If Manchester United win the Saturday lunchtime game at Man City, Chelsea have to beat Arsenal on Sunday.
If City-United is a draw, Chelsea have to match their result to stay in the title race with two games left.
Their next game is Wednesday night : Man United at Stamford Bridge.
Sunday’s game is an opportunity for Arsenal, who have never beaten Mourinho’s side and have not won a home game against Chelsea since 2003, when Edu and Henry scored in a 2-0.
Gallas will be tangling with his big friend Didier Drogba and I actually fancy Gallas to win that duel. And that could be crucial because, as I said the other day, Chelsea have become very one-Drogmensional
Arsenal may have to score twice to win. How will they do that? Who will score the two goals?
If Rosicky is 50-50 he will play, I’d say, because he is Arsene’s best bet for a goal and he’ll want to score against his friend Petr Cech. I also fancy Fabregas to have a big game. Is the improved Adebayor now good enough to score in this one?
The biggest question is : Which Chelsea will turn up at the Emirates?
Are they demoralised? Are they angry? Are they really up for it now? Or do they care more about a home game against Man United than an away game at Arsenal ?
And some of us wonder : has Jose Mourinho lost his nerve?
He was not himself at Anfield. Not before the game, or during it, or after losing that penalty shoot out by 4-1.
Leaving aside the obscene millions that Abramovich has spent to buy two Premiership titles, Mourinho has proved to be a fantastic coach, a match-planner who can also think on his feet and win a game from his Technical Area. He has created a team that is mentally tough and able to score late goals.
It’s common knowledge that Abramovich had decided to sack Mourinho, who has suffered from the infighting at the club. Lumbered with two old superstars he didn’t want, he had two keepers injured on the same day at Reading, lost Joe Cole, Robben and Terry for long periods, and still competed in four competitions and won the Carling Cup in February, reached the FA Cup Final, and the Champions League semi-final, winning the first leg, and taking the second leg at Anfield to a penalty shoot-out.
And while all this was going on, Peter Kenyon and two henchmen flew out to California to offer Jurgen Klinsmann £7 million a year to do the job Mourinho is doing for £5 million. When Klinsmann turned them down, they said they wouldn’t sack Mourinho !!!!
Is that any way to run a football club? Humiliate your coach in April, just as the season is coming to the boil?
Over the last two months, as the games have become more important, Chelsea have hit more and more long balls to Drogba.
At Anfield, when it came to the crunch, with some players unavailable and some just coming back from injury, knowing they’ve missed chances in the first half of the first game, knowing they haven’t played well in the second half of the first game, Mourinho goes 1-0 down after 22 minutes and he doesn’t react.
The old Mourinho, the super-confident Special One, would have changed it as soon as Agger scored. He’d have switched it, put Boulharouz on, pushed Essien up into midfield to take the game to Liverpool, got Shaun Wright-Phillips to run at them. But he didn’t react till it was too late and he used Robben, not SWP, who has been a terrific supersub of late.
Looking at a bigger picture, Mourinho should have become more expansive in his approach after winning titles in 2005 and 2006, creating a team that could entertain more. By now he should be playing swaggering football but instead he’s playing percentage football, scuffling football, as if he is still managing Porto. Chelsea are not Porto and do not want to be Porto.
If the club executives had been able and willing to work with him, Chelsea might have evolved into a team that could play spectacular football and win the hearts and minds of neutrals. They could have become the Real Madrid with a good defence.
But they didn’t work with him. Legend has it that Kenyon brought SWP and Mourinho said, “Fine, but I won’t play him.” And he didn’t.
TUESDAY NIGHT was a big failure for Chelsea and the biggest part of that failure was that everybody enjoyed it. Everybody wanted them to lose, except Chelsea fans. It was ABC- anybody but Chelsea, I don’t care who wins the Champions League as long as it’s not Chelsea. They lost the PR battle because they are such an obviously dysfunctional organisation.
And Roman Abramovich was not at Anfield !
Think about it : the world’s biggest club competition, the semi-final, you are 1-0 up from the first leg, and the owner is not there ? The guy who was allegedly crying on his superyacht after Ranieri lost in Monaco?
Compare Chelsea to Liverpool, where the new owners love Rafa Benitez and respect him, so he is confidence personified.
Rafa looks at Chelsea and sees that Lampard is burned out, running on empty, so he says to himself, “I don’t need Xabi Alonso in this game. But I’ll fox everybody by bringing him up for the mandatory media conference. Mascherano is so bloody good, I don’t need Xabi. I’m gonna put Zenden on the left because he’s strong boy who can tackle and stop Paulo Ferreira coming forward and crossing from an angle that’s dangerous for us, and I’ll put Pennant on the right to keep Ashley Cole back.”
And it worked. Chelsea stayed narrow, fired long diagonals up to Drogba, and Liverpool had done a week’s work on squeezing him. As soon as Pennant went off, Ashley Cole came forward a lot more.
Mourinho is pragmatic but nobody, but nobody, is as pragmatic as Benitez, the Spanish king of stopping, the nabob of nullification.
Mourinho has lost 21 games, five to Liverpool. They’ve played each other 15 times and Chelsea have won seven. In recent times, after Rafa figured Jose out, Liverpool have won the semi-final, the Community Shield, the league game at home and Tuesday night. So Rafa has won four of the last six. Nobody else comes close to that against Chelsea, do they?
Finally, spare a thought for the Ukrainian Express this week.
A consummate pro, an phenomenal gladiator for Kiev and AC Milan, Shevchenko has had a rough, rough year over here.
Mourinho slags him off in public, says he has to play for the team, gives him no credit for the way Drogba has improved. His arrival galvanised Drogba to a new level, and his reputation alone has created spaces for his centre forward. And since Sheva’s been out of the team, Chelsea have been using Drogba as a battering ram, as they did last season, which has worn him down.
You can argue all night long about how Chelsea play and how they should play but this much is undeniable : When Sheva is there, the team plays more football.
This week, in their biggest game of the season so far, a make-or-break second leg at Anfield, Shevchenko is not even in the squad on Tuesday and they lose on penalties. The following night he sees his old Milan mates thrash Manchester United 3-0. He can’t help but think : I should have been playing for one of those two teams. While 22 other players are thinking, I’ve missed the European Cup Final, he is thinking , “I’ve missed it twice in the same week.”
Also, Shevchenko’s absence has changed the Milan team.
He has been replaced by Ambrosini, a midfield squad player. So Kaka is the new Shevchenko, and Seedorf, pushing forward more, tries to be the new Kaka. He’s shorter, stockier, older, slower, but he did better than an ageing runt ever should against England’s league leaders. Made one, scored one, Athens here I come, Liverpool watch out, I want my fourth European Cup.
Clarence Seedorf, 33, is having a helluva career in football.
He could help Arsenal’s kids a lot, if he fancied living in London. But Arsene doesn’t do short-term signings. And he doesn’t do stocky. He would never have signed Kenny Sansom. Wrong body shape.