Cole on fire as Blues bounce back

Chelsea 3 Colchester 1

He was telling Barcelona that Chelsea’s mud bath of a pitch is like an ugly person with a beautiful brain.

Mourinho watched his Chelsea team reach the quarter-finals of the FA Cup by beating League One side Colchester, and he had plenty of grounds for optimism. It wasn’t Joe Cole’s two late goals that made him smile, but the sight of muddy puddles appearing all over the club’s much-maligned pitch as pouring rain turned the already uneven surface into a quagmire.

That’s just what Barcelona don’t want to see as their cultured superstars prepare for a crucial Champions League tie in west London on Wednesday. But for Mourinho it’s all part of the fun. The mind games that have provided an animated side-show ahead of the big match are just his cup of tea, and he has done little to end rumours that Chelsea are deliberately keeping the pitch in a terrible state to upset their Spanish rivals.

Only last week Mourinho claimed Barcelona must be “stupid” to sign up to such a conspiracy theory but last night he was back to his old tricks after watching both sides slip and slide across Stamford Bridge.

“The pitch is not so bad as it looks,” he insisted, with more than a trace of a smirk. “Sometimes you see beautiful people with no brains. They can’t think, they are stupid people but beautiful. Sometimes you have ugly people who are intelligent, maybe scientists. And our pitch is a bit like that.

“If you look at the pitch from the top it’s a disgrace, to be fair. But the ball rolls with normal speed, no rebounds. So it’s actually good.”

If Barcelona can make head or tail of that, then their comprehension of English is better than most who listened as Mourinho held court late into the evening at Stamford Bridge. Then, almost as an after-thought, he offered Barca a cheeky challenge.

“It’s true I would prefer the pitch was better, that’s why I don’t train here on Tuesday,” he said. “So if Barcelona want to train at our training centre on Tuesday to give more time to the pitch they can do that.”

It’s an offer that Barcelona are unlikely to accept, and the idea of the Spanish champions testing out their free-kick routines with Chelsea players hanging out of every window at their Cobham training ground is unlikely.

“Why not?” teased Mourinho.

“They do nothing in the training session before the game. You just move a little bit, adapt to the ball because it’s not the ball they use in Spain. If they want our training centre we’re very pleased to let them go there. I’m serious.”

He may well be, but with Mourinho you are never quite sure, and it was much like that in the FA Cup last night. There were more than 41,000 inside Stamford Bridge but with Frank Lampard, Joe Cole, Didier Drogba and Hernan Crespo all left on the bench it didn’t seem like Mourinho was taking it quite as seriously as the fans - and Colchester almost made him pay.

Make no mistake, they had Chelsea concerned, and it took a wonderful display from super-sub Joe Cole to break their hearts and turn a 1-0 deficit into a 3-1 victory.

Colchester hit the post through Ireland’s Mark Yeates after 22 minutes and then took the lead when a Richard Garcia cross was turned into his own net by Ricardo Carvalho.

The goal was greeted by sheer delirium by 6,000 travelling Colchester fans who could hardly believe what they were seeing. But Chelsea’s response was strong, and Paulo Ferreira scored his first-ever goal for the club from close range to equalise.

Mourinho was so worried at this stage that he brought on Cole, Lampard and Crespo - and it was Cole who made the difference.

He eventually got the goal his dazzling display deserved, snapping up the rebound when Crespo’s 20-yard effort was spilled into his path by keeper Aidan Davison.

Then he rounded it off with a special second, cutting between three players on a wonderful run before curling a fierce shot into the top corner of the net. Another goal like that against Barcelona would go down a treat - if he can wade through the Stamford Bridge mud to get there.

CHELSEA: Cudicini, Johnson, Huth, Ricardo Carvalho, Paulo Ferreira, Diarra (Joe Cole 45), Wright-Phillips, Essien, Maniche (Lampard 45), Duff (Crespo 63), Drogba.

COLCHESTER: Davison, Duguid, Baldwin, Brown, White, Yeates (Chilvers 73), Danns, Watson, Halford, Garcia (Williams 81), Iwelumo.

Referee: D Gallagher (Oxfordshire).