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Stoke City’s Marko Arnautovic piles pressure on Chelsea’s José Mourinho

Even, ignoring for one moment, the fact José Mourinho had become the Missing One, this was another day when it felt as though he might be straying dangerously close to his absence from the Chelsea bench becoming permanent. It was their third successive league defeat, for the first time in the Roman Abramovich era, and though the owner will never divulge his thoughts publicly it must be startling for everyone connected with the club that we are only in Bonfire Night week and Mourinho has already forsaken his record of having never lost seven times in a single season.
To trace the last time Chelsea lost three in a row would mean going back to Gianluca Vialli’s tenure in October 1999 and if Abramovich is looking for signs that his manager has it under control it cannot help that Mourinho was prohibited from entering the stadium. In total, they have lost 10 times in all competitions. It was not the worst performance of Chelsea’s season by any measure and they gave everything during their late search for an equaliser, but they have lost their knack of recovering from going behind and Marko Arnautovic’s goal, eight minutes into the second half, was decisive. Something has changed and it leaves Chelsea two places above the relegation zone, with problems all over the pitch and a genuine crisis enveloping the club. “That’s why you’re going down,” the Stoke fans sang, and the indignities continue to stack up for the team who were parading the championship trophy six months ago.
This defeat ended with a steward making a complaint of assault against Diego Costa for allegedly treading on his toe when he went to collect the ball. The television pictures looked innocuous and on this occasion Costa probably deserves the benefit of the doubt. Chelsea have much bigger concerns and, wherever he was watching it, Mourinho must have found it a chastening experience.
It wasn’t easy to keep count of the number of times the television cameras flashed to the leather padded seat he should have been occupying. There was a cardboard cutout in the away end and various Mourinho masks in other parts of the ground. Outside a chair had been placed on the grassy bank, with a note: “Reserved, Jose Mourinho.” As for the man himself, he was in a hotel somewhere, trying to avoid the photographers who had tailed the team bus on the way to the ground. Perhaps Mourinho should have sat in the stand wearing a Mourinho mask and hoped nobody noticed. Either way, it was unsatisfactory in all sorts of ways and not something Chelsea will want to repeat any time soon.

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