As far as celebrations to mark 100 not out go, Chelsea’s defeat at home to Crystal Palace went according to plan about as much as organizing a surprise party for a great-grandmother reaching a century, only for her to die of shock upon being greeted with party poppers at the venue.

Given Alan Pardew had overseen nine victories from Palace’s 11 away games prior to their trip across the capital, shock value should have been in short supply for Mourinho’s 100th league game at Stamford Bridge. In the previous 99, he had tasted defeat just once, to Sunderland in April 2014. Throughout a managerial career that has spanned significant stints at Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid, he has lost just five of 192 home league matches combined.

Such records give licence to a view that this is merely a temporary blot on the most decorated of landscapes, a sorry footnote that has seen Chelsea make the worst start to a title defence since Blackburn in 1995—Kenny Dalglish’s side went on to finish seventh after picking up three points from their opening four matches—but a footnote nonetheless for a better chapter still to be written.

The immaculate start Manchester City have made has amplified how significantly Chelsea have fallen short, but that Mourinho felt compelled to reassure the watching world that slipping eight points behind the leaders before August is out does not signal the end of a title tilt suggests it has crossed his mind.

“In the Premier League I don’t say game over because last season we had seven points to the second and in one month we lost the seven points. On January 1 we were on the same points as the second,” said Mourinho, relayed by James Benge of the Evening Standard. 

“This is the Premier League and I think it’s getting more difficult than before. The reality is that we had a bad start. Four points in four matches is a very bad start.”

It’s the measure of the man that one worries when he is magnanimous, yet there was something slightly unnerving about the manner in which a second defeat of the season was met with such reasoned good grace. Albeit with the odd caveat in tow.

Let us pause for a moment and consider that this is a grown man who once, according to the Daily Mail (h/t Reuters), hid in a laundry basket so he could escape a UEFA ban and deliver a team talk to his side for a Champions League clash with Bayern Munich. Regardless of whether the story is apocryphal, the point is it’s not hard to image him ordering one of his subordinates to place towels over his head to avoid detection. Just mentally picture the scene. This is how far he’ll go to gain an advantage. 

Part of what makes Mourinho a serial winner is that, like Sir Alex Ferguson, he’s a horrible, embittered loser.

He’d rather blame the doctor (versus Swansea, 2015), floodlights (QPR, 2014), buses (West Ham United, 2014), eggs (in a row with Roman Abramovich about how to make omelettes/transfer policy), fans (after “only 300” Madrid fans made the short trip to Rayo Vallecano), referees (take your pick) and the media (Jamie Carragher and Graeme Souness after the Paris Saint-Germain game last season) than accept the root of his side’s respective problems may lie closer to home.

Stupefaction was replaced with acceptance on Saturday. Other than a half-hearted groan about a penalty that wasn’t awarded for a shirt pull on Kurt Zouma, Mourinho was effusive in his praise of both Pardew and Palace.

“Thoughts? The first thought is for Palace. They come with everything. Team ready, players ready, fans ready, fantastic spirit. I prefer to go in this order because the most important thing [in the result] was Palace,” he said, reported by Simon Rice of the Independent. 

Mourinho is right. First thoughts should belong to Palace. This was not a smash-and-grab job. Palace went toe-to-toe and traded blows to leave the champions bloodied. No balaclavas were required; this was three points earned rather than stolen.

Trademark counter-attacks, long-since intoxicating studies in power and pace, proved enthralling once again. The rangy Wilfried Zaha, Bakary Sako and Yannick Bolasie, who came on as a second-half substitute after returning from compassionate leave, all left their respective marks to give Chelsea’s back four the appearance of sailors on shore leave, replete with the familiar punch drunk look that has characterized their season to date. 

Bolasie’s showboating when Branislav Ivanovic closed him down with all the enthusiasm of a vegan in a butchers will have made Mourinho’s blood boil. 

The additional poise provided by Yohan Cabaye since his club-record move from Paris Saint Germain has oft been commented upon, but the form of Jason Puncheon alongside him in Palace’s midfield has been at least the equal of the Frenchman.

On Saturday, he frequently outshone Cesc Fabregas. Quick of mind as he is of feet, Puncheon’s wit in possession was in marked contrast to the Chelsea man’s more prosaic and pedestrian promptings. Fabregas, whose lack of defensive wherewithal in a holding role appears to be having an adverse effect on an overcompensating Nemanja Matic, who was hauled off after 73 minutes to be replaced by teenager Ruben Loftus-Cheek.

Fabregas was a leading suspect when Mourinho spoke of a frustration at only being able to make three substitutions. The hapless Ivanovic was another. As was the ineffective Eden Hazard. 

When so many top class players are performing so substandardly, the question has to be asked if there are bigger issues afoot? With a back four that has conceded almost half as many home league goals in two matches as they did in the whole of last season at Stamford Bridge (nine), a midfield that lacks both bite and cohesion, wide men that look leggy and a striker that seems to have stolen all of the fight left in his team-mates to become a one-man wrecking ball, eight points currently looks a sizeable gap to make up. 

“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 and when I made the third change I realised I needed a fourth,” lamented Mourinho, per Sam Mokbel of the Mail on Sunday.  

Rare is it that Mourinho chooses to criticize his own players. Again, though, he was willing to break self-imposed protocol as his charges left for home with the proverbial flea in their collective ear.

He added:

If a player is not performing there are two ways to look at it. The first one is I trust so much the player that I will wait for the improvement. You wait, wait and wait and maybe it comes or doesn’t come. Or even while you are trusting the players arrives a moment when you think I have to change. And I can go both ways.

Mourinho’s portent words recall a scene in Seinfeld when Jerry ruminates on the machinations of a parting of ways.

“Breaking up is like knocking over a Coke machine. You can’t do it in one push; you gotta rock it back and forth a few times and then it goes over.”

One suspects several of Chelsea’s players may not enjoy the forthcoming international break as much as they’d have liked. Certainly not until after Tuesday’s transfer deadline has passed.

 

United Stuck on Repeat

If Mourinho’s entry to the 100 club proved to be a damp squib, perhaps he’ll draw consolation from the fact his old mentor, Louis van Gaal, suffered a similarly miserable fate at the gates of the 50 club a day later. 

There was a lovely symmetry, perhaps not for Louis van Gaal, but certainly for those who enjoy the little coincidences life throws up from time to time, as the Dutchman’s 50th game in charge of Manchester United ended up exactly the same as his first: a 2-1 defeat to Swansea City.

This latest feather in the managerial cap sported by Garry Monk (metaphorically, as opposed to horribly literally in the case of Claudio Ranieri on Saturday) comes courtesy of getting the better of Van Gaal for a third successive time. And this one will be all the sweeter given the game turned on a tactical switch the Swansea boss made in the aftermath of going behind to Juan Mata‘s opener after half-time. 

As per Michael Cox of the Guardian, Van Gaal conceded he was tactically outwitted when Monk changed his formation from a 4-2-3-1 to a 4-3-1-2.

“The opponent changed their shape. At 1-0 they changed their shape and we couldn’t cope with that,” he admitted after watching his side usurped in the table by their increasingly impressive hosts.  

Twice Swansea got in behind Luke Shaw, when he was encouraged to buccaneer forward, because of the fact he no longer had a winger to keep an eye on, as Wayne Routledge had been replaced. Swansea’s first saw the irrepressible Andre Ayew ghost into the box to nod in Gylfi Sigurdsson’s centre from the right before the Ghanaian played a pass with the outside of his foot that was so beautiful it would have been understandable had the ball given itself a standing ovation en route to Bafetimbi Gomis. 

From there, for the fourth successive game, we were treated to the Frenchman’s idiosyncratic, and slightly unnerving, celebration, as he slipped the ball under Sergio Romero. David De Gea could have stopped it with Monk’s cap, let alone his own.

United head into the international break on the back of a performance that seems to have been played on a perpetual loop since the start of the season. A fast incisive start that hints everything has finally clicked into place before the pace slows like a standard 45 rpm record played at 33⅓ rpm.

As Gary Neville said on Super Sunday (h/t Sky Sports), Manchester United should not be seen as title contenders. It’s difficult to argue with that assessment with Van Gaal’s side currently playing with nothing like enough tempo in the final third.

 

Could Have Been Worse

On a weekend when only Manchester City really enforced their title credentials with anything like conviction, as Raheem Sterling got off the mark for his new club to break Watford’s resolve before Kevin De Bruyne was added at a cost of £55 million, per the Telegraph, Liverpool supporters will justifiably lay claim to being the most miserable of all. Sunderland fans can take a week off after their team’s 2-2 draw at Aston Villa.

West Ham travelled north on the back of home defeats to Leicester City and Bournemouth and in the knowledge the last time they left Anfield with maximum spoils was the year John F Kennedy was shot, 1963. It’s probably a little dramatic to describe the intervening period as 52 years of hurt, but it’s fair to say they were due a win on Merseyside.

A fourth successive clean sheet for Liverpool was off the table within 148 seconds as the highly impressive Manuel Lanzini caught Joe Gomez ball-watching to stab in at the near post. Thereafter, it only got worse for the home side.

Philippe Coutinho’s red card, harsh perhaps but very much of his own design, means he’ll miss Liverpool’s trip to Old Trafford, and on this showing, with both Firmino and Christian Benteke having drawn blanks again, goals could again be in short supply.

The ghosts of last season returned to haunt Dejan Lovren too, with the Croatian’s chaotic display, summed up by a piece of defending for West Ham’s second goal that is only done full justice when accompanied by the Benny Hill theme, meaning further disruption to Liverpool’s defence is inevitable.

For West Ham, even Mark Noble’s dismissal, for a challenge that was barely even a foul, could not spoil an afternoon’s work that Slaven Bilic spoke of with the reverence usually reserved for titles and silverware. Given it’s been 52 years, it’s easy to forgive him a little exuberance over a victory made even more emphatic when Diafra Sakho added insult to injury in the final minute. 

“After 52 years, in this special stadium, and I think we did it in style. We didn’t nick it. It was a great performance. I’m very proud of the players,” said Bilic, relayed by Derick Allsop of the Daily Mirror. 

“It was one of those victories that will be written about in books for years to come.”

from Bleacher Report – Front Page http://ift.tt/1FbCHFP
via IFTTT http://ift.tt/eA8V8J