Stifling the life out of football

If we go on like this, we'll have the life strangled out of football.

Chelsea stifled every attempt by Liverpool to bring beauty to the game at Anfield yesterday, but the superbly organised defence of the visitors left no room for manoeuvre. It was a shame that Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard - such an influence on the club - made the mistake that led to the first goal. The second goal - deep into stoppage time - was an irrelevance, as Liverpool pushed forward to try and get the equaliser.

With six across the back and a deep midfield three in front of them, Chelsea - with exceptionally strong players, and superbly organised - were always going to be difficult to break down, and so it proved.

But it is a bit rich for Jose Mourinho to play like this when earlier in the season he accused West Ham (who defended solidly at Stamford Bridge for a 0-0 draw) of 'playing 19th century football', and when Chelsea have virtually unlimited resources from the pockets of Roman Abramovich. I might understand a team with little chance of winning to play by parking the proverbial bus, but when it's a team who has won so many things, with two potential starting elevens better than most teams in the Premier League, it makes me fear for the future of football.

But of course, this was the way Chelsea won the Champions League two years ago. Heaven help us if they manage to do so again this year.

A couple of months ago Everton boss Roberto Martinez accused Chelsea of employing every trick in the book to win games - and they do. So we had the usual time wasting, tiptoeing forward at free-kicks, haranguing of the referee, and similar for the fourth official. Again - from a club with millions? Come on.

Mourinho says that Chelsea deserve respect. Sorry, but actually they do far too many things that deserve loss of respect..

Let's hope they don't continue to win by stifling the life out of football.

Mourinho will never change

What pathetic petulance.

Jose Mourinho excelled himself at the weekend with his 'four-point' press conference at which he allowed no questions, but merely made four points of 'congratulations' after Chelsea's home defeat by Sunderland on Saturday evening.

He congratulated:

1. His players.
2. Sunderland on their win.
3. Referee Mike Dean on his 'unbelievable', 'fantastic' performance.
4. Referee supervisor Mike Riley for 'the way the championship is going.

At least 3 and 4 were obviously sarcastic, but, I suppose, if asked, he could easily deny that and say, 'Listen to what I said...'

Talk about an ungracious, sore loser. It was claimed that Mourinho, on his return to English football this season, had changed. Could we expect a more magnanimous, more gracious Mourinho?

Well, it appears, no, not a bit of it.

Losing your 77-game unbeaten home league record must be annoying, but trying to blame the referee, and - of all things - the referees' supervisor, for Chelsea's home defeat, is verging on embarrassing.

Mind you, we assume he's making some implied reference to Dean's award of a penalty for the foul by Azpilicueta or Jozy Altidore. Maybe not: maybe he's annoyed at Dean's failure to penalise Chelsea's Ramires for a blatant elbow on Sebastian Larsson, only a couple of yards in front of Dean; or the failure of the officials to deal with Chelsea assistant coach Rui Faria in a more comprehensive and timely fashion when he had to be held back from attacking Dean.

It's all rather tiresome.

Chelsea must be favourites

The last couple of weeks have seen a bit of shuffling at the top of the Barclays Premier League, with Chelsea's card popping up at the top of the pack.

We can ignore all Jose Mourinho's nonsense about Chelsea being a "little horse". They are a big club backed by Abramovich's billions and no silly words from Mourinho can disguise that. Chelsea's performance to beat Manchester City at the beginning of last week was excellent and some recent displays by Eden Hazard show him to be a world-class player (and I never use that term lightly).

I make Chelsea favourites for the title.

Manchester City have shown vulnerability recently, with the defeat to Chelsea and a tame 0-0 draw at Norwich City, and, despite some obviously exciting wins, to me they don't seem to have the team resilience that Chelsea possess.

Arsenal have faltered - as I think most people expected them to do - and they are not yet strong enough to win the title. But I wish Arsene Wenger well - he's still one of the best managers there is.

Liverpool remain an outside bet. They are only four points behind leaders Chelsea, and in Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge they have genuine goalscorers. But I don't see them as quite the finished article yet.

As for the rest - Tottenham Hotspur, Everton and Manchester United - they will fight to get into the top four, but I don't think any of them will make it. They may not be keen to land up in the Europa League. So, how do you fight for fourth, but ensure you don't finish fifth?

City can be stopped; exciting games ahead

Manchester City had another big win last night, 5-1 against Tottenham. Are they unstoppable?

Well, no, I don't think so. While they have been scoring for fun (68 goals in 23 league games so far), they do show occasional vulnerability in defence. Whereas teams like Spurs (sorry Spurs fans) are not good enough to hold them at bay, they very top teams (e.g. Chelsea and City's next Champions League opponents Barcelona) are capable of stopping City.

Ironically Chelsea failed to beat West Ham United last night, despite having a record-equalling (while failing to score) count of 39 shots. Jose Mourinho has accused West Ham of playing football from the 19th Century. Well, he's not afraid to vary his playing style, and although he wasn't in charge at the time, didn't Chelsea win the Champions League a couple of years ago by basically trying to stop Bayern Munich from playing?

West Ham boss, Sam Allardyce, was (quite rightly) unrepentant. He said: "He can't take it, can he? He can't take it because we've outwitted him - he just can't cope.

"He can tell me all he wants, I don't care.

"I love to see Chelsea players moaning at the referee, trying to intimidate him, Jose jumping up and down saying we play rubbish football.

"It's brilliant when you get a result against him. Hard luck, Jose."

There are many ways to play this great game of ours, Jose. Deal with it.

So on to the match on Monday night: Manchester City v Chelsea. This will go a long way to indicating whether City really are destined for the League title this year.

Then barely two weeks later the same two teams meet in the FA Cup 5th round. Mouth-watering.

Mourinho - graceless as ever as his team salvages a point

Couldn't Jose Mourinho find it within himself to simply admit that his team had been lucky to get their injury-time penalty against West Brom on Saturday?

It was, frankly, never a penalty as Ramires ran into West Brom defender Steven Reid and took the opportunity to "go to ground". Hapless referee Andre Marriner was fooled and awarded the spot kick. This was duly dispatched by Eden Hazard to keep Mourinho's unbeaten home record in the league with Chelsea intact.

Mourinho said after the game: "The penalty came at a moment when it's difficult for the team that is winning to accept. You are waiting for the last minute and the whistle to come, but this one was a penalty. I didn't know, no idea; but on the screen, no doubts."

He also tried to deflect attention away from this poor decision by claiming that his team should have had a free-kick before West Brom's second goal. He said: "It's a free kick just in front of the fourth official [what's that got to do with it?]. It's a big mistake from the referee." Wrong again. Branislav Ivanovic dwelt on the ball and wasn't strong enough to retain it under the challenge of Stephane Sessegnon.

For poor West Brom manager, Steve Clarke (assistant to Mourinho in his previous spell at Chelsea), it was a different viewpoint for the penalty decision: "I'm flabbergasted at the decision. I can't believe he gave it. I saw it at the time. I've been in the game a long time and I knew Ramires was already on the way down before anyone was near him."

Back to Mourinho's comment: it wasn't difficult to accept because of the time of the penalty; it was difficult to accept because it wasn't a penalty - big difference!

Real Madrid face charges for time-wasting dismissals

Sadly, people in professional football are always trying to stretch the rules to the limit.

So it was on Tuesday night when Real Madrid seemingly contrived to get two players sent off so that they would avoid suspensions in the knock-out stages of the Champions League.

Both Xabi Alonso and Sergio Ramos were booked for a second time and therefore sent off in the latter stages of Madrid's 4-0 win at Ajax. The misdemeanour in each case was a piece of outrageous time-wasting that rightly resulted in a booking - exactly what each player wanted. They will now be suspended for the meaningless match against Auxerre, and their slate will be clean for the first game of the knock-out competition.

UEFA, though, appear to have seen through this ruse, and have charged Real Madrid with improper conduct of manager Jose Mourinho and four players (Alonso, Ramos, goalkeeper Iker Casillas and substitute Jerzey Dudek). The latter two appeared to be part of the conspiracy, passing messages to the two players who were already on a booking each.

Well, good for UEFA. It will be interesting to see what punishment they mete out. Perhaps suspensions for two games in the knock-out stages?

Mourinho and Beckham face old friends in Champions League

A pair of amazing ties came out of the Champions league draw today.
Firstly, Jose Mourinho was drawn against his old club as Inter Milan drew Chelsea.
Secondly, David Beckham got his wish as AC Milan (where he is on loan) were drawn to face his old club Manchester United.

Arguably, Arsenal enjoyed the easiest draw of the English clubs, against Porto. Perhaps that will will quell Arsene Wenger's recent bout of moaning.

It will be fascinating to see ex-Chelsea manager Mourinho pit his wits against current incumbent, Carlo Ancelotti. Plenty of Chelsea fans feel that Mourinho should never have been sacked.

Just as interesting will be the return of David Beckham to Old Trafford, where he will no doubt get a tremendous reception. The odds are slightly in MIlan's favour; United have not knocked them out in four attempts.

Full Draw:

Stuttgart v Barcelona

Olympiakos v Bordeaux
Inter Milan v Chelsea
Bayern Munich v Fiorentina
CSKA Moscow v Seville
Lyon v Real Madrid
FC Porto v Arsenal
AC Milan v Manchester United