Jose Mourinho blasted members of his team for what he described as “a failure of individual performance” after only the second home Premier League loss of his Chelsea career.
Crystal Palace inflicted a 2-1 defeat on Mourinho in his 100th home league game in charge of Chelsea.
“I am not happy,” Mourinho said. “I cannot say I had 11 men performing. Two or three of them their individual performance was not good, I made mistake not to change one of them who stayed on for 90 minutes. I needed a fourth substitute, and I only have three.”
After lauding the efforts of his opponents – “Crystal Palace come with everything, the team was ready, the players were ready, the fans were ready, they come with a fantastic spirit” – Mourinho praised the performance of Kurt Zouma, Gary Cahill, Cesar Azpilicueta and Diego Costa among his own players. Willian, Nemanja Matic and Azpilicueta were substituted.
Who dominated at Stamford Bridge?
Mourinho refused to elaborate about the target of his ire, but a process of elimination suggests he was referring to one of Branislav Ivanovic, Eden Hazard or Cesc Fabregas, all of whom completed 90 minutes without once looking close to form.
Mourinho said: “If a player is not performing, there are two ways of looking at it. You wait for performance to come, or maybe the moment has arrived where you have to change. I could go either way.”
Ahead of the international break, he added: “Most of the players now go to their national team. I stay two weeks with four players, I can’t work, I can’t improve, I can’t do anything during the next two weeks to improve my team.”
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
