Strikerless Jose can’t let back five lose the plot too

It is not often that Jose Mourinho is lost for words but when it came to describing Chelsea’s poor defensive display in Paris on Wednesday night, you could sense the ‘special one’ had no answers to explain why the back five have crumbled in recent games.

Chelsea’s defence has been one of the major reasons why the club have remained front-runners in the challenge for the Premier League title this season which astounds considering the fact they have not got a proven goalscorer.

But following the manner of the 3-1 defeat against Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday night, Mourinho will now have deep concerns over where it has all gone wrong.

The Chelsea manager seems to be making a point in every press conference to convey his unhappiness with certain members of his squad and is determined to make big changes during the summer.

We all assumed he was talking about his front players and in particular Fernando Torres who failed to show the right attitude against Crystal Palace last weekend and was dropped against PSG as Mourinho opted to play without a recognised forward in favour of Andre Schurrle.

Mourinho knew he was taking a major gamble but had faith that the backbone of his team — Petr Cech, Branislav Ivanovic, John Terry, Gary Cahill and Cesar Azpilicueta — would give them something to defend in the return leg at Stamford Bridge next week. But that clearly backfired and you know something is wrong when the inspirational captain Terry is having one of his worst moments in a Chelsea shirt. Following his own goal against Crystal Palace last weekend, Terry could not have imagined things could get any worse for him.

Well they did, and it was a shocking piece of defending from the 33-year-old after just five minutes which led to the opening goal. Terry failed to deal with a cross and could only head the ball straight into the path of Ezequiel Lavezzi who fired home.

It was only a few weeks ago that people were talking about the superb partnership between Terry and Cahill and were calling for the Chelsea captain to come out of international retirement so the duo could play together at the World Cup.

But things change dramatically in football and Terry appears to have lost his focus in recent games.

More worrying for Mourinho was the poor performance from Cech, who has also been one of the most consistent performers for Chelsea in recent seasons.

The Chelsea keeper was at fault for two of the PSG goals and the third goal in injury-time which Mourinho described as a ‘joke’ should never have been allowed to happen.

Javier Pastore dribbled in from the right goal-line and fired a low shot which beat Cech at his near post and changed the whole complexion of the tie.

It didn’t take long for the Chelsea supporters to start a debate over whether the Czech Republic international has seen his best days and be replaced by reserve keeper Thibaut Courtois, who has been earning rave reviews during his loan spell with Atletico Madrid this season.

Some would say they have been extremely lucky in European competition over the last few years and their defensive mistakes were always going to catch up with them at some stage. But if Chelsea are to stand any chance of overturning the deficit from the first leg, Mourinho will have to work extra hard on the training ground over the next few days to cut out any more errors.

Chelsea are no strangers to overturning a 3-1 deficit in the Champions League. Rewind to March 2012 and the west London club faced a similar hurdle to overcome when they suffered the same scoreline against Napoli in the first leg. But they showed all their fighting qualities in the return game at Stamford Bridge when Ivanovic scored the winning goal in extra-time to help them win the tie 5-4 on aggregate.

Chelsea defender Cahill has no doubts his team have enough quality to turn the game around once again. He said: “We need a massive performance, the kind we had against Napoli the year we won it.

“Of course it’s going to be very hard and it was a real blow to concede the third goal at the end, which was very soft and unlike us. I really don’t know what went wrong. But we’ve been here before.”

Mourinho can only dream of having the same scoreline next Tuesday night and it would be ironic if Ivanovic or one of the other Chelsea defenders were to turn from villains into heroes and make it another magical night.