LONDON, October 16- Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has rejected claims that he is starting to lose the support of the dressing room after a poor start to the season.
According to the London Evening Standard on Thursday, Mourinho is facing a mutiny from his squad with the Blues languishing in 16th place in the Premier League after the opening eight games of the season.
This is in stark contrast to comments from a string of Chelsea’s first-team players pledging their support for the Portuguese manager and, speaking to talkSPORT, Mourinho himself has described the allegations as sad.
“I don’t care really. I spoke with the players about it and the players are also sad about it, but there is no way to care. It’s sad,” Mourinho said.
“We know what we are, we know the relationships between ourselves. We know that we are trying to go back to normality together, but it is quite sad because people could analyse the situation in pure football terms.
“Let’s try to find the reason why this team is playing badly and why it is not winning matches, without agendas and without unfair comment, because that’s not nice.
“In the last three or four days, Asmir Begovic said ‘we have the best manager in the world’. Kurt Zouma the same. John Terry said ‘we have the manager we want; the one who can help us to revive this situation’.
“Diego Costa said ‘if you ask every player in the world, they will all answer the same, that they’d like to work with three managers and one of them is this one’.
“Who else? Cesc Fabregas; the same. Ramires; the same. Loftus-Cheek; the same. Cahill; the same. Eden Hazard, very similar,” he concluded.
-FA disgrace-
Mourinho hit out at the FA over the £50,000 fine, and probationary stadium ban, that he received for misconduct.
The Blues boss is in trouble for criticising match officials after their 3-1 loss to Southampton, but believes that other managers are getting away with the same kind of behaviour.
“I’m happy that I don’t have an electronic tag,” he said while promoting his new book. “£50,000 is a disgrace. The possibility of getting a stadium ban is astonishing.”
The Portuguese boss then hit out at Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, who escaped a similar punishment despite calling referee Mike Dean “weak” and “naive” after the two sides met at Stamford Bridge last month.
“The difference between afraid and weak and naive is £10,000 and one-match stadium ban. Afraid costs £50,000. Weak and naive – you can do it. We can push people in the technical area.”
Mourinho will hope that he doesn’t have to point any fingers after his side’s next Premier League match against Aston Villa at Stamford Bridge on Saturday.