The champions are reeling after a dismal start to the season but José
Mourinho did not get where he is by crumpling at the first hint of
trouble
This time a couple of weeks ago, Chelsea were the popular choice to defend the league championship with the same ease with which they won it. Two games later, knees have jerked and they are being depicted as the first crisis story of the new campaign, teetering on the brink of a full-on meltdown before we have even reached its 10th day. It’s not true, of course. There are 108 points to play for and let’s remember Mourinho did not get where he is by crumpling at the first hint of trouble.
Likewise, anyone presumptuous enough to think John Terry should be directed to the knackers’ yard on the basis of one 45-minute ordeal, facing the best striker in the land, could seriously be in danger of under-estimating the man’s competitive courage. Terry had a difficult afternoon against Sergio Agüero, as many do, and his substitution was so out of the norm that, naturally, it was a big part of the story from Sunday’s game at Manchester City. Yet there is also a sense here that some of the people who have decided a black sheet can now be draped over Terry’s career have read too much into one match and, in some cases, that it might be wishful thinking when the player in question has gone through spells of his professional life, to borrow the quote from Percival Wilde, where he has made enemies as naturally as soap makes suds.
What can be said is that Sunday bordered on public humiliation for Terry and there is something remarkable about the way Chelsea have staggered through the initial stages of their title defence given the swirl of negative publicity and unpleasant stench that is still hanging over them from the Eva Carneiro dispute.
To recap, they are two doctors down. We have had the first press-conference walk-out of the season, albeit Mourinho reached only as far as the door before making his way back to the top table. Chelsea have taken one point out of six and their captain has been reminded what can happen when age becomes a player’s hardest opponent. It is not a crisis, but it is chaos, and there has not been a period like it for Mourinho at Chelsea since his first spell at the club entered its final stages, when his hair started to look out of control, the gaze was wild and Sir Alex Ferguson began one early-morning press conference at Manchester United by asking whether “the sparrows are waking up coughing at Stamford Bridge.
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