LONDON: Two bad results do not make a crisis but Chelsea must break with the past and change their style of play to get back on top in the Premier League and Europe, manager Jose Mourinho said today.
Chelsea suffered a shock 2-1 home defeat to Swiss side Basel in their opening Champions League group game in midweek, which followed a 1-0 loss to Everton in the Premier League last Saturday.
Before that, they lost the European Super Cup on penalties to Bayern Munich and Chelsea’s start to the season is now their worst in a decade.
Speaking to reporters ahead of Saturday’s West London derby at home to Fulham, the Portuguese said he had to agree with some of the criticism levelled at his side but played down talk of a crisis.
‘I’m worried because I lost and I don’t want to lose, but again this is the way it happens sometimes. For me there is no crisis – it’s just two bad results,’ he said.
‘It’s not the way you start the season but the way you finish.’
On past form, on Saturday should end the sequence for the former European champions. Fulham have not won a top flight league game at Stamford Bridge since 1964, when the late England manager Bobby Robson was playing for them.
Mourinho, the ‘Special One’ in his second stint at Chelsea, pointed out that all of the top six in the Premiership – with the exception of leaders Liverpool – had also lost once in the league this season.
‘I don’t like the way Chelsea were playing the last couple of years; the club doesn’t like it and we want to change,’ he said. ‘We want to play a different style. The past is history – even my past. I’m here like I’ve just arrived.
‘People were asking if I wanted Didier (Drogba) here but that’s history and we need to change. I agree we must have better results and we are not the kind of club who will wait three to five years for that to happen. We want them to play in a certain way now.’
Mourinho said critics were bound to speak up when results went against Chelsea but he would not be swayed.
‘I know the steps I have to take; when you want to build something different, the players are adapted and comfortable – it is more difficult,’ he said.
‘If you want to do something different and the results are not good, there will be question marks. If someone expects me to play against Fulham with nine players behind the ball and wait for them to make a mistake and win 1-0, then I will not go home happy.’
Mourinho, who left captain John Terry on the bench in midweek, said after the Basel defeat that his talented but young team needed to show more emotional maturity.
Today he recognised he did not know how long the transformation would take.
‘We have a lot to do. The work I have to do does not sell papers – big defeats and big victories do – but the only thing I can do is to have belief in my players and wait for the results to come,’ he said.
Fernando Torres, who did not play in midweek, could feature from the start up front against Fulham. (Reuters)