VIDEO: Jose Mourinho's second sitting for the last supper at Chelsea
They say that you should never return to the scene of previous triumphs. Didn’t work for Kenny Dalglish, Kevin Keegan proved the rule, Howard Kendall regretted his return to Goodison Park and the reunion between Terry Venables and Crystal Palace ended with the club in administration.
For a short while it seemed that the second coming of Jose Mourinho — the self-styled “Happy One” when he came back to Stamford Bridge in the summer of 2013 — would smash one of the oldest clichés in sport.
But the reality is that it has been reconfirmed with a vengeance.
To many, including most supporters, the collapse of a team which has been renowned for its spirit for a dozen years or more has been inexplicable. Some have tried to attribute it to the unseemly row over Dr Eva Caneiro, a former squad medic, back in August who was berated by Mourinho for entering the field of play after being signalled on by referee Michael Oliver to treat Eden Hazard as they pushed to win the season’s opening game.
But this aberrant behaviour was a symptom, not a cause, and provided the earliest possible warning about Mourinho’s mental state.
Just a few weeks ago, in fact just before Chelsea’s last league victory at home, a patchy and unconvincing 1-0 victory over Norwich illuminated by that rarity of 2015, a Diego Costa goal, I spent some time in discussion with a former player still well connected with the Stamford Bridge dressing room. He scornfully dismissed the notion Mourinho’s handling of Caneiro had affected the players. They “couldn’t care less” about her fate was his verdict.
What was more telling for people looking for clues in that opening game against Swansea, was the reaction of the midfielder, Oscar, to his opening goal in the 23rd minute. Normally an unassuming and conscientious professional who regularly delivers a full and committed shift, Oscar showed not a shred of joy in starting the season on the scoresheet. In fact he dismissed congratulations and applause with an irritated wave of his hand.
At the end of last season the team celebrated their fourth league title in 10 years and few could argue that it was undeserved. It could easily have been their fifth Premier League because, after they dismantled Liverpool’s title charge by winning at Anfield the previous year, they should have gone on to claim the crown instead of slipping limply away to allow Manchester City to take the prize.
But even in that memorable game there was something about the nature of the Mourinho celebration — a chest-beating charge down the touchline accompanied by a primal scream — that jarred, that implied that behind the painted smile a small dark midnight of the soul was taking place.
Much of that was forgotten last season, but the truth is his team over-achieved, and lacks the character, the intensity, the personality and the appetite for renewal.
Players should have been replaced in the summer, which was a disaster in terms of transfer policy characterised by the hapless mismanagement of the potential recruitment of John Stones. Mourinho was promised that Stones would form a young central defensive partnership with Kurt Zouma which would lead the club out of the post-John Terry era.
Terry’s personal role in the unravelling will be subject to much speculation but there is a limit to the influence that a 35-year-old centre-half can continue to wield and his departure, almost certainly this summer, will bring closure to a resilient and hungry generation of players in blue who included Petr Cech (sold against Mourinho’s wishes to Arsenal), Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole and Didier Drogba whose previous leadership qualities in the dressing room now come into sharp focus given the experiences of the past 18 weeks.
For some time, Mourinho has had the air of someone who not only did not know the answer to his problems, but who was too weary to think about them, or perhaps no longer cared. He has suffered from anxiety over the health of his 77-year-old father who had brain surgery for a haemorrhage in April and then suffered two strokes. He has had to put up with the behaviour of social media morons — and there are plenty of those around — who deemed it acceptable to follow him around London with all kinds of provocation. And finally he has been let down by a cadre of players who have grown complacent and self-satisfied, and several of whom should have been replaced.
Of the current squad only Willian, Courtois (injured for most of the first half of the season), and Zouma can feel any real pride in their contribution. Others have looked disaffected or simply past their best.
The departure of Mourinho has a fin de siècle feel for the recent history of Chelsea. It is an arc which stretches from Glenn Hoddle in 1996 through Ruud Gullit’s sexy football to the style of Gianluca Vialli until the summer of 2015 during which the club has assembled an impressive trophy cabinet and the scalps of practically every major club in European football.
It also represents a considerable personal disappointment for the chief executive Marina Granovskaia — frequently styled “the most powerful woman in football” — who brokered Mourinho’s return and for at least two seasons appeared to have made a profoundly wise choice.
But while supporters (that’s the people who go to matches) would have forgiven Mourinho almost anything there is much at risk for the Stamford Bridge hierarchy who are planning an ambitious ground expansion in the Fulham Road to more than 60,000 seats. An application goes before the local authority in January, the €650m project is being underwritten by Roman Abramovich, and the team would have to relocate, most likely to Wembley, for three to four years.
This, therefore, is not the moment to be relegated. Unless something astonishing happens in the Champions League, and it would be very long odds on that happening to Chelsea twice in four years, then next season will be one without European football. That will be difficult, but not terminal.
Hosting the likes of MK Dons and Blackburn on a Wednesday evening in a proxy stadium designed for 90,000 people might be just a bridge too far for everyone except the most old school of fans.
