What a difference a couple of months can make in football.

Last term it seemed impossible to think that Jose Mourinho would ever be in a position where his job would be under threat at Chelsea.

The Portuguese manager guided his side to his third Premier League title at a bit of a canter and his squad looked unstoppable at times.

Yet this season after ten league outings the English champions are lying in a lowly fifteenth position. They’ve already lost five times, with the latest defeat coming against West Ham on Saturday. That sees the ‘Blues’ nine points adrift of a ‘Top Four’ places in the domestic table.

The Champions League hasn’t been much better with Chelsea only producing one win in their first three European fixtures.

The effects of such a disastrous start to the campaign have taken a heavy toll on the self-proclaimed ‘Special One’.  Jose has often looked sullen, depressed and even shell-shocked on the touchlines as his players fail miserably to turn their season around.

During press conferences the once humorous coach has turned into a paranoid, unstable character who will moan about every decision that doesn’t go his way.

For the first time in his career at Stamford Bridge, the manager seems to be losing his dressing room and he’s even attacked his playing personnel on various occasions in public as their slumped continued.

The players themselves have looked shells of their former selves.

The list of under performers is a growing one that includes key talent like Eden Hazard, John Terry, Diego Costa, Nemanja Matic, Cesc Fabregas and Branislav Ivanovic. They’ve all been posted missing for most of this current campaign.

Really the only players that can really come away with any real credit in my eyes are Kurt Zouma, Willian and possibly Cesar Azpilicueta.

The summer transfer window couldn’t have been as far removed as the successful one of 2014 if they tried. Just over twelve months ago they spotted the gaps in their pool and brought in top quality replacements early in the window.

This off season they failed to get their main defensive target in Everton’s John Stones and all in all bought back-up’s rather than established stars, apart from Pedro who then arrived late in August.

Bringing in Radamel Falcao was a very bizarre piece of business. It was either a vanity project from Mourinho to show he could get the best out of a fallen striker or it was a favour to his agent Jorge Mendes. The fact is, like most of us thought, Falcao wasn’t a player that was going to do well at Chelsea. He struggled at Manchester United last term and without prolonged first-team football was never going to be a success at the ‘Bridge’.

Defensively the Blues have struggled all season, yet new signings Baba Rahman and Papy Djilobodji have yet to feature in a league fixture, even though they cost a combined fee of £16.7m and both played regularly for their clubs last year.

Sir Alex Ferguson is a man Jose respects dearly. Fergie always strengthened his sides after successful seasons. He wanted to keep his players on their toes. This Chelsea team look lazy and spent, yet it’s still only October! They certainly don’t look hungry or dominant.

A major issue for Chelsea is that they need to be in the Champions League next season. We are already seeing stories appear in the press linking maestro Hazard away from the club. Those types of stories will only grow the longer this malaise continues and the unrest in the dressing room will also boil over at some point.

The problem seems to be that Jose Mourinho has no answers. He cannot explain why his side are playing so badly and he cannot change games with his tactical nous. He also hasn’t been able to build on any good results they have managed this term like the triumph over rivals Arsenal, who are now joint top of the league.

Mourinho at the moment looks like a man who is just waiting for his P45. Chelsea’s Russian owner Roman Abramovich has never been one to take his time if he think a coach is ready for the sack and a defeat to Liverpool at home next weekend could see Jose exit the Stamford Bridge stage once and for all!

Posted on October 26th, 2015 by scott
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