It’s just over a year ––isn’t it––since Jose Mourinho departed Stamford Bridge by ‘mutual consent’.
Yet if consent was to be sought on whether the Inter Milan manager left behind a huge hole in the Premiership it would be easily forthcoming, certainly from the English press and Chelsea fans.
Not surprisingly, the Portuguese recently paid tribute to the English scribes saying, “The English Press is fantastic.â€
“It is impossible to compare the Italian Press to the English one. If you want to compare the Italian to the Spanish or the Portuguese, then you can, but in England it is a whole different approach,†he explained in a Press conference.
Mourinho, while not everyone’s favourite in England, was generally regarded as something special not least for his firm grip of football’s tactics and great success.
In Italy, on the other hand, Mourinho is generally loathed and the press there continues to stress there is nothing special about the Portuguese or his tactical knowledge.
His arrogance and confrontational approach to other managers has won him many enemies in a country where respect is all the rage.
Admittedly, given Mourinho’s abrasiveness, the negative press is altogether expected… so is his ascendance to the top of the Serie A by the year’s turn.
The 45 year-old has won four league titles in his last five full seasons as manager and with Inter Milan taking a six point lead into the halfway recess, it looks like he’ll make it five in six.
By contrast, his charming successor at Chelsea goes into the new year having lost the Premiership lead and subsequently blown two glorious occasions to regain it.
Failure to beat West Ham at the Bridge and a 0-0 draw at Everton in successive weeks last month, after league leaders Liverpool dropping points, represented a crucial weakness in Chelsea’s title bid ––the inability to rise to the occasion.
Mourinho’s Chelsea was a menace but when tested, Felipe Scolari’s Chelsea have been found frail.
Under Scolari, Chelsea’s four year-old home unbeaten league record bowed out with a 1-0 whimper against Liverpool. Not long after, Arsenal came calling and gave Chelsea the blues even after going behind to a Johan Djorou own-goal.
There was another crucial statistic in that London derby ––Chelsea had one shot on target –– which encapsulates another major weakness of Scolari’s team.
See, Chelsea’s attack can be easily shut out and when they’ve come up against ready-to-park-the-bus sides, they have struggled. In addition to West Ham, Tottenham and Newcastle have traveled to Stamford Bridge and come away with a point ––the latter via a 0-0 score-line. All three sides employed the same uneventful strategy of defending deep in numbers… and it worked.
Scolari’s team generally lack width and channel most of their attacks through the middle with the full backs required to bomb forward at every opportunity. That means when Chelsea face cynical, unadventurous sides they struggle to prize them open.
Nicholas Anelka, Chelsea’s leading marksman this season with 14 goals in the league is a bit one dimensional and proves largely ineffective against packed defences.
Comparatively, his striking partner Didier Drogba does not need a lot of space to be effective and through out his time at Chelsea has always embodied the Plan B needed to open up stubborn defences. However, the Ivorian has had a start-stop campaign so far which has helped Anelka go ahead in Scolari’s pecking order.
Nonetheless, Scolari is aware of his team’s dire need of attacking options.
“I have now two weeks to work with the players and in that time I have time to train the second system or the third system,†explained Scolari in the run up to the Everton game.
“Before it is impossible. Before I had six, seven, eight players injured. Before I played Wednesday and Saturday and [the players had] international games. Now, this week, I train two times with different styles and tell my players: ‘If the game is like this, I try putting this player here and train them for it.’ Now I have time and no injuries and a good chance for me to start to play and change the systems.â€
The draw at Goodison Park can be cynically taken to mean the players still need time to grasp the “change of systems†but few of them will take exception to Scolari’s latest invention.
Most of them played under Mourinho who, as a matter of principle, always planned for their response if they went 1-0 up or 1-0 down.
The comparisons between Mourinho and every incumbent Chelsea manager will be drawn for a long time and even though Scolari is more accomplished than the Portuguese, only fresh success at the Bridge will convince the Blues following that the manager who ended their 50 year-old wait for the league is not the only special one.
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