Chelsea will never be champions off the pitch with Jose Mourinho in charge

But to me it just exposed a personal agenda. Great teams are often defined by the strength of personality of their manager – just think of Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United – but Mourinho is coming across like he has an inferiority complex with his behaviour at the moment.

I keep hearing all this rubbish all the time that he is doing things to take the pressure off his players – what nonsense. It is to highlight himself. It’s all about him. That’s why he wants to use the press, but he needs to remember that eventually the press will spit you out.

We’ve seen it elsewhere. The Italian press got fed up of Mourinho, the Spanish press got fed up of Mourinho. In England the press has always tried to love him but the whole act could grow very tiresome soon, even if he is great for generating headlines.

Sky asked him very loaded questions. They gave him a platform and it was all very friendly. The argument was only going in one direction. This wasn’t exactly an interrogation from Jeremy Paxman. It was all pats on the back for Mourinho.

Sky got what they wanted out of it: they got some must-watch TV and also managed to placate one of the most influential managers in the game, who had claimed there was a Sky agenda against his team. But shouldn’t they be protecting one of their pundits?

Jamie Redknapp – whose comments about Diego Costa against Liverpool sparked the whole Mourinho-Shy feud – is paid to give an opinion. It doesn’t mean it’s necessarily right, but ultimately Sky need to back him and say he doesn’t deserve to be singled out by Mourinho in the manner he was a few weeks ago. It was petty.

Mourinho claims Chelsea are being victimised, but they aren’t. He is trying to conduct a campaign to turn things around, make coverage more favourable to his team and make referees more indulgent of his players.

There is a plan in there. Sir Alex Ferguson did the same thing. People always called him the king of mind games but it was just Sir Alex saying what he thought. Mourinho, though, is attempting psychological warfare but he is just making himself look silly and Chelsea Football Club look silly. The last thing Chelsea need after what happened in Paris is to be in front of the cameras all over again.

Mourinho’s reaction has very over the top. It’s not how you should be acting if you are in charge of a top club. You are the leader of a big club, you are the manager, the one people respect, the brand leader. And it doesn’t bode well for Chelsea if they are trying to sell a brand around the world.

Their manager is putting himself on a show like that and saying whatever he wants. I can’t think of any other manager who would do something like that. It was great TV for Sky, but for Jose Mourinho it was a poor, poor decision and I think it could come back to bite him.

Sometimes I think Mourinho is like Steve McClaren or Brendan Rodgers – he needs some good media advice about what to say and how to say it. That reaction wasn’t good. He needs to think about his conduct before, during and after games. The contrast to Sean Dyche’s measured explanation of the same incidents on Burnley’s website couldn’t have been greater.

When Martin Taylor snapped Eduardo’s leg in 2008, Arsene Wenger said in the heat of the incident that the Birmingham defender “should never play football again”, but after reflecting on the matter he said on that Saturday evening that his comments were “excessive.” Mourinho, though, seemed to go the other way.

And again he shows a complete lack of self-awareness. Chelsea players have been guilty of some shocking challenges in recent months. I’m thinking recently of Gary Cahill on Alexis Sanchez and then Diego Costa’s antics against Liverpool.

You can’t keep on condoning the behaviour of your own players and then accuse an opponent of “criminal” behaviour – it’s not as if Barnes has killed anyone. If it is, then some of Mourinho’s players have got away with murder this season.

Chelsea also have other issues to address. Why is their big, strong right-back, who has been praised by all and sundry, collapsing to the floor under another challenge from Ashley Barnes – which at the worst was a booking – before immediately leaping up to ask the ref to book him? A man’s man wouldn’t have done that.

Ivanovic is not a man’s man. He is a decent right-back. Is he an agile full-back in the modern mould? No, he is very solid and he suits Chelsea, but not a club like Manchester City, Manchester United or Arsenal. And the way he went down under the challenge of Barnes said absolutely everything about Ivanovic, and everything about Chelsea.

They also need to stop surrounding referees as it isn’t helping them. They think it’s good to put pressure on match officials but human nature tells you it will have the reverse effect: match officials might react by making a call against them. If the players had stayed away on Saturday and given Martin Atkinson the time to think, then he might have sent Barnes off. They didn’t give him the chance to think it over before Matic shoved Barnes to the ground.

Instead of trying to get Barnes got sent off, Chelsea's players should have tried to calm matters down. They should have kept Matic on the park and then Chelsea would have won the game and certainly won the League Cup at the weekend.

But those players can’t be controlled because they have a manager who does not set any examples at all with his behaviour on and off the park. He doesn’t control himself on the touchline and so those players see what he is doing and take their lead from Mourinho. That is Chelsea’s biggest problem.

Nottingham Forest had an immense disciplinary record under Brian Clough because the players knew exactly what would happen if they stepped out of line and were disrespectful to a referee. The real Chelsea fans must be worried about how their club is perceived.

Chelsea need to be champions on and off the park. They might be the former come May but certainly not the latter.