Something stirred at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday night. The support cascading down from the stands for José Mourinho, which reached a peak in the first half after Chelsea went ahead against Dynamo Kyiv and again towards full-time following Willian’s late winner but didn’t waver even at 1-1, was like an echo from an earlier age.
Skilfully milked as it was by Mourinho, of course, but no less genuine for that, it was the sound of a support that has become spoiled by endless success over the past 12 years tapping into an echo of its past. The sound of a crowd acknowledging the football fan’s perverse thrill at revelling in adversity and conjuring a backs-to-the-wall mentality.
Chelsea’s first win in five still contained too many hallmarks of the recent malaise to be definitively declared a corner turned. But it nonetheless shored up Mourinho’s position in the short-term and underlined the impression that, whatever else, he definitively retains the backing of the Stamford Bridge faithful.
The contrast with his departure eight years ago was instructive. Then, a half-full stadium (with grumblings about the manner in which Chelsea had started the season and murmurings about their style of play exacerbated by a protest over ticket prices) saw Chelsea draw 1-1 with Rosenborg. Two days later he was gone, power struggles with Roman Abramovich and, internally, with Frank Arnesen having spelled the end.
This time, things are different. Abramovich, having swallowed his pride and brought Mourinho back, needs it to work as much as the Portuguese does.
Mourinho’s return was supposed to herald a new phase in the Chelsea project – one in which he bought into a longer-term vision, was happy to work with Michael Emenalo and others on transfers and took a wider responsibility for bringing kids through and so on. One in which he built and nurtured rather than bludgeoned his way to success.
Although much of that might have been a collective delusion, and shown up by the events of recent weeks as such, the feeling persists that getting rid of Mourinho all over again is the last move Abramovich wants to make.
Against that, he will be weighing the blow to his pride and to the club’s new-found determination to operate as a sane business that any threat to next season’s Champions League participation would bring.
The other intriguing contrast was with Old Trafford on Tuesday night. There, fans booed Louis van Gaal for what they perceive to be a failure to continue the blood line of Manchester United’s rich history of swashbuckling attack.
At Chelsea, their support for an embattled manager and a team unrecognisable from this time last year was a plea for continuity, for something to cling to, for their club to be more than a revolving door of managers and players.
The banners that hail “the special one” and proclaim him “one of us” may overlook the inconvenient truth that he would probably have preferred to go to Old Trafford than Stamford Bridge when he came back to England.
But his gratitude after the match for the voluble backing from the Stamford Bridge faithful was genuine and heartfelt. Afterwards, he talked about staying at Chelsea for “four, 10, 14 years”.
One thing is clear. Even in adversity and fighting for his job Mourinho, who at times this season has looked all at sea, still makes it all about him.
The support of the fans certainly doesn’t make him unsackable. This, remember, is the owner who dispensed with the hugely popular Carlo Ancelotti in a corridor a year after he had delivered the double and who employed Rafael Benítez in what appeared an exercise in trolling his entire fanbase.
But if, as seems apparent, he is minded to keep faith with Mourinho unless absolutely forced to act then the support of the fans is another factor that weighs in favour of the Portuguese.
This remains a club whose intentions remain fundamentally unknowable, hidden behind the wan half-smile of the owner in his executive box. If anything, despite the transition from heavily subsidised plaything to a more sustainable business model, the consolidation of power around Abramovich’s chosen troika of close advisers – Bruce Buck, Marina Granovskaia and Eugene Tenenbaum – has become more entrenched.
That can still lead to some situations, such as that surrounding the treatment of Eva Carneiro, being fundamentally mishandled and gives the air of a club that continues to orbit around the whims of one man.
All the factors that have been cited as part of the toxic cocktail – a failure to augment a title-winning squad with its attendant effect on Mourinho’s mood, a late return from pre-season, the ongoing poisonous fallout from the Carneiro affair, key players off-form and off-colour – are still there.
But at some point Chelsea will have to turn that negative energy into a positive. And the performance against Kyiv was more redolent of the encouraging displays against Stoke City and at Kyiv than the limp surrender to Liverpool.
There was the same lumpiness to the performance – an impressive first half followed by a slump in which defensive jitters multiplied, an all-action display from Willian, a misfiring Diego Costa – but no lack of energy and effort. The difference this time being they had a slice of luck with the own goal and a moment of quality in Willian’s free-kick that delivered a vital victory.
If John Terry had set the tone with a rallying press conference and the evening’s programme notes continued it by making endless reference to the fans bonding in adversity and getting behind the team, then they did enough on the field to ensure Saturday’s clash with Stoke City becomes as much opportunity as threat.
Any talk of recovery remains premature and anyone witnessing what has become a familiar sight of the slow, silent trudge back to the halfway line after Kyiv equalised could only conclude confidence remains brittle.
Yet as the PA rolled out Chelsea’s repertoire of victory songs afterwards for what after all was the narrowest of group stage wins against inferior opponents, there was a sense this could yet turn out to be a significant European night – albeit for reasons they could never have predicted at the beginning of the season.
