“In my case, I’m looking to get the best out of my players”. The Portuguese is a renowned man-manager and cultivator of player loyalty but aside from rallying his troops around him, what can Jose do to dig his way out? It doesn’t matter if that’s in the middle or on the flanks’. The relationship seemed to be deteriorating between the manager and star-player.
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Hazard’s poor form this season has coincided with rumours suggesting the Belgian winger is unhappily working under Mourinho, a story the 24-year-old is eager to quash.
Hazard, however, denies there is any friction.
Eden Hazard reveals that he told Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho to play him at number 10 in order to help end the team’s Premier League slump. I’ve heard a lot of things about this, but no. Everything is good with him. Norwich manager Alex Neil has no doubt Chelsea will come good sooner rather than later, but has every intention of heaping more pressure on Mourinho with a positive result at Stamford Bridge.
“We spoke together before the Stoke game”, he said. League leaders Leicester City have double the points and with one-third of the season already done with, the ascent to the top looks increasingly hard. The score could have been better but sometimes 1-0 is enough.
Norwich now sit a place above Chelsea in the table after their win against Swansea on 7 November halted a four-game losing streak.
“Nothing that went public is something that I didn’t know before”, added Mourinho, who signed a new contract until June 2019 in August. “We are never lucky and you put Chelsea in a position where in the last four minutes the team that rarely crossed the halfway line, they have a throw in, a corner, a rebound, and we could lose two points, which would again be very undeserved”. In the first half as he skipped away from a cluster of Norwich players there was a gasp, not so much of pleasure as relief, recognition, curdled hope. You just have to keep going, waiting for better performances. “I tried to play my normal game, I gave everything in training and on the pitch, but…” his voice trails off.
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“It’s important for us to go to a good period, because the owner deserves, the board deserves, the supporters deserve so much”. Mourinho said he was not generally nervous during a game but the dying moments were tough.
