All of this has been
consistently written off as mind games, which it most certainly is.
Mourinho has been trying to ingrain himself in a win-win situation:
either being wrong about Chelsea as a non-contender and collecting a
winner's medal or right about it and being able to say "I told you so!"
when everyone asks why they didn't lift the trophy. The only problem is
that instead of being wrong and happy, right now he's looking right and
miserable. Confusing? Well, that probably suits him too.
Chelsea have now lost three of
their last five matches, including both the Premier League and Champions
League. Infuriating losses to Aston Villa
and Crystal Palace have dropped them from first to second in the table
(with third-place Man City having two games in hand) and a 3-1 loss to
PSG in the Champions League quarterfinals puts them at a significant
disadvantage going into the return leg at Stamford Bridge.
The problems are obvious. As Mourinho has repeatedly said (even when he thought he was off the record),
scoring goals is hard for Chelsea and the main problem is the strikers.
As it turns out, he wasn't exaggerating. He started the PSG match
without any real strikers since Samuel Eto'o is injured and when he
finally brought on Fernando Torres in the 59th minute, PSG scored two more goals and Chelsea finished the match without a single shot on a target after Eden Hazard's 27th-minute penalty.
It's gotten to the point where just talking about Fernando Torres makes Mourinho's face go full De Niro.
So Mourinho is being proven
right and he's definitely not happy about it. But all is not lost for
Chelsea just yet. With six matches remaining the league title is still
far from decided and being 3-1 down after the first leg of a Champions
League knockout tie actually led to their greatest success in the tournament in 2012.
While everyone always wants to be right, in this instance Mourinho would be much, much happier if he were proven wrong.
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