Mourinho's fatal mistake

Is that a lot? Relative to Manchester United and Arsenal, sure. Manchester City have let five managers go in that time (and don’t bet on Manuel Pellegrini being around come next season), Liverpool five and Tottenham six.

There’s the idea that Chelsea were impatient with Mourinho. Yet at the time of his departure this week, they had lost nine of 16 games in the Premier League, as many as they’d lost in the previous 76 league games under Mourinho. What’s more, they were a single point above the relegation zone.

Mourinho’s camp believe the decision to sack him predates the defeat at Leicester. Club sources suggest he was the architect of his own downfall with his post-game comments: doubting the extent of Eden Hazard’s injury; suggesting only the “phenomenal job” he did the previous year allowed Chelsea to overachieve; and saying he had been “betrayed” by the players.

If anything, what Mourinho's departure confirms is that, even as clubs chase the supposed superstar managers – from Pep Guardiola to Carlo Ancelotti – they remain subordinate to the organisation itself. In other words, managers are important, but they don’t stick around and thus it’s down to the clubs to look after the medium and long-term.

This was obvious at Chelsea. Hanging on to Mourinho after his attack on the players became an exercise in risk management. The most plausible best-case scenario was a mid-table finish and a run in the Champions League, maybe even to the final.

But at what cost? A European run would have afforded Mourinho the political capital to blame the players further. He might have demanded that the likes of Diego Costa, Hazard and Cesc Fabregas – three of his favourite targets – be replaced by new signings. In the era of Financial Fair Play, with no Champions League football next season and with Chelsea having made a loss last year, that would have been an expensive proposition. Hazard, Costa and Fabregas between them might have fetched close to £150 million last summer. Next summer, after an indifferent season and accusations of feigned injuries, laziness and indiscipline, you’d be lucky to get much more than half that.

And that would have applied regardless of whether Chelsea persevered with Mourinho or brought in a new manager. Coaches can get away with a lot, but dumping blame on their own players – and thereby depreciating club assets – amounts to crossing the line. It damages the club down the road.

That’s why it was felt Mourinho had to go. Better to have Guus Hiddink then, who isn’t expected to perform miracles but rather simply steer the ship to mid-table safety and ensure the assets aren’t devalued.

As for Mourinho, the next step is anyone’s guess. Paris Saint-Germain are cited by many, though it’s not clear he has much of an appetite for Ligue 1 and, in any case, it’s tough to boot Laurent Blanc who is miles ahead in the league and has lost just once in all competitions this year.

Manchester United seems to be the obvious alternative, particularly given Ed Woodward’s penchant for chasing box office superstars (or pretending to do so).

Of course, that would mean dispatching Louis van Gaal a year early but, then again, pass up Mourinho and you may not get another chance for a while. Then there’s the more left-field option of international management – either his native Portugal or, post-Euro 2016, England, if Roy Hodgson fails to impress.

Whatever the case, the Special One won’t be out of the picture for long.

YOU hear it time and again, particularly from mid-table clubs and downwards. Whether it be managers or players, they talk about the importance of Premier League experience, As if it was some kind of unique and distinct sport, entirely apart from other countries or, indeed, the lower leagues.

Watford, who are up to seventh place in the table and host Liverpool today are disproving that notion. Of the 22 players they’ve used this season following their promotion, only two – Ben Watson and Heurelho Gomes – have been starters in the top flight in years past. And the manager, Quique Sanchez Flores, is new to it as well, of course.

So too, for that matter, are the managers of West Ham (Slaven Bilic, eighth), Bournemouth (Eddie Howe, 14th) and Norwich (Alex Neil, 18th), all of whom have surpassed expectations thus far.

So why this entrenched belief that such a thing is vital? Possibly because it’s yet another way of burnishing the league’s reputation as being unlike any other. And because it’s an easy out for those managers who like doing business with the same folks time and again.

THE adjudicatory branch of Fifa’s ethics committee are expected to release their verdict tomorrow in the case of Michel Platini, Sepp Blatter and the payment the latter made to the former in 2011. Platini’s defence has long stretched credulity: it was for work carried out nine years earlier and there was no written contract. The fact that it was around this time that the Frenchman decided not to challenge Blatter for the Fifa presidency is, of course, merely a coincidence.

And yet the Uefa president remains bullish to the point that he boycotted his hearing in Zurich on Friday, believing the committee had little interest in his side of the story. Instead, he will take tomorrow’s verdict and make an immediate appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

It’s tough to tell from afar what exactly transpired and whether Platini was simply incredibly naive and greedy or something more. At the same time though, you’d imagine that somebody paying a bribe would not be so brazen as to do it directly from Fifa accounts and with no paperwork – even fake paperwork – to justify it.

Equally, you’d imagine a person receiving a bribe might demand something less traceable than a wire transfer from the “Home of Football” and that they might not be so open about declaring the payment to the taxman, as Platini did.

Whatever the case, you can understand why Platini’s crew have little faith in the ethics committee. He was provisionally suspended without being allowed to provide testimony or evidence.

Not only has he not yet been charged by the Swiss attorney general’s office (whose investigation kicked off the matter), he hasn’t been named as a suspect either. And a spokesman for the ethics committee, Andreas Bantel, said that he’d “certainly” be suspended for several years, before the committee even heard from Platini or his lawyer. That’s the kind of due process you might get in North Korea.