Premier League Preview: All Eyes on a Post-Mourinho Chelsea for Sunderland Visit

Given the fractious nature of a season that has yielded almost as many controversies as defeats, it was always a question of when, not if Jose Mourinho would cross the Rubicon.

Julius Caesar's crossing of a small river in northern Italy became one of ancient history's most pivotal events, and it began the Roman Empire. Mourinho's own moment of no return came after Chelsea's defeat to Leicester City on Monday night and helped get him the sack precipitate a mutual parting of ways. 

Given Chelsea's owner runs his own Roman empire in a manner not too dissimilar to old Julius, it was hardly a surprise to hear the bells ringing in west London on Thursday afternoon. Mourinho is as savvy of a manipulator of the media as there is, and in electing to use the word "betrayed" to describe how his players had made him feel, he surely knew he was effectively signing off his own death knell.

Here was a manager not so much breaking the sanctuary of the dressing room as lobbing a grenade inside. 

"It's a big frustration to accept because I feel like my work was betrayed, if that's the right word," Mourinho said in his post-match interview with Sky Sports.

It seems he decided it was indeed the right word, having used it in three separate press conferences. When Mourinho says "if that's the right word," it's akin to a supermodel asking, "Do you really find me attractive?"

Mourinho loves a conspiracy theory, but to suggest some of his players were attempting to "expose (one's country, a group, or a person) to danger by treacherously giving information to an enemy" was fanciful to the point of being embarrassing. It's also classic Mourinho. When things go wrong, he puts as much space between himself and the problem as humanly possible.

Having exhausted all of his options to inject a semblance of urgency into a side that has regressed from winning the Premier League title 228 days ago to losing nine of its 16 league matches this season, Mourinho could barely conceal his contempt.

"All last season I did phenomenal work,” he pouted on Sky Sports.

"I think I did such an amazing job, I brought players to a level that is not their level and, if this is true, I brought them to such a level where this season they couldn’t keep the super motivation to be leaders and champions."

That doesn't sound like what a man in a job would say. This is the language of someone already gone. And so it proved.

According to reports in the Telegraph, Mourinho sat with his players for their annual Christmas lunch at the club’s Cobham training ground, before he was informed of his fate in a 10-minute meeting with chairman Bruce Buck and director Eugene Tenenbaum. In better news, he found a paper hat and a £12 million payoff in his cracker. 

Football's Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor looked to have proved false the old "never go back" adage when last term Mourinho delivered for Roman Abramovich a customary league title in his second season, by eight points. Google it quietly, though, as the BBC's Ben Smith will attest, and it quickly becomes clear "third-season syndrome" has struck again for the Portuguese.

Results are, of course, the reason for his departure, but results hit such an astonishing nadir because he had lost the dressing room. The fact he effectively conceded as much will have made the decision even easier for Abramovich. And in fairness, whether through loyalty or a desire to shed an image of having no patience, he gave Mourinho more time to turn things around than many expected.

Chelsea technical director Michael Emenalo confirmed to Chelsea TV (h/t the Telegraph) that a "palpable discord" between manager and players had made Mourinho's position untenable.

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The facts of the matter remain that Chelsea Football Club is in trouble. The results are not good. There obviously seems to be a palpable discord between manager and players. We feel it was time to act.

The owner is forced to make what was a very tough decision for the good of the club.

Make no mistake about it, Chelsea Football Club, one of the biggest clubs in the world, is one point above relegation in the English Premier League. And that's not good enough.

Anybody, any fan, who loves the club or has any affiliation with the club can understand this club is in trouble. Something needed to be done.

"

It's interesting that everything about this season for Chelsea and Mourinho echoes the words of Manchester City chief executive Ferran Soriano. In explaining Barcelona's decision to hire Pep Guardiola over Mourinho during his time as a director with the Spanish giants, the latter's Achilles' heel is laid bare with telling prescience. 

"Mourinho is a winner, but in order to win he generates a level of tension that becomes a problem," said Soriano, as detailed in Diego Torres' The Special One: The Dark Side of Jose Mourinho. Clearly Diego is as big of a fan of Jose as Fernando.

Without being flippant, it's as though Mourinho has been almost bored this season, such has been his predilection to get himself into unnecessary scrapes.

As the Independent's Ian Herbert stated in his piece on the situation, Chelsea are a modern club that want a modern manager who behaves himself. Mourinho, conversely, is one of the last of the old-school brawlers who just can't help themselves from sniffing out trouble. 

There was the ill-advised-to-the-point-of-lunacy Eva Carneiro furore and also the intimation on Monday that Eden Hazard was exaggerating the injury he hobbled off with. There were embittered tete-a-tetes with referees (Mike "weak and naive" Dean, Robert "afraid" Madley and Jon "f--king weak" Moss), Arsene "specialist in failure" Wenger and the Football Association as well.

It's as though Mourinho has been bitten by Diego Costa and infected with a strand of the "start a fight in an empty room" virus that has seemingly plagued Chelsea's front man since he left the womb. 

Where once Mourinho was the master of alternating the carrot with the stick, this season he banned vegetables from Chelsea's menu altogether. A lack of vitamins and minerals would explain the majority of their performances.

Invariably speculation will reach a crescendo in the next few weeks as the football world plays a giant game of Guess Who?, with a special prize awarded to whoever can sniff out the mole Mourinho insists has been leaking information all season.

Given he's dropped and/or reportedly fallen out with John Terry, Nemanja Matic, Cesc Fabregas, Diego Costa, Oscar, Branislav Ivanovic and Hazard, we could be here some time. At Chelsea, he's never previously had to call his senior professionals into line.

This year, with the exception perhaps of Willian, the majority at one time or another have felt their manager's wrath. Clearly there are a few carrot fans in the club's ranks who aren't so keen on public dressing-downs. 

When Mourinho rejoined Chelsea two years ago, he conceded, per Sky Sports: "Every manager has weaknesses. I'm trying to improve them." Even the most trenchant of Chelsea supporters would struggle to argue he's a better manager now than the one who joined them from Porto in 2004.

It's as if he's attacked with such regularity to keep his players on their toes after last season's title success, to challenge them to become "serial winners." Instead, what has happened is the results have gotten worse with each new verbal affront, as Mourinho has emerged as a malevolent figure to those intimidated by his presence. Certainly, it has come to light how Chelsea have fewer leaders than anyone ever could have envisaged. 

Chelsea have not so much been poor this year as positively shambolic. Mourinho has overseen the worst-ever defence of a Premier League crown, with their 15-point return from 16 games six points fewer than Blackburn Rovers managed at the same stage back in 1995/96. Last season, his win rate was 66.67 per cent; this term, it's dipped to 36 per cent.

His average over seven seasons as Chelsea manager during two spells is 66 per cent, which puts him ahead of Sir Alex Ferguson and any other Premier League manager who has overseen more than 100 games, per the Telegraph. Talk of him being a spent force may be a little premature. 

When he returned to English shores for a second stint at Stamford Bridge, he gave an impassioned speech of wanting to build a dynasty, espousing the virtues of stability to anyone who would listen.

Having flirted with Europe's hottest clubs on a tour that took in Italy and Spain, he now wanted to come home. The man who had won seven league titles (eight, including last season) across four European nations was ready to settle down with his true love.

Thirty months on, his only hope of leaving a dynasty is if he does a Bobby Ewing and the previous 16 league matches are brushed away as just a bad dream. That's a shower scene only Chelsea supporters could enjoy.

As a short-term fixer, to come into a club and to quickly galvanise it into a title-winner, he's still the best in the business. Beyond that, in terms of longevity, there's nothing to suggest he has the capacity to keep evolving a team beyond its initial flush of success.

Arsene Wenger may be a specialist in failure, but he's one who has got Arsenal into the top four in each of his 19 seasons in charge. Mourinho leaves Chelsea with the club just a point outside of the relegation places.

Chelsea v Sunderland, Saturday at 3 p.m. BST

During Sunderland's visit to Stamford Bridge on Saturday, it's almost certain Jose Mourinho's name will reverberate around the stadium at regular intervals. Black Cats boss Sam Allardyce has been quick to pay tribute to a manager he has the utmost respect for ahead of his side's trip south.

“I’m sad to see Mourinho go because I got to know him quite well and he’s a great character. He’s a loss to the Premier League,” Allardyce said, per the Guardian.

"I’m shocked to say the least. They must have somebody lined up," he added, before dusting off his CV.

In west London, the Portuguese remains an unparalleled icon. But as his last two jobs, at Real Madrid and now Chelsea, have ended in similar circumstances—the title in the second season, before capitulation in the third—for the first time in his career, he may be questioning himself. 

Almost certainly in the boardrooms of Europe's biggest clubs, the question will be asked if Mourinho still holds the lustre of yesteryear or his star is fading. That he has won two titles in his last five seasons and no European trophies, against a backdrop of six league titles and two Champions Leagues in the eight campaigns prior to joining Madrid, suggests his famed methods may just need a little light titivating. 

Give it a few years and he might be back at Chelsea. After all, as Burton said of Taylor: "I might run from her for a thousand years and she is still my baby child. Our love is so furious that we burn each other out."

 
Manchester United v Norwich City, Saturday at 3 p.m. BST—Could Louis van Gaal be next?

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Mourinho to Van Gaal after getting sacked... pic.twitter.com/TPT66WfGlV

— BenchWarmers (@BeWarmers) December 17, 2015"

Everton v Leicester City, Saturday at 3 p.m. BST—Are the Foxes serious title contenders?

Arsenal v Manchester City, Monday at 8 p.m. BST—Will Mesut Ozil prove the difference again for Wenger's side?