Jose dumbstruck after Boro thrashing

THE Special One, it appears, is mortal after all. Jose Mourinho stood dumbstruck — well, relatively by his standards — at the Riverside Stadium on Saturday and watched his all-conquering Chelsea side unravel against a Middlesbrough team that looked to be hurtling towards a Premiership survival battle seven days earlier.

It was not the fact of the defeat which stung, but more the manner of it as the bunch of misfits which piled the pressure on Boro boss Steve McClaren last Saturday with a performance of rare ineptitude against Aston Villa regrouped to play the champion off the park.

But for all Boro were good, Chelsea were, for once, truly awful.