Manchester City 3-0 Chelsea
Jose Mourinho stood firm on his decision to substitute captain John Terry as Chelsea were drubbed by Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium yesterday.
With the score at 1-0 at half-time, Mourinho replaced Terry with Kurt Zouma to deal with the pace of Sergio Aguero, who tormented the Blues backline and opened the scoring just after the half hour.
But late goals from Yaya Toure and Fernandinho rounded off an impressive City performance that means Chelsea are already five points behind Manuel Pellegrini’s team after two games.
It was the first time in 176 games under Mourinho that Terry had not completed the full 90 minutes, but Mourinho felt it was the right call.
“The point was not to bring John out but to bring Zouma in,” he said.
“I wanted to have my fastest player on the pitch and not on the bench because I knew they would play counter attack and long balls into Aguero.
“I knew I wanted my team to be dominant and to play in the opposition half.”
Mourinho felt his team were second best in the first half but believes their endeavours after the break deserved more, and that Fernandinho should have been sent off for an elbow on Diego Costa.
“I’m the first one to be disappointed when all week you are speaking about movements, directions of the game, mechanisms, Aguero’s runs and positions, wingers coming from the outside to the inside, and then after 10 seconds Aguero is in the face of Begovic,” he added.
“We were defensively poor in the first half.
“In the second half everything changed. We brought our defensive line to the midfield line, we pressed them and had control of the game.
“We created chances and had space in midfield to play. They couldn’t cope with that.
“It should have been a red card for Fernandinho and Yaya Toure should also have had a second yellow card, but the score was 3-0 so it had no relation to the result, but it had a relation to the rules.”
Chelsea will be looking for the first win of the season when they face another winless team, West Brom, on Sunday, when they should have new signing, 21-year-old Ghanaian left back Baba Rahman, available.
Feature image courtesy of Chelsea FC, via Youtube, with thanks
