José Mourinho has admitted for the first time that he “cannot promise” to secure Champions League qualification this season following Chelsea’s worst ever start to a Premier League campaign.
The title winners go into Saturday’s game against Liverpool a lowly 15th in the table after one win in four league matches, leaving them 11 points off the top and nine from the top four. Chelsea will hand late fitness tests to Diego Costa and Pedro Rodríguez ahead of the visit of Jürgen Klopp’s side for a game that the hosts, and the manager, dare not lose.
Mourinho stressed the only way his team will remove themselves from the doldrums will be through “working, working”. Yet, having been adamant up to now that his players would recover their poise to finish in the top four, the Portuguese was more guarded on Friday when asked about Champions League qualification. “I cannot promise,” he said before highlighting the inability of other ‘elite’ English clubs in recent years to reach Europe’s top competition.
“Chelsea is a big club,” he said. “It’s the club I chose to come to. A club I live in a very specific way, with respect. Liverpool is a big club. Man United is a super big club. Last season Liverpool won nothing and didn’t qualify for the Champions League, and they are still a big club. Two years ago United didn’t qualify for the Champions League, not even the Europa League, and won nothing, and they are still a monster club. That is football.”
The Football Association are hearing Mourinho’s appeal over his £50,000 fine and suspended one-match stadium ban, incurred after the Portuguese suggested referees were “afraid” to award his side decisions after the defeat to Southampton on 3 October, on Friday. The manager said he was “neither optimistic nor pessimistic” over the outcome.
