Month: November 2015

Jose Mourinho has played down talk of a disagreement between himself and Diego Costa after the Brazilian born Spanish forward appeared to throw a bib at his manager during yesterday’s London derby.

Costa was Chelsea’s highest scorer last season, firing the Blues towards their fourth Premier League title. He has struggled to find that form again this term, however, and he appeared to be engaged in a heated argument with Mourinho as the first half of Chelsea’s Champion’s League match against Maccabi Tel Aviv reached its conclusion during the week.

Mourinho suggested the pair had been all ‘kisses and cuddles’ during the half-time interval and that there wouldn’t be any problems moving forward, but Costa found himself relegated to the bench for the London derby against Tottenham Hotspur this weekend.

Costa has only managed to find the net once in his last eight appearances for the Blues, with that goal coming last weekend against Norwich City. Mourinho defended his decision to drop the striker, saying, “I think Diego is very privileged. He is the last player to be on the bench. Everyone has been on the bench – the captain [John] Terry, [Branislav] Ivanovic, [Gary] Cahill, [Cesc] Fabregas, Pedro and player of the season [Eden] Hazard. Diego is privileged to have been kept in the team for all these matches and today we thought our best strategy was to play with this. I am happy with my decision and the players. Eden could play the 90 minutes and was so good and dangerous for us, I felt he could have scored a goal”.

Costa was an unused sub in the derby and allowed his frustration to get the better of him when he realised, after 92 minutes, that he wasn’t going to get any game time. He ran back along the touchline after warming up, removed his bib and appeared to throw it at Jose Mourinho. Thankfully for Costa it missed its intended target, but even if it had struck the self-proclaimed Special One he wouldn’t have been too annoyed. He said, “If he wants to hurt me it would not be with a bib”.

Mourinho claimed he was happy to see that his first choice striker still had some fighting spirit left in him. Before the match he claimed he was worried about the damage constantly playing Costa without him scoring could do to him, saying, “He’s playing every match and things are not going really well for his confidence”. Yet after the game the Chelsea boss was keen to play up Costa’s desire and said, “Diego is physically fine, no problems. He works well, every day his mood is positive, he is the positive guy in the team. I do not expect to have a player on the bench jumping and shouting because he is not playing”.

Mourinho will hope to see his side turn a corner after a win against Norwich in the Premier League, a win against Maccabi Tel Aviv in the Champion’s League and this draw against Spurs. It means that Tottenham are now unbeaten in thirteen games in the top flight whilst the Blue side of London are still languishing at the wrong end of the league table.

Chelsea’s former striker Didier Drogba has admitted that he hopes to return to Chelsea as the club’s manager one day in the future.

Drogba is currently plying his trade in Canada but remains one of Chelsea fans’ most beloved forwards, scoring 164 goals in all competitions across two spell at the London club. He is best loved for scoring the penalty that won Chelsea the Champion’s League in 2012, but he also won four Premier League titles, four FA Cups and three League Cups with the defending Premier League champions.

Drogba told BBC Africa, “I want to give back to the club which has given so much to me. I have agreed that with the club directors. Why not manager? Why not sporting director, trainer at the academy or maybe an advising role for strikers?”

The idea that his former first choice striker is keen on the manager’s role might not sit well with Stamford Bridge’s current boss, Jose Mourinho. The Blues have endured a torrid start to the season, losing seven of their first twelve fixtures in the Premier League, with the self-proclaimed Special One coming under increasing pressure regarding the team’s performance. The club sit 15th in the league after their worst start to a top flight campaign since 1978-1979, with a tricky away game in the London derby against Tottenham Hotspur coming up this weekend.

Drogba is certain that the club have made the right decision in sticking by their boss, saying, “If the club has kept him that means owner Roman Abramovich thinks that he is the right man. I think the players trust him and he is giving his best to change the situation”.

Drogba admits that his old team-mates are going through a ‘difficult moment’ right now, but is convinced they have what it takes to make it back to the right end of the Premier League table. Back-to-back wins over Norwich City and Maccabi Tel Aviv are certainly helping with that notion, and the Ivory Coast striker said, “They have quality when it comes to the players, and quality when it comes to the management. This is a club which usually doesn’t have a bad season twice”.

Though Drogba is unlikely to be given the manager’s job any time soon, Mourinho will be hoping that results take an upturn quickly as he fights to get his team back to the top of the Premier League. They are currently closer to the relegation zone than they are to the league leader’s Leicester City, whilst they are also ten points shy of this weekend’s opponents, Spurs.

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho moved to play down speculation about his relationship with his star striker Diego Costa after the two appeared to have a run-in with each other just before the half-time interval of the club’s Champion’s League match last night.

Mourinho gave the Brazilian-born Spanish striker some harsh words as the game against Maccabi Tel Aviv headed towards half-time, but Costa refused to take it lying down and raged back at the self-proclaimed ‘Special One’.

Many people watching the game were surprised when Costa emerged to play the second half of the match, assuming that Mourinho would substitute him for such a flagrant display of dis-respect. He did play the second half, however, though he didn’t shake his manager’s hand or salute the Chelsea fans after the final whistle.

Mourinho said after the match, “Yes we had an argument. I want him to do a certain movement that he didn’t do. I was disappointed that he didn’t and I reacted. He did too. But at half-time in the dressing room, a few kisses and a few cuddles. No problem”,

Mourinho was delighted with his team’s win, even if Porto’s surprise home loss to Dynamo Kiev means that qualification for the next round will go down to the final group game, when the defending Premier League champions will host the Portuguese manager’s old club. He said, “This was an important win. But with this group, I need a calculator because I don’t know what will happen. I know if we win we finish first. I know if we lose we go into the Europa League. With a draw, I don’t know. “I prefer to think we have to win our final match and that’s it”.

The victory was a much needed one for a manager who has found himself under immense pressure after the London club endured their worst start to a league campaign since 1978-1979. The win followed a 1-0 victory over Norwich in the Premier League last weekend and sets Chelsea up perfectly for their London derby match against Tottenham Hotspur this Saturday.

Chelsea Football Club have released their annual financial results and it appears that it cost them £23.1 million to win the Premier League last season.

The London-based club is owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and is considered to be one of the richest in the world, with their improvement in performance on the pitch coinciding with Abramovich’s arrival in England. They have reportedly spent over a billion pounds of his money during that time.

The £23.1 million loss meant they were able to remain within the limits of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations, with the club chairman saying that is something that they consider to be very important, “It was a primary aim in the past financial year to be one of the clubs with a continuous record of meeting the regulations”.

The club’s revenues for the last year were £314.3 million, which is less than the record of £319.8 million that they achieved in the 2013-2014 season. Buck expects revenues to improve in the coming year or so, however, with a lucrative shirt sponsorship deal worth £40 million a season due to kick in soon. He said, “These will be powered by new commercial deals, including our record-breaking partnership with Yokohama. They will also be enhanced by revenues related to this season’s Champions League which improve due to entering as Premier League champions and an increase in TV revenue for English clubs”.

With Chelsea struggling on the pitch and their manager Jose Mourinho coming under increasing pressure, Buck is hoping that the club can qualify for the knockout stages of the Champion’s League in order to relieve the financial burden on the club’s owner.

In the aftermath of their win over Norwich City this weekend, Jose Mourinho confessed that it’s Mission: Impossible as far as Chelsea’s defence of their Premier League title is concerned.

The Portuguese manager, who was back in the dugout for the Blues after serving out a one match stadium ban during Chelsea’s outing against Stoke City before the international break, still feels as though his side can reach the top four, but thinks that an unlikely title win is a job for Tom Cruise, not him.

Chelsea won their first league game since the 17th of October in a nervy win over the newly promoted Canaries thanks to a 64th minute Diego Costa goal. The victory moved them to 15th place in the league, five points clear of the relegation zone and allowed the Chelsea fans to sing a somewhat tongue-in-cheek rendition of ‘We are staying up’ towards the end of the game.

The Blues sit twelve points away from fourth placed Arsenal and the title favourites Manchester City, thirteen points off Louis Van Gaal’s Manchester United and fourteen points shy of the unlikely league leaders Leicester City.

Their woeful league form led Mourinho to tell the press in his post-match press conference, “Fourth position for me is not an impossible mission. If you ask me about winning the the title, I would say impossible mission. Maybe Tom Cruise can do it but it’s complicated”.

History is not on Chelsea’s side. In the last five Premier League campaigns the fourth placed team have managed an average of 72 points. That means that the defending Premier League champions would need to register another 58 points before the end of the season, or 19 wins and 1 draw from their remaining 25 games.

The self-proclaimed ‘Special One’ has no intention of bowing to history, however, suggesting that there could yet be some movement at the top of the league table. He said, ‘You have to recover points from four candidates. But one of the teams that go up may also have a little bit of a collapse. The fourth position is a difficult position but a possible target”.

Diego Costa’s goal was his first in his last seven appearances and Mourinho confessed that the Spanish forward has been affected by his lack of form. He had managed eleven goals at the same stage as this in the last campaign, but he’s only notched up four so far this time out. Mourinho said, “You don’t score goals, you get heavier. Every game that you don’t score goals, you get 5kg more. You get heavy and the pressure is there. In the first half he missed two chances. The second one, in the last minute, is really a big one. So it was important for him. He’s working well, he’s a happy guy, he tries everything. He’s positive, so if I had to choose somebody to score the winning goal, I would go exactly with him”.

Mourinho will be hoping that the goal takes some of the weight of Costa’s shoulders. He’s also be hoping that Chelsea can use the victory as a springboard to go on a run as long and successful as Tom Cruise’s career has been, proving that it’s not just the diminutive Hollywood actor who can pull off impossible missions.

Jose Mourinho used his pre-match press conference for this weekend’s game against Norwich City at Stamford Bridge to tell the world that Chelsea’s owner, Roman Abramovich, still trusts Mourinho to guide his team out of their current mess.

The defending Premier League champions find themselves just three points clear of the relegation places after back to back defeats against Liverpool and Stoke just before the international break. It means that they have lost seven of the first twelve games in the league, their worst start to a top flight campaign since 1978-1979 when a win was only worth two points.

Yet Jose Mourinho is confident that the club’s owner won’t be looking to change manager any time soon. He said, “Nobody gives a four-year contract to a manager if they don’t trust the person. Nobody gives new contracts to players, as we have in the last couple of months, if we don’t trust the players. There is trust and there are reasons for that trust. The power is with the board and they have shown to me and the players that they trust us. It’s time for us to give a positive answer. I think we are doing this but not in the results”.

The self-proclaimed ‘Special One’ has come under fire a number of times this season, owing to things that he’s said either on the pitch or off it. His comments about Chelsea’s former club doctor, Eva Carneiro, led her to resign from her position at the club and could yet lead to individual legal action against the Portuguese manager. He has also been handed a £40,000 fine and a one match suspended stadium ban for his comments about referees after his side’s home loss to Southampton, as well as given a one match stadium ban and a £50,000 fine for refusing to leave the referee’s changing room during the half-time interval in the match against West Ham at The Boleyn Ground.

He has been given the backing of the Chelsea board, though, with the club’s technical director, Michael Emenalo, adding to the official statement the board gave earlier in the season with an interview in the Daily Telegraph. He told the newspaper, “Right now, the statement from the owner and from the board comes from a belief that we are in a position to trust a group of players who have delivered in the last couple of seasons. We are in a position to see that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and therein lies our confidence that we can get out of the situation”.

Mourinho also told reporters that he doesn’t expect to make sweeping changes to his squad in January. He is boosted by the fact that Radamel Falcao is due to return from a muscle problem within a couple of weeks, whilst Thibaut Courtois – who has been missing for most of the season with a knee injury – is due back within a month or so.

The Chelsea boss said, “I am happy with my players. I trust the players. I don’t need to clean the dressing room – I heard that was written somewhere – and I don’t need to ask the club to spend money in January. We put ourselves in a great situation by being champions, we have to be again together to put it in the right place”.