Time for Jose Mourinho to step up and prove himself

Time for Jose Mourinho to step up and prove himself

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After a 2-1 home defeat by Crystal Palace that left Chelsea 13th in the Premier League, it is now time for José Mourinho to take full responsibility and prove he is still the Special One.

Jose Mourinho isn not known for taking responsibility and blaming himself when results go south. But after Chelsea’s poor start to the season and with things going from bad to worse after a 2-1 home defeat to Crystal Palace, he admitted he made a mistake.

Well, that was not a complete admission of guilt.

“I cannot say I had 11 players at the same time performing,” Mourinho said.

“Two or three of them, their individual performance were far from good. I blame myself for not changing one of them. I kept him in the game for 90 minutes.”

Mourinho did not name who were the guilty ones but one can assume any of Branislav Ivanovic, Cesc Fabregas or Nemanja Matic.

That said, the main theme here is that Chelsea is trailing Premier League leaders Manchester City by eight points and the whole collective performance was a mess, once again.

“We have to do better. Me and the players have to do better,” he said.

Problems are everywhere. Mourinho is well known as a master of defensive phase, but his Chelsea failed to live up to this hype. At the back, Ivanovic was poor as he was taunted by Yannick Bolasie, the latest winger to rip him apart.

Former rock John Terry was hauled off at half time in the 3-0 loss to Manchester City and sent off at West Brom. The midfield offered poor protection. The pair of Fabregas and Matic was outplayed by Palace’s midfielders, specially Jason Puncheon.

Following the Palace defeat, there has been tension between Chelsea supporters as they questioned Mourinho’s team selection. Whether this is a problem of system or men remains to be seen. Whatever the point is, Mourinho strongly pushed the club this preseason to go after Everton centre-back John Stones while Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich opened the chequebook to sign Baba Rahman from Augsburg.

The pursuit of Paul Pogba is another signal Mourinho sent to his club: he needs another holding midfielder to anchor the weak pair of Matric and Fabregas. But the issues go beyond the players. The team lost cohesion and the work done in defence during preseason was not there. This squad is suffering a regression. It is not playing as defending champions.

Up front, key players such as Eden Hazard are underperforming. Getting Pedro from Barcelona will help but this is not enough. Declaring that his players will be not in shape until September, as the Portuguese manager did, is not acceptable. Mourinho knows it and knows the problems but he has to prove he can fix them.

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