WHY SAY ANYTHING?

(Jose waves goodbye to Chelsea again, probably for the last time, but who really knows?)

For a while it was a match made in heaven. Jose and Chelsea had a passionate marriage which lasted three years and only ended in divorce when the bubble appeared to have burst and the passion went out of it.

After a short separation, Mourinho and Chelsea realised that they could no longer live without each other and decided to give it another go. The passion returned for a short while and everything was fine for a short while. The problem is that “short while” has come to define the marriages between Mourinho and Chelsea.

Now he has gone, probably for good, because of the vow “for better or worse” in the wedding ceremony. To Jose’s way of thinking this meant that the “better” bit was for him and the “worse” bit was for Chelsea and everybody else. In other words he was quite happy to take all the praise when winning, but turned into a spoiled brat when losing.

The final straw, in my humble opinion, was when he turned on his own players after the Leicester City game, which Chelsea lost 2-1.

To graphically explain to the media how HE had got it right in his preparations, but the PLAYERS had got it wrong in their execution, was almost suicidal and forcing Roman Abramovich into a decision.

This was Mourinho out of his depth, looking for any way he could to retain his respect as a top manager by laying the blame elsewhere. He couldn’t be blamed, he had got it right. In this action alone, he proved that there is still a large part missing from his managerial ability.

Great managers, such as Sir Alex Ferguson, Bill Shankly, Brian Clough and Sir Bobby Robson, to name but four of quite a long list, could all do what Mourinho can’t. They could handle a bad run of form. Not only could they handle it but they could identify the reasons for it and correct those failings.

Granted, they were given the time to do so, but the feeling is that Mourinho would have been given more time had he gone about his job with more paw-work and less jaw-work. Had he stayed away from the media and just got on with reviving Chelsea there may not have been a story to write today.

The other point about the previous four managers I have mentioned is that none of them was able to start with a top four club. They all started with relatively poor teams, (Shankly and Clough both started outside the top division).

Mourinho was a translator at Barcelona when Sir Bobby Robson was manager. He took over a reasonably successful Porto side and, in fairness, improved them so much that they won the Champions League. Since then he has had a succession of top jobs. Chelsea, Inter Milan, Real Madrid and Chelsea again. He doesn’t know what it is like to lose and, by lose, I don’t mean finish second in everything!

He has little or no experience of dealing with failure and this is what showed on that cold night in Leicester. It was the inexperienced Jose Mourinho. The one the public has never seen before. Here he was clutching at straws by explaining how the players had let him down. Sorry, but no way Jose. As manager the buck stops with you.

If the players do not play the required way, that is the manager’s fault. Whether they have ignored his instructions or just found them too difficult to follow, it is the manager’s fault. If Eden Hazard is in a position to make the decision as to staying on or coming off, that is the manager’s fault. If Chelsea lose games and finish outside of the top ten, that is the manager’s fault.

There is no point in Mourinho trying to blame others and this, in the end, is more likely to be what has cost him his job. Abramovich seems to be a proud man and he won’t have liked what he heard from his translator, because it would seem to him to be an act of petulance by Mourinho.

Roman Abramovich will put up with lots of things providing his team is winning. He will not put up with petulance, particularly not when his team is not winning.

Mourinho will now walk into another top job, probably outside of England although I hope he stays in the country, whereby he will have gained a little more experience from his stint at Chelsea. Let us hope he has learned some lessons from it.