When Jose Mourinho picked apart the wreckage of Chelsea’s damaging Champions League quarter-final first leg defeat to Paris Saint-Germain last week he left no doubt as to who he blamed.
It was not a defence that had conceded three goals. Neither was it David Luiz, whose erratic display in defensive midfield also proved pivotal. Instead, his glare centred on his forwards.
In a match he described as being for “for strikers, for real strikers”, Mourinho let it be known that his pretenders had been found wanting.
As a pitch to deflect the spotlight from himself, it was not the strongest in a career full of purposeful soundbites. Instead, it sharpened the focus on Mourinho’s culpability for the 3-1 loss.
As a man who has shown an aggressive pursuit of control in all his previous posts, there can be no-one else to blame for the ill-conceived use of Andre Schurrle as a centre forward in Paris.
It is no revelation to say the slight German does his best work out wide, away from the attentions of grizzled centre-backs. With Samuel Eto’o out injured, is it beyond the realms of possibility to suggest the Machiavellian Mourinho wanted to give the impression he had no other choice?
The Parc des Princes was not the appropriate stage to make such a protest. True, he could point to the fact his striking trio of Eto’o, Demba Ba and club-record £50 million (Dh305m) signing Fernando Torres had contributed only 15 English Premier League goals between them this season. Yet critically, this is only two more than a man cast aside by Mourinho has managed.
The unwanted Romelu Lukaku has been a revelation on loan at Everton. On Sunday, he barrelled through a petrified Arsenal defence and lashed in his side’s second in a 3-0 win.
Such shows of brute force, raw determination and blossoming skill have been absent at his parent club. The argument goes that, in a masterstroke, Mourinho decided to damage his title rivals by unleashing Lukaku instead of letting the youngster stagnate on the bench.
Would it not have been more sensible to have had him around for the toothless 1-0 defeats to Aston Villa and Crystal Palace that have derailed Chelsea’s title bid or indeed for tonight’s rescue mission?
Mourinho tried to correct the issue of his misfiring strikers in the summer, with several fruitless bids to buy Manchester United talisman Wayne Rooney.
The search to recruit a top-line frontman should not have ended there. In a year of relative frugality as Chelsea prepare for the Financial Fair Play regulations to bite, owner Roman Abramovich has still sanctioned the acquisition of seven new first-team members.
That this £90m-plus spree failed to provide anything else up front except the muddled decision to end Eto’o’s semi-retirement in Russia at a bargain price is on Mourinho.
He had the time and resources to be able to recruit strikers of the standard PSG will be able to deploy tonight in Edinson Cavani and Ezequeil Lavezzi. And the fact he will chase goals tonight without a striker he believes in is his own fault.
