There's no way back for Jose Mourinho at Chelsea now

Jose Mourinho’s full-frontal assault on his players after Chelsea lost 2-1 to Leicester City was something I have never seen before. By complaining that he was “betrayed”, by claiming that Chelsea only won the league last season because of him, that Diego Costa had forgotten how to play as a centre-forward and hinting that Eden Hazard’s injury may not have been as serious as he made out, he questioned the loyalty, ability, mentality and integrity of his players.

It was an all-encompassing attack which may achieve its aim and provoke searching questions about those players in the dressing room, but has also left Mourinho’s own position basically untenable as a result. It is hard to see a way back for him now after this declaration of war against his own players. After a brief cooling off period, when he kept his own counsel, it was all building up and on Monday night the pressure valve burst. He escalated the situation dramatically.

It was one of the most amazing outbursts we’ve ever seen in the Premier League. Talk about parking the bus; last night Mourinho was throwing his players under it. But this just sums him up: Mourinho is a selfish manager who is happy to take the accolades when Chelsea are winning, but seeks to transfer blame to the players when he is losing.

Players are responsible for performances and results, of that there is no doubt, but in any other business outside of football, if you are the manager and the product you are putting out is terrible, you will be ultimately held responsible, even if you say the people on the conveyor belt aren’t doing their jobs properly.

Surely the most stunning part of his post-match tirade was the claim that he was “betrayed” by his players for their failure to implement his plans to stop Jamie Vardy and particularly Riyad Mahrez, who got an assist and a goal. I’ve never heard a manager say that about his players and I found it disgraceful. I don’t see how he can come back from making that statement as it won’t have offended one or two players, it will have offended the whole squad.

How many of these players will really want to play for Mourinho now? They’ve lost respect for him. Chelsea strongly denied the story from BBC reporter Garry Richardson at the start of November that a Chelsea player had said they would rather lose than win a game for Mourinho, but I can absolutely believe it. And that feeling will be stronger now than ever before.

Ex pros will admit that they have all had times when they wanted their team to lose. Perhaps it was when they were dropped and they knew that if the team won, they would lose their place for good. These kind of feelings are not uncommon in dressing rooms, particularly if players feel that the current manager is holding their career back with his negativity. If you alienate all your players, they can hardly be forgiven for thinking they might be better off without you.

While the “betrayal” claim captured the headlines, I think the most telling quote, and the one most revealing when it comes to Mourinho’s psychology and his fractured relationship with his team, was when he claimed that, “all last season I did phenomenal work and I took them to a level that is not their level. It's more than they really are.” He basically told the players that the only reason they have a winner’s medal is because he, the managerial magician, worked miracles. How disheartening would it be to hear that as a player?

Those Chelsea players will have been astonished to hear him say what he did. They will have been talking to team-mates, friends and family members saying, ‘have you seen what he’s just said about us?’

This is where it really matters that Mourinho never played the game to any serious standard. The one thing you learn as a footballer is that the game is bigger than just you; it’s all about the team and you win together and lose together. Mourinho can’t grasp that because he doesn’t have the grounding in a dressing room. He’s come into management as an autocrat who believes that he has a masterplan and that all the glory is his. When Chelsea stumble, in his mind it is because the players haven’t carried out his instructions.

Mourinho has to accept that he takes ultimate responsibility for Chelsea’s fortunes on the pitch, but he can’t find it within himself. And he can no longer manage this team effectively because he has completely lost control. He isn’t capable of managing this group of players and getting the best out of them.

The need for a change at Chelsea is growing with every game and Roman Abramovich will know that he can hardly go and flog off half the squad in January and bring in a new set of players who won’t be opposed to Mourinho. It’s just not realistic to get rid of such a big cohort of stars. If you are being told there are half a dozen bad apples, you have to start asking questions about the man in charge of picking them.

Mourinho will probably think he can walk into another job. Maybe he has been positioning himself for one already. But if I was an owner of a club and a global brand, I would be seriously questioning whether I’d want a man like Mourinho to represent it. He will give you a good two or three years but things might turn toxic after that.

He is not a long-term option because he can’t grow a club and doesn’t know even know how to start. He can’t grow a club because his confrontational management style means he can’t maintain effective working relationships. It’s all about him. No other manager is so single-minded in finding other people to blame: players, other managers, the FA, referees, the media. He’s blamed everyone except himself.

Jose Mourinho has left his mark on Chelsea’s history and the fans rightly love him for that, but some of the more sober amongst them might consider whether even more could have been achieved had he been able to avoid so much conflict. Certainly the current debacle is a completely unnecessary mess of his own making.