Depending on where you went for your sports news this morning Chelsea were either preparing to sack Jose Mourinho now, after the weekend, or if he succumbed to another defeat.
At all speculation has now come to an end with the public statement that he has left the club by mutual consent. In reality it seems more like he was pushed.
We have felt for a long time that, in terms of his personality and behaviour, he needed reeling in.
He’s much like Alex Ferguson in his sporadic ire toward the media and frustration with referees.
But there was usually a little more restraint, respect and fairness shown by Ferguson. Yes, he lost the plot from time to time and screamed conspiracy.
But Mourinho takes it to another level. He screams conspiracy almost every week and it’s not nice to see. He certainly didn’t gain any friends outside Chelsea with his antics.
And now, it appears, his own club has turned on him.
In fairness, Jose can appear a little spoilt and immature for one so celebrated.
TACTICS
But in terms of his quality as a football manager, Chelsea will seriously struggle to get anyone in that is as good as Mourinho.
Everton manager Roberto Martinez called him ‘the best in the business’ on Thursday and Pep Guardiola is arguably the only coach that could possibly be described as superior right now. But there is no guarantee that Chelsea could get him, with Manchester City and Manchester United potentially also on the prowl for a new leader at the same time.
We think that Chelsea should have held on to their manager because he could have returned them to the top. But he needed to take a long look in the mirror. He needed to get his squad together for some team building because, for whatever reason, they didn’t seem to be giving their all for him at this point.
And he should have apologised publicly to Eva Carneiro for the completely unjustified vilification during one of his early season tantrums.
If he had done that, we think that he could have put all of this behind him and managed Chelsea to a strong finish in the league and a great European campaign.
Alas, he didn’t do it and now he is unemployed. But we think that, just like the first time round, Chelsea are making a mistake.
Chelsea fans: a bad decision?
