Jose Mourinho, Chelsea's Exit and the Absence of Ruthlessness

You look at John Terry and Gary Cahill—or Kurt Zouma, for that matter—and you see big, powerful men who are good in the air.

You look at Thibaut Courtois and see a confident goalkeeper who commands his box.

You add in Branislav Ivanovic and Nemanja Matic and begin to wonder how Chelsea could ever concede a goal in the air.

Yet it wasn’t just against Paris St-Germain that Chelsea’s vulnerability to crosses has been apparent. This is an ongoing problem.

It’s always easy to cherry-pick examples, but Frank Lampard’s equaliser for Manchester City at the Etihad in September—the only thing that means there is still even the semblance of a title race—and Robin van Persie’s late equaliser for Manchester United at Old Trafford in October stand out.

The vulnerability Chelsea have to players who run directly at the centre of their defence is well known, but before that there was this strange deficiency against the crossed ball: Eight of the first 11 goals Chelsea conceded this season came from crosses.

That’s not necessarily an issue to do with the central defenders or the goalkeeper. In the league, according to WhoScored.com, Terry still wins 2.7 aerial duels per game (and loses 1.1), while Cahill wins 2.9 per game (and loses 1.1). Those are good, solid figures. And Courtois remains one of the most impressive goalkeepers in the world.

At least part of the issue, early in the season, was the licence Jose Mourinho gave his full-backs to get forward, which meant there was often space for opposing wide players to get crosses into the box (and there is always something of a lottery about crosses, something Herbert Chapman, the great Arsenal coach, noted as early as the 1920s: No matter how good the delivery, the odds always favour the defender, and yet however good the defenders are there will always be a ball that lands perfectly for the forward).

Equally there have been times when the full-backs have been left exposed by the failure of the wide midfielders to track—as was the case at the Etihad, when Mourinho blamed Andre Schurrle for City’s equaliser.

But neither of those issues were at play on Wednesday. Corners are supposed to be Mourinho’s strongest suit. He is a meticulous organiser, and nowhere is meticulous organisation more important than in defending set plays. There was a minor wobble in that regard in November and December last season, culminating in Chelsea conceding what turned out to be Jozy Altidore’s only goal for Sunderland in the 4-3 win at the Stadium of Light, but Mourinho soon fixed that.

“When a team cannot defend two corners, and concedes twice, that team doesn’t deserve to win,” Mourinho said at the post-match press conference, and it’s impossible to disagree with that (it should be noted as well that only a brilliant save from Courtois prevented Thiago Silva scoring from a corner moments before the second equaliser). Given the height in the PSG side, their threat from set pieces cannot have come as a surprise.

So what went wrong? The only sensible conclusion is probably that drawn by Mourinho, that his side somehow failed to cope with “the pressure.” Yet that is what Mourinho sides are supposed to be good at: They’re the ones who stare down an opponent and make them blink, as Internazionale did, to offer only the most famous example, in the semi-final against Barcelona in 2010.

This wasn’t a one-off: In six of Chelsea’s eight biggest games this season they have taken the lead and ended up drawing, which is the very opposite of expectations for a Mourinho side, who are supposed to be masters at killing games.

There has been a suggestion abroad for some time that the trauma of his final season at Real Madrid diminished Mourinho, that it somehow shook that unshakable self-confidence and added a glimmer of doubt to his single-mindedness.

It’s a theory that’s impossible to prove, but it’s certainly true that this Chelsea is not as ruthless as it ought to be.