José was easily the best manager in the world when he managed Porto, us and then Inter. He peaked in 2008/09 when he won the treble, beating Pep's Barcelona on the way with Inter.

Something changed at Real Madrid, his invincibility aura around him had gone. He's never been the same manager since then. Yes, he has his moments and he did win the league with us during 14/15 but on the whole, his last 5/6 years as a manager have been close to disasturous. Sacked by Real, Chelsea and United.

You can't discredit him for the achievments between 04-07 for us, he was magnificent and built a solid platform that ended up winning us the CL in 2012.

6 minutes ago, JMaher94 said:

José was easily the best manager in the world when he managed Porto, us and then Inter. He peaked in 2008/09 when he won the treble, beating Pep's Barcelona on the way with Inter.

Something changed at Real Madrid, his invincibility aura around him had gone. He's never been the same manager since then. Yes, he has his moments and he did win the league with us during 14/15 but on the whole, his last 5/6 years as a manager have been close to disasturous. Sacked by Real, Chelsea and United.

You can't discredit him for the achievments between 04-07 for us, he was magnificent and built a solid platform that ended up winning us the CL in 2012.

IMO a prime Jose would have won us the 2008 CL as well.

2 hours ago, benjsross said:

We were going to win the league in 2005 regardless. The investment in the squad in comparison to the rest of the league has no comparison in English football history. 

 

Agree with some of the things you have said in this thread, but I think you are way off with this one.

There are many examples of clubs having spent the most/having the best squad, and not winning the league.

The competition was there in the form of Arsenals invincibles and an Alex Ferguson United side. Winning the league was never a formality.

Regardless, there was something about that Chelsea side between 04-06 which was special, something you don't naturally achieve by buying lots of good players. It was an animal of a team, ruthlessly effective and blessed with metal steel that you rarely see. It was a proper cohesive unit, and Jose was a massive, massive part of that.

The Chelsea side from 04-05 is arguably the best side in Premier league history. Yes a lot of the records were broken by City last year, but I would never bet against that 04-5 side against anyone. Just 15 goals conceded in a premier league season (a record that still stands). Outrageous.

As others have said, Jose is no longer the man or manager he was when we had him in his prime, but that version of Jose Mourinho was the best manager in the world at the time.

The revisionism is strong in this thread...

i think most will all love him again now he has wiped off the manure

10 minutes ago, luckywerthers said:

i think most will all love him again now he has wiped off the manure

I very much doubt it, most people didn't go off him because he went to United it was the way he himself turned on the club. He made his own bed so now has to lie in it.

I'm with Argo on this.    Like most people I loved him (or more accurately in my case, lusted after him) during his first incarnation.  But in his second incarnation he turned into a narcissistic menopausal middle-aged diva who had temper tantrums on and off pitch.  I never want to see him associated with Chelsea again.

 

Anyway he is stinking rich - need never work again in his life.  So waste no sympathy on him.

Now hes not Scum united manager, lets not forget what he has done for our club 

3 premier league titles

1 FA Cup

3 League Cups

1 Charity Shield

To claim that the club would have won some or just one of these despite him is incredulous and dishonest imo

Let's show the man some bloody respect, just cus he fell out with the CFC board 3 years ago (I imagine that's not too hard to do in reality) doesn't mean we should re write  his and ours' glorious history. Yes, I admit I have enjoyed his antics and decline at Manure Utd. But that's done now. I wish him nothing but the best in his future endeavors and I'm sure hes very happy at home with his family for Christmas counting the zeroes on Ed Woodward's festive pay off check. 

He will always be our special and then almost special one !!

 

One of the richest earners in modern football, never played the game. Maybe his strength turned out to be his weakness?

40 minutes ago, General said:

Now hes not Scum united manager, lets not forget what he has done for our club 

3 premier league titles

1 FA Cup

3 League Cups

1 Charity Shield

To claim that the club would have won some or just one of these despite him is incredulous and dishonest imo

Let's show the man some bloody respect, just cus he fell out with the CFC board 3 years ago (I imagine that's not too hard to do in reality) doesn't mean we should re write  his and ours' glorious history. Yes, I admit I have enjoyed his antics and decline at Manure Utd. But that's done now. I wish him nothing but the best in his future endeavors and I'm sure hes very happy at home with his family for Christmas counting the zeroes on Ed Woodward's festive pay off check. 

He will always be our special and then almost special one !!

 

I think we may well have one a trophy or two without him yet never so many so soon.

Agree in his first spell it was like a revolution and evolution and he turned us into a trophy winning machine.

For that he has earnt our respect yet no longer adulation.

4 hours ago, coco said:

One of the richest earners in modern football, never played the game. Maybe his strength turned out to be his weakness?

Of course he played the game - for several years. First, revisionism from you in this thread mate for which you were rightly taken to task over & now a palpable untruth.

I will never disrespect him since he brought us so many trophies and transformed us into the extremely successful club we are now. Another manager may have won the league with us, with the investment put into us by Roman, but he brought about an instant transformation into a side that could compete on all fronts. He made the spine of our team into a resilient and hungry core that stuck with us for the guts of a decade. Any suggestion to the contrary can be debunked by what Cech, Lamps, Terry and Drogba would say about him, that he's the best coach they've ever worked under.

Of late he's just seemed weary of football, the press, players and the modern game. He needs a break, and I hope to see him do well with another club at some point in the future. I don't believe he's lost his touch but the change in personality from charismatic but likeable to the cantankerous, narcissistic manager he became in the last 3 years seems to be a lingering echo of his time at Real Madrid, which definitely caused him so much frustration. A two or three year break from the game might rejuvenate him. 

10 hours ago, Argo said:

 He made his own bed so now has to lie in it.

i thought he was living in an Hotel...

6 hours ago, youlots said:

Of course he played the game - for several years. First, revisionism from you in this thread mate for which you were rightly taken to task over & now a palpable ?untruth.

You know exactly what i meant, he never played the game at the top level, and nowhere near the level of football the players he manages have achieved.

Can't really bring that up when we are currently managed by a banker.

1 hour ago, coco said:

You know exactly what i meant, he never played the game at the top level, and nowhere near the level of football the players he manages have achieved.

I'm not convinced there is a correlation between having played at top level, and being a top manager.

13 minutes ago, Valerie said:

I'm not convinced there is a correlation between having played at top level, and being a top manager.

Neither am i, but when he has this habit of losing the dressing room at virtually every club he's managed, you wonder why.

34 minutes ago, Stim said:

Can't really bring that up when we are currently managed by a banker.

But Sarri has not lost the dressing room at any club he's managed as far as i know, so we wouldn't question his lack of skill at managing the top players.

Just now, coco said:

But Sarri has not lost the dressing room at any club he's managed as far as i know, so we wouldn't question his lack of skill at managing the top players.

Surely the main point is to manage top players in such a way that you win titles though. You can be Mr.NiceGuy all you want but if you don't win anything over time at a top club it doesn't count for much.

Mourinho have managed top players just fine.

It is quite amazing how Jose divides opinion amongst our support.

When players like JT reflect on their time at the Bridge they proclaim Jose as the best.

For what Jose achieved at Chelsea he deserves more respect.

When we had the ball, we went 4-3-3 and when we lost it we went 4-5-1. The football we played under him at its peak was fabulous, each player working so hard off the ball. Our counter attacks changed the way others think about football forever. The attention to detail he displayed was so exacting and it paid dividends.

His arrogance fitted in so well with ours.

We owe him a much greater debt of gratitude that some are claiming. For me he is a Chelsea legend and I will always hold his name in reverence when connected to Chelsea.

29 minutes ago, coco said:

Neither am i, but when he has this habit of losing the dressing room at virtually every club he's managed, you wonder why.

I used to have a colleague, who was initially well liked (and good at her job). After a couple of years, when some personal experiences with her were compared, it dawned on everybody she was narcissistic and manipulative. On top of that, she had begun to coast and let others handle some parts of her job she didn"t like. When she figured she couldn"t get away with her behaviour anymore, she left. I see some parallels with Mourinho. To me, it's his personality that causes the same happening every time, and not the fact he didn't play at top level himself.

He's still a top class manager despite critics trying to make out he's no longer relevant. Sure he stuffed up at United, but that club has stuffed itself for a couple of years before he got the job, and nobody was complaining when he was winning Europa league.

This is another one of these subjects where a lot of people take a stand based on a binary, black or white position.  Mourinho is either god/allah/the green man (select deity of your choice) or satan.  And then people go getting themselves entrenched and argumentative from that position.

In my view, for what very little it is worth, Jose was a god in his first time with us, the best manager in the world, and will always be respected and will always have my gratitude for that.  Then he left and became,  eventually, what he is today, apparently a sour and suspicious bitter man OR an extremely clever manipulator, but, in either case, no longer relevant to me or Chelsea.

He was great, now he ain't.  Doesn't tarnish what he did with us first time, and he deserves my respect and thanks for that.  Since then he has done nothing to warrant anything but antipathy,  and the normal wish for failure that I have for any rival manager.

Anyone who just expresses nothing BUT contempt for the man needs to have a word with themselves, ungrateful f**ks.

A lot is often said about what he has done for Chelsea and very little about what Chelsea has done for him.

We offered a young manager ( a successful one) from a second tier league a chance to manage a big club in London with the biggest budget available to any world team at that time. This was a team that were on the up with huge investment the previous year on some world class players. He was quickly made the highest paid manager in world football and given the platform to become the biggest name in world management.

His management style obviously only lasts for a couple of years as has been proved time and time again at every club he has been at. Maybe he gets bored,  but I suspect that players get feed up with him and his siege mentally only rallies the troops for so long and his Man management skills or lack off means the whole things begins to fall apart and he starts looking excuses espeacially with the boards and not being backed. Never His fault.

The success of the club was more to do with RA and investment and would the club have had more or less success with someone else is impossible to know as certainly investment on its own guarantees nothing.

Anyways for me he was a good fit first time for a couple of years but I was glad he went and wish he hadn’t come back the second time.

i don’t see him as a Chelsea legend and think that he is a bitter man who seems to carry large chips on his shoulder. 

He has done well out of football and CFC had a big part in it.

Farewell.

2 minutes ago, goose said:

A lot is often said about what he has done for Chelsea and very little about what Chelsea has done for him.

We offered a young manager ( a successful one) from a second tier league a chance to manage a big club in London with the biggest budget available to any world team at that time.

Second tier league it may have been but the man had just won the UEFA-Cup and then the Champions League back to back with Porto.
He was the one every club would have wanted to hire back then but thankfully we got to him first.