Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho blamed a “dangerous” pitch for the ankle injury which is expected to prevent captain John Terry from playing in Sunday’s match at Tottenham. “I want to stay in the club, the club want me to stay”, he said after Chelsea’s 4-0 Champions League win against Maccabi Tel-Aviv.
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“The surface was bad and unsafe”, Mourinho added.
Mourinho was also less than impressed by a pitch which he took it upon himself to fix after Cahill’s goal, replacing large divots near his technical area.
It completed a good night’s work for the Premier League champions, although they had problems at the back early on.
“I reacted. He did too”, Mourinho told a news conference.
Mourinho has no fresh injur concerns heading to Israel but will be without the services of striker Radamel Falcao as the Monaco loanee recovers from a musuclar injury while no 1 keeper Thibaut Cortouis remains absent as he recovers from a knee injury. “We tried to protect ourselves by only training a little bit on it but to my surprise Maccabi trained on it after us, plus there was the warm-up before the game, so the pitch was really bad”.
Gary Cahill gave the Blues the lead in the first half from a corner before Maccabi’s Tal Ben Haim I saw red for kicking out at Diego Costa.
“I was saying before, such a handsome stadium, such a fantastic public”, said the Chelsea boss. We really needed to win this match. “At half-time in the dressing room there were a few kisses and a few cuddles”. I know if we lose we are going to Europa League [Chelsea could still qualify with a loss if Dynamo Kiev fail to beat Maccabi Tel-Aviv].
“My future? I think there are no rumours”.
“We were too confident, we were waiting for the second goal to come”.
The former Liverpool midfielder indicated that two wins over average sides won’t hide the fact that the Blues have been disappointing for the major part of the season.
Chelsea player Abdul Baba Rahman returned to the starting line-up in the UEFA Champions League after sitting out for the weekend’s Premier League game. I hope confidence comes.
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“If I did not have Pedro on the bench then I don’t think I could improve on Hazard’s performance for the last 20 minutes of the match”.
