Defeat to Bournemouth ramps up pressure on Mourinho

Chelsea 0 Bournemouth 1

Forget Champions League football next season: right now Chelsea will be lucky to make the Europa League. That was the glum acknowledgement from Jose Mourinho after watching his side slump to their worst result yet of a calamitous season.

Bournemouth's 1-0 victory at Stamford Bridge - described by Cherries manager, Eddie Howe, as the "best individual result of the club's history" - leaves the Blues in 14th position, 14 points behind fourth-placed Manchester United and 17 shy of leaders Leicester City.

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It also means Chelsea are just three points above the relegation zone, and though no one at the Bridge is at this stage seriously entertaining thoughts of slipping out of the Premier League, nonetheless Mourinho knows they'll struggle to finish in the top four come May.

"Before this game I think it was fair to think and feel that with our quality and by winning three or four matches in a row we could push up to the kind of position where I was expecting to be," reflected Mourinho after Glenn Murray's late goal had condemned Chelsea to their eighth loss of the season.

He added: "But this defeat leaves us in a position that means now we maybe have to think about top six. I am concerned. I was concerned before this game because I am not happy with the position."

Dismissing talk of the drop with a bullish declaration that "Chelsea will never be fighting for relegation, no chance", Mourinho blamed the club's plight on a lack of consistency.

He said: "We are in it together, no doubt. But if you analyse matches you can identify a few players where it is difficult for them to be consistent.

"You think there is an evolution but the next day you realise it's not evolution it was just an individual moment, and to get results you have to be consistent and we are not."

Mourinho complained that Bournemouth had time-wasted in the eight minutes between Murray's goal and the final whistle, a claim that will have made the neutral smile, given the Chelsea manager's track record for deploying similar tactics down the years.

"With five minutes to go the team that was defending was being, what some people would call, intelligent and some would say is lack of fair play," he said.

"Time-outs, stopping the game, asking for the medical team to go on, drinks for a minute… They were more than ready for basketball and they did it very well."

The defeat ramps up the pressure on Mourinho and according to the Sunday Telegraph his future is "in doubt" after Chelsea's fourth home defeat this season.

It was the first time they have lost to a newly-promoted side to the Premier League since 2001, and watching on from the stands was Roman Abramovich.

The Telegraph says that the normally impassive Russian "was seen with his head in his hands" late on, increasing speculation that Mourinho could be gone by the New Year.

“The owner, the board ... they are not responsible for the bad moment," said Mourinho. "The responsibility of the bad moment is mine and the players."

According to The Sun, Mourinho has "been given a week" to turn things around by Abramovich, starting with the visit of Porto on Wednesday in the Champions League and followed by a trip to Leicester next Monday.

Chelsea and Porto are level on points at the top of G, and a win is imperative for the Blues. "I cannot laugh because I am not happy, I cannot cry because it's not my profile," Mourinho told reporters.

"I can just work and that is what I am going to do to try to get a result on Wednesday to get through to the next round of the Champions League."