Andy Gray and Richard Keys: Mourinho's crisis is a mystery

Sport360 staff 07:24 31/10/2015
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  • Under threat?: Mourinho.

    As speculation grows over Jose Mourinho’s future at Chelsea he takes on Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool in a game that could decide his fate.

    Andy Gray and Richard Keys who front beIN Sports’ EPL coverage discuss this and the weekend’s other games.

    Andy Gray: The one thing I did not expect to be talking about at this stage of the season was the possibility that Jose Mourinho would either walk or be fired.

    There is something seriously wrong at Stamford Bridge with the club stumbling from crisis to crisis on a weekly basis. Roman Abramovich can’t be enjoying seeing his club feature on the back and front pages of the newspapers in the UK for all the wrong reasons. The whole thing is a mystery.

    The way Mourinho is behaving and some of the things he is saying definitely suggest a ‘sack me if you want’ attitude and I find that staggering.

    There has been speculation that Real Madrid want him back and maybe he thinks he has unfinished business there, who knows? The one thing Mourinho has always had is the backing of his players but he is in danger of that changing because the way he talks about them has altered since he first turned up at Stamford Bridge.

    He never used to criticise them and sometimes blindly backed his players to the hilt but this time around he has been very critical of some and messed a few of them around. If he loses the core of that dressing room, and I don’t think that is the situation just yet, then he will have an extremely tough job to get it back.

    If Mourinho loses against Liverpool I wouldn’t sack him. Look, Wayne Rooney is having a bad time at the moment. Are United going sack him? Of course not, because they know his qualities.

    So why, when for the first time in his life he is having a bad time of things, would you sack the most successful manager Chelsea have ever had? Who are they going to bring in? Unless they can persuade Pep Guardiola to join them it makes no sense to get rid of Mourinho.

    I would like to see Chelsea’s players, not Mourinho, do the talking this weekend against Liverpool, win the match and then move on. That would be the best thing for Chelsea and their manager.

    Liverpool are a work in progress and they are devoid of ideas at the top end of the pitch. They have played 15 games this season and only once have they scored more than one goal and that is not going to change overnight, even with Jurgen Klopp in charge. 2-0.

    Richard Keys: I am hearing that the speculation about Real Madrid is bang on and that he might fancy a return there. I have been of the opinion for a while that he has already lost the Chelsea dressing room.

    There was a lot of bickering going on among the players during their game against West Ham last week with players having a go at each other. 

    I don’t understand why it has gone wrong so quickly but there has to be a reason which we don’t know about yet. The whole episode with the club doctor Eva Carneiro was another extraordinary episode.

    Why make such a fuss about it and go so public with it? If he didn’t rate her he could have just got rid but now the whole is a mess with her threatening legal action against the club.

    Then there was his now infamous seven-minute rant after losing to Southampton. Why? Things are clearly not right, as I keep saying in this column, and it’s not just the results.

    For me, it’s something much, much deeper. Maybe he is trying to put himself in an untenable position so he gets the boot with a pay-off. Who knows?

    Would the Premier League be poorer without Mourinho? To be honest, at the moment it would probably be a better place without him because he is continually pushing the borders of acceptability with his behaviour. He is becoming a bore and I have had enough of it.

    If he loses against Liverpool and gets the sack then people will say that was the reason. They would be wrong. If he is going it will have been decided already. This is a crunch weekend for Mourinho but I actually think they will beat Liverpool who aren’t very good. 2-1.

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