ALONG with three league titles, Jose Mourinho has won three manager of the month awards in his Premier League years, two fewer than Jurgen Klopp has plonked on his mantelpiece this season alone.
The only man to break Klopp’s award-dominance in 2019-20 is Frank Lampard back in October, after Chelsea had won three out of three and when life and football management seemed easy. A win against Palace in early November was the first time Chelsea had won six league games on the bounce since 2016-17, and even as fans and media alike celebrated the youth revolution, Lampard could sense difficulty ahead, asking “can we replicate that through a longer period, that's the test.”
Reader, they could not. Chelsea have won just four of their subsequent 14 league games yet have somehow remained in fourth place, like a piece of jetsam that refuses to be swallowed by the ocean. But eventually everything sinks and this weekend the chasing pack finally have their chance to catch and pass Chelsea, a clutch of sides that includes Saturday’s opponents Tottenham Hotspur.
The north London club appointed Jose Mourinho around the point Chelsea’s league season started to unravel, and as Mourinho himself likes to point out, he has taken Spurs from 12 points behind his former side to virtual parity. Behind Tottenham are Sheffield United, Manchester United, Wolves, Everton and Arsenal, all of whom can harbour realistic top four hopes if they put together some sort of run, although if there is one thing that defines this Premier League campaign below the lofty extremism of Liverpool, it’s wild inconsistency.
Chelsea, at their current 2019-20 points per game rate, will reach only 60 by the end of the season, a total which does not scream ‘Champions League qualification’. In fact, since the Premier League gained its fourth Champions League slot in 2001-02, the lowest points total to secure that final place was indeed 60 by Liverpool in 2003-04. A season with an unbeaten title winner and a big gap to fourth place? We’ve seen it happen.
Looking one place lower, across the last seven years the average number of points by the team finishing fifth in the Premier League is a daunting 70, something that Sheffield United haven’t achieved (based on 3pts/win) since the 1946-47 season, and even then in a 42 game campaign. Chris Wilder’s upwardly mobile Blades, though, are not going to need to add a daunting total of 31 additional points in their remaining 12 games. To reiterate, it really is not that sort of season.
And while the week-old ‘race for fifth’ competition is a refreshing twist on a classic, until clubs know the outcome of Manchester City’s appeal against Uefa’s judgement it remains safer for them to aim for fourth, which only adds to the pressure on Lampard and Mourinho ahead of Saturday’s derby della prestigio sfiorito. Chelsea and Tottenham need to be in the Champions League for both financial and reputational reasons and the Blues were more than happy to wave goodbye to Maurizio Sarri last summer, despite him steering the club to third place and winning the Europa League.
The last two seasons in which Chelsea have not qualified for the Champions League, 2015-16 and 2017-18, saw Mourinho and Antonio Conte dispensed with (Mourinho before Christmas). The fans might cut club legend Lampard some slack if his team continue to slide but it remains to be seen whether the club hierarchy will do so.
Similarly, it seems inconceivable that Tottenham would have moved for Mourinho in the autumn if they hadn’t seen the prospect of a top four finish rapidly disappearing from view as the relationship between Mauricio Pochettino and his squad started to disintegrate. Arsenal are a chilling example of how a club’s pulling power and finances can suffer once an absence from the Champions League becomes elongated over three or four seasons.
Once it was Tottenham pressed up against the window watching the Gunners and Chelsea qualify year after year. The residents of the world’s most expensive stadium cannot afford for that situation to recur. All of which means Saturday’s game at Stamford Bridge between the out-of-form-team and the out-of-players-team is set up to be a nervy classic.
It’s really isn’t the sort of season where a defeat will be disastrous, but it is one where a win will probably be worth more than the three points on offer. And if that winning manager is Mourinho, the psychological damage to his former midfield general in the other dugout could be hefty.
