“I feel very lucky to have won the Champions League and the Premier League since I came”.
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Many suggest if Mourinho was to be axed, he would have gone by now, with the lack of alternatives a saving grace.
The self-described “Special One” had seemed to have weathered the storm that engulfed the club in the autumn as the champions tumbled towards the relegation zone in one of the most spectacular swings of fortune ever seen in English football.
Mourinho, who signed a four-year deal until June 2019 in August, told Chelsea TV: “It’s a knockout game”.
The Chelsea manager was adamant Glenn Murray’s winning goal eight minutes from time should have been ruled out for offside, and that his own side should have been awarded a penalty just after the hour mark when the ball struck Simon Francis’s arm in the area.
To extend the boxing analogy, Chelsea and Mourinho are on the ropes and landing few punches in retaliation.
The Portuguese again insisted he had no “right” to demand transfer activity in January.
Changes to the playing staff might be imposed from above, though.
Asked if he still has the confidence of the club, Mourinho said: “Yes, I believe”.
“I only know one way which is to work and give my maximum every day and if some players are not capable of that, giving the maximum day by day, match by match, the collective pays for that”, he said. Of course not scoring enough goals.
“Before this game I think it was fair to think that with our quality we could win three, four matches in a row”, he added in a post-match interview on Sky Sports.
Arsenal went to second by halting a three-game winless run with a 3-1 victory over Sunderland that saw Olivier Giroud score for both teams. “But in the first half we were not aggressive enough, in the second half we arrived in unsafe positions a lot of time with a lot of crosses from the right-hand side, but didn’t score”.
“Scoring goals is a lot about individuals”.
“We lost the game exactly at the moment where we were the strongest team, in our strongest period”, he added.
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Midfielder Matt Ritchie said: “I wouldn’t have thought they’d fancy it. We’ll try to make it a tough game for them”.
