Strange as it may seem to some but Chelsea’s traditional rivals are not Manchester United, City, Liverpool or even Arsenal – it’s Millwall.
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The Lions have spent just two seasons in the English top flight and are somewhat unfairly more known for their hooligan problems in the 1980s than their football.
However, as Chelsea fans will be well aware of, the south east London club’s call to arms has always been: “no one likes us, we don’t care.”
As much as Jose Mourinho has tried to adopt a similar viewpoint, the last few weeks have revealed that the Portuguese does, in fact, care a great deal how his Premier League champions are perceived.
Mourinho: “It isn’t normal to win a title every season. Unless you choose the countries and clubs where even the kit-man as manager wins it”
— ChelsTransferGossip (@ChelsTransfer) May 1, 2015
It’s now boring to label Chelsea boring (as they’re clearly not) but since the 1-0 victory against QPR on April 12, Mourinho has been at pains to deny such accusations.
Of course, he’s been asked about it by willing reporters looking for a line, but there’s been an increasing bitterness in each of his replies. Jibes at Arsene Wenger and modern football’s obsession with possession were amusing, but wholly unnecessary in the grand scheme of things.
The results speak for themselves: six games against City, Arsenal and United – no defeats. He’s outwitted and often outplayed the sides of Wenger, Manuel Pellegrini and Louis van Gaal, yet both the Arsenal manager and the City boss have been targeted verbally.
It’s not mind games, it’s about settling petty scores that nobody really cares about. Except one man.
Not content with winning the Premier League with three games to spare on Sunday, his default setting was to immediately ‘defend’ his team and then launched further cheap shots at Pep Guardiola for moving to Bayern Munich after Barcelona, claiming the Catalan only ever takes the ‘easy’ jobs.
With Guardiola, his eternal nemesis in La Liga, the smug sense of self-satisfaction was difficult to stomach and, once again, utterly needless in the context of the occasion.
Witness a similar approach from John Terry, who has been by far and away the most consistent defender in the league this season, yet within a few hours of the final whistle on Sunday marking arguably the most impressive achievement of his career, he was criticising former manager Rafael Benitez for writing him off as over-the-hill in 2013.
Instead of revelling in their success and enjoying the moment there was a sneering and unpleasant tone to Chelsea celebrations which haven’t exactly overshadowed their utter domination of the Premier League but made it all a little less satisfying for the neutral.
Each of Chelsea’s three league titles under Mourinho has seen them respected and revered but never loved. And as much as he’s responsible for their very best, Mourinho is also culpable for Chelsea’s worst.
