The ESPN FC panel discuss whether or not Chelsea’s victory over Porto actually means anything.
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Chelsea’s season in the Premier League has been an utter disappointment and Jose Mourinho’s days could be numbered with the club.
Mourinho must overturn Chelsea’s Premier League troubles to ensure he is still in charge when the competition resumes in February, but is adamant they can still reach the top four, despite being 14 points adrift after 15 games.
The effect of a loss would have seen Chelsea drop to the Europa League and Mourinho said it was with a sense of pride that his players fought to avoid that scenario.
“I don’t need someone to tell me that I’m not having a great season”, added Costa, whose most recent goal was on November 21 in the win over Norwich.
The sight of Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich grinning and exchanging high-fives with his entourage afer Willian’s goal suggested Mourinho has bought himself a little time to get the Premier League champions back on track. I should have brought in Diego Lopez after my first year. I was talking about the practical side of things.
Mourinho paid tribute to his players for playing for a win against Porto when a draw would have been enough to secure qualification for the knock-out phase.
Costa again started on the bench in the weekend defeat to Bournemouth before returning to the starting line-up for Wednesday’s 2-0 win over Porto which earned the Blues a place in the last 16 of the Champions League. So, yes, clearly there’s a lack of confidence but his attitude was very good and his movement was much better. “It was important to win (against Porto) to make the fans happy and to recover our confidence”. When we have been favourites, we haven’t won. I just remember the first goal here against Kiev was a defender who scored an own-goal, today it was a defender who scored an own-goal. After all, he first won Europe’s top prize with an unfancied Porto side in 2004, before repeating the feat with Inter Milan.
“This is football. I’m not interested in what’s said in the Press”. We knew it was a hard match.
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“We are disappointed about the result”.
