinds of problems that you can attempt to fix by bringing in someone who is fresh with new ideas.
Look at Monchengladbach. The same manager, a legend of the club, who oversaw them lose game after game and end up bottom of the Bundesliga at the start of the season, was the same man responsible for them finishing third in the league for the previous campaign. They made the tough decision to sack him, and their results have changed and they're the only team to have convincingly beaten Bayern Munich this season. That's what a new face and personality can do with the very same players.
I don't want to see it happen. I'd rather the chumps who call themselves professionals are demoted and Mourinho can somehow be given quality players who actually want to fight for a win. But that's just not feasible. So there's only one thing that can be done....
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