Fixture No. 36 in Chelsea's Premier League season was sent by the
gods to let Jose Mourinho take revenge on all his enemies. Except
Liverpool, who will be a leap closer to their first English title for 24
years if their visitors on Sunday hoist the white flag.
Mourinho can take them all down in one 90-minute payback: the
league, referees, Manchester City, the television companies, even Roman
Abramovich for not buying him a fancy striker. A potentially momentous
clash had already been undermined by Chelsea's extraordinary home defeat
to Sunderland and Liverpool's win at Norwich, but now the 'Political
One' is threatening to field a shadow side at Anfield and treat the
match as a rude interruption to his quest to scrape past Atletico Madrid
in the Champions League semi-finals.
Attention-deflecting shields seldom come this big, and
Mourinho is laughing away behind this one. First, he can claim that the
Premier League's refusal to shift the fixture to Saturday displays the
warped priorities of the English game, even though the Chelsea v
Sunderland game was moved to a Saturday to accommodate a Tuesday night
date at Atletico.
There is no bluff
involved in him thinking he cannot win the league. But the stalemate at
Atletico and Real's 1-0 victory over Bayern Munich in the other
semi-final will have raised his hopes of winning the Champions League
with a third club. The loss of Petr Cech and John Terry to injury forces
him to think even more intensely about his team's defensive strategy at
Stamford Bridge on Wednesday.
Liverpool fans would be quite happy to see Mourinho field 11
Chelsea Pensioners. After 11 consecutive league wins, there is nothing
Chelsea can do to diminish the Anfield rebirth. If Liverpool return to
where they last were in 1990 it will not be because Mourinho turned
Machiavellian on the run-in. Yet the thrill is gone when a team who
could still theoretically win the title pass up that chance in favour of
glory in another competition.
Mourinho cannot break the rules by simply selecting a B team.
Clubs now avoid the kind of punishments that befell Blackpool and
Wolves. The 25-man squad, they argue, allows for rotation and facilitate
the fielding of strong teams in any circumstances. A greater threat
than the starting line-up itself is what message it conveys to
Mourinho's players. As we have seen in domestic cup competitions, if you
tell them the competition is irrelevant it tends to show on the pitch. A
5 per cent drop in intensity is sufficient to allow Luis Suarez through
on goal. So if Chelsea trot out beneath the "This is Anfield" sign
thinking the game is an exercise in injury-avoidance then the vagaries
of the fixture list and Mourinho's politicking will have deprived us of a
gloriously tense afternoon on Merseyside.
The other flaw in Mourinho's case is that Atletico also play
on Sunday. Wednesday night's battlefield is already level. Chelsea were
seeking an advantage, not parity, in inquiring about the possibility of a
switch to Saturday. All of which diverts the eye from the squandering
of points at Newcastle, Stoke, Aston Villa, Crystal Palace and at home
to Sunderland.
Mourinho redirected his forces to Europe when his domestic
campaign flamed out. No one can dispute his logic. But the negativity he
has brought to Chelsea's season will find its biggest outlet if he goes
in at half-steam against Liverpool. This was meant to be a Premier
League title race for the history books, not one decided by politics.
The Telegraph, London
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