Mourinho looks to Robben for goals

JOSE MOURINHO has targeted Chelsea’s November 6 encounter with high-flying Everton as the day Arjen Robben will return to lift the Blues out of their striking crisis.

Robben has yet to play a competitive game since his £12m summer move from PSV Eindhoven, having picked up a knee injury in pre-season training. The 20-year-old was badly missed at Eastlands as Chelsea meekly surrendered their unbeaten record to Manchester City and slipped five points adrift of Arsenal.

With top scorer Didier Drogba out for at least another five weeks with a groin problem and Adrian Mutu ruled out indefinitely after clashing with his manager over the seriousness of his own knee injury, Chelsea’s toothless attack badly needs a lift.

Aside from three speculative Frank Lampard efforts which were all turned away with varying degrees of difficulty by David James, the nearest they came to levelling Nicolas Anelka’s early penalty was when Eidur Gudjohnsen screwed horribly wide late on.

Roman Abramovich has spent £130million on strikers alone in the past 15 months and Mourinho knows a paltry scoring record of eight goals in nine league outings is not good enough, especially when Arsenal have managed an incredible 29 in the same number of games.

“I expect Arjen to play for the reserves in two weeks’ time,” said Mourinho. “After that, I hope he can be back in the first team by the beginning of November because we are not scoring enough goals.

“We are defending well, playing well as a team and creating chances - more than any other side in the Premiership - but one goal a game will not win you the title.”

Mourinho refused to elaborate on the Mutu situation other than a curt: “He is in the hands of the medical department. He can’t play or even train at the moment, so I am not even thinking about him.”

Clearly though, his dispute with the Romanian, who was fit enough to play 90 minutes for his country against the Czech Republic last weekend, is not helping Chelsea’s cause.

Already the Blues find themselves requiring favours off others to keep in touch with Arsenal, so Alex Ferguson is not the only one who will desperately hope Manchester United can end the Gunners’ 49-match unbeaten streak at Old Trafford next Sunday.

“If we can beat Blackburn on Saturday and Arsenal don’t win at United, it would allow us to close the gap again,” he said.

“We are frustrated and disappointed because we have fallen further behind than we would like. But there is no point crying about it, we just have to accept the reality.”

City’s victory came at a heavy price, with popular Chinese international Sun Jihai ruled out until Christmas 2005 after tearing cruciate and medial ligaments in an innocuous first-half challenge with Gudjohnsen.