Anfield was ready for a party on Sunday and who better to break it all up and send everyone home than Jose Mourinho?
Clad in bright white and blue, illuminating himself against the sea of red in the stands, the Portuguese – also unshaven just to complete the villainous look – encouraged his team on as they time-wasted, petulantly fouled and stoutly defended their way to a 2-0 victory.
He is a continual reminder that for all the entertainment, football is a game of results. And there are few managers able to drag a result from improbable circumstance quite like Mourinho.
He rested his best available centre-back in Gary Cahill, selected 20-year-old Tomas Kalas, who had played more injury time for Chelsea than normal time, yet the Blues stopped Liverpool from scoring for only the third instance this season, and the first at Anfield since September 21.
This was as impressive a defensive performance as when his Internazionale side in the Champions League semi-finals, having won the first leg 3-1, restricted Barcelona to a 1-0 win at the Nou Camp in 2010, despite playing for 62 minutes with 10 men.
Kalas was composed in the heart of defence, while Branislav Ivanovic should take enormous credit for playing the role of leader in the backline.
Having honed the tactic against Atletico Madrid last Tuesday, Mourinho perfected it on Merseyside, flooding his own penalty area and breaking at pace.
Mourinho’s managerial ethos has always wavered towards his teams being more effective without the ball than with it – totally at odds to the much-mimicked Barcelona/Spanish method – and Sunday's game was the definitive example of that.
Brendan Rodgers, who learned his craft under Mourinho, is one who totally rejects such an approach, yet his Liverpool side played into Chelsea’s hands by making too many mistakes.
They didn’t need to win the game, a point would have sufficied. Yet this was 100km/h football again from the Reds, except they encountered a sizeable speed bump and were unable to adapt.
Steven Gerrard’s slip not only provided Chelsea with an easy opener but affected the Reds’ captain’s own performance.
In search of the heroic equaliser, Gerrard attempted eight unsuccessful shots at goal after half-time (he averages 1.6 a match), while positionally he was all over the place, giving Chelsea a clear and defined area of the pitch to break into.
Luis Suarez could simply not get into the penalty area, while their set-pieces – a source for 23 goals this season, the most in the Premier League – were rendered irrelevant by Chelsea’s defensive organisation and application.
When Mourinho began his post-match press conference with the declaration “the best team won” many sneered, but his analysis was undeniably accurate.
