You could hear the sighs of relief around Stamford Bridge at the final whistle as Chelsea ended a run of three straight Premier League defeats, although none were as loud as José Mourinho’s.
Back in his usual habitat of his side’s once impregnable fortress after his one-match stadium ban, Mourinho spent the majority of the last 20 minutes of this nervy win over Norwich glued to his seat on the bench.
When the referee, Craig Pawson, finally blew for full-time to confirm Diego Costa’s second-half goal as the match winner, the Chelsea manager allowed himself a brief punch of the air in triumph before disappearing down the tunnel.
“It was bit of relief,” he admitted. “I’m not nervous on the bench, I am OK, I am fine. I think we don’t deserve the heartbeat of the last four minutes. I think we deserve to be enjoying the last three, four minutes with a two, three, 4-0 result, relaxed. But we couldn’t.”
Despite Costa’s third Premier League goal of the season, that Norwich could so easily have snatched an equaliser late on could largely be attributed to his failure to take more than one of the succession of chances that came his way. By this stage last year, the Spain international had scored 11 times in the Premier League but he looks a shadow of that player.
After side-footing over from the penalty spot having been picked out by Pedro, Costa wasted the best chance of the first half when he dallied for too long and was denied by John Ruddy in the Norwich goal. That miss was not well received in the Chelsea dugout and Mourinho must have been considering substituting his combative striker moments before the game’s key moment arrived. A quickly taken free kick from Cesc Fàbregas caught the Norwich defence cold and this time Costa found the corner of the net.
“If I had to choose somebody to score the winning goal, I would go exactly with him,” Mourinho said. “Every game that you don’t score goals, you get 5kg more. You get heavy and the pressure is there.
“In the first half he misses two chances. The second one, in the last minute, is really a big one. So it was important for him. Important for us, the result and the goal, but I think also for him.”
Yet if this does end up being a turning point in Costa and Chelsea’s season, Mourinho will know that Eden Hazard deserves just as much credit. The Belgian has looked like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders in recent months but offered a timely reminder of his quality just when Chelsea needed him..
Mourinho rose to applaud him with the rest of the home supporters when he was substituted in injury time after an energetic performance that should have created at least one goal had Costa been at his best. In the end, though, it was one moment of indecision from the well-organised Norwich defence that proved decisive, much to the chagrin of Alex Neil.
“The first thing we should do is get around the ball to stop it being taken quickly, or take the ball with us, and even then recover our positions quicker,” lamented the Norwich manager, who also felt his side could have had a penalty when Robbie Brady was felled by a fast-retreating Willian in the first half. “That little lapse in concentration ultimately cost us the match.”
After the last few results, Mourinho will be thankful that it did. Hazard aside, Chelsea still look a shadow of the team that won the title last season and the decision to drop César Azpilicueta and play the Brazilian teenager Kenedy out of position at left-back illustrates the depth of their problems. Branislav Ivanovic did make his first start since the 3-1 home defeat against Southampton at the beginning of October, although there seemed to be lack of cohesion in both defence and attack.
Against better sides, they will surely have to improve, although Mourinho was realistic enough to admit that they still have plenty of work to do before the season is anywhere near back on track. “We have to go game after game,” he said. “But I said already that the fourth position for me is not an impossible mission. If you ask me the title I would say impossible mission. Maybe Tom Cruise can do it,” he said with the afternoon’s first hint of a smile.
“It’s complicated because you have to recover points from four candidates. But to recover positions and points to teams that normally are in the middle of the table and to grab one of the ones that go up and will also have a little bit of a collapse for sure, because everybody will have. But match after match.”
