THIS time last week, there was a rumour growing on the World Wide Web. Chelsea were set to demote Doctor Eva Carneiro after she ran onto the pitch to treat Eden Hazard’s injury a few days prior.

Carneiro is arguably the most well-known doctor in the Premier League, if not football. How many fans can say they know the name of another team’s physio? Not many. Yet everyone knows who Carneiro is.

Let’s not pretend that supporters of other clubs know who she is because she does her job better than everyone else.

It is because of her looks and she has been subject to sexist chants from a few fans since she joined the backroom staff at Stamford Bridge.

But this isn’t about the abuse she gets from certain sections of the away crowd. This is about her demotion from her role as Chelsea’s first-team doctor.

Let’s get one thing straight. Blues boss Jose Mourinho was in the wrong and anyone that sides with the self-proclaimed Special One is wrong too.

Even the most die-hard of Chelsea fans are struggling to see the point Mourinho made.

During the opening league match against Swansea at the Bridge, Eden Hazard was fouled and asked for the medical team to attend to him.

Referee Michael Oliver signalled for them to enter the pitch, twice, and on they came.

Due to the rules, once a physio steps onto the pitch to attend an injury, that player must leave the field and return once the referee gives them permission to do so.

Because Chelsea were down to 10 men after goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois was dismissed, the Blues only had eight outfield players when Hazard was on the sidelines waiting to come back on.

Mourinho was furious after and blamed the medical staff for his team only having nine players on the pitch.

He claimed that they didn’t understand the game which is utter nonsense.

They understand that their role is to make sure players stay clear of injury. Hazard gave the impression he needed medical attention.

Therefore, it is their job to patch him up and check that he is OK to continue playing.

Mourinho explained after that Hazard wasn’t injured and was just tired.

But if Mourinho knew that Hazard was faking being hurt, then it is the player’s fault that his play-acting caused Carneiro and head physiotherapist Jon Fearn to check if he was seriously hurt which forced him to leave the field.

It is like prank-calling your local Pizza Hut for three extra-large peperoni pizzas and then being angry at them for coming out and delivering the food.

Or calling an ambulance after you fell over and grazed your hand — but claimed it was broken — and getting annoyed that they drove to your house for no reason.

Mourinho should have directed his rant at the Belgian. But he knows that if he attacks one of his star players, it may upset him and that would affect his performances on the pitch.

And it’s the same reason why Blues fans are defending what Hazard did. I have no problem with what he did.

Hazard gets kicked a lot during games and I can understand why he might stay down a bit longer than usual.

But he did ask for medical assistance. He started this issue and at any point could have come and said that he felt he needed to be checked over by Fearn and Carneiro and didn’t mean for things to turn out this way.

But he wouldn’t dare speak out against his manager and possibly be benched or sold. And Mourinho is too egotistical to apologise now and admit he was in the wrong.

So instead, Mourinho placed the blame on Carneiro and Fearn as they are expendable. However, Carneiro is such a likeable public figure that the media leapt to her defence.

Blues fans use the terrible excuse that the media are only focusing on this story because of Carneiro’s gender.

I strongly disagree because Mourinho was wrong to demote both of them. However, no-one had heard of Fearn and he doesn’t make headlines.

If it was just Fearn, it would have made the back page on Monday and forgotten about on Tuesday.

But Carneiro is a public figure. Is it because she’s a woman? Yes. The fact that most men find her attractive has meant that she gets noticed more than the other doctors or physios.

It is why Sian Massey stands out as an assistant referee. I couldn’t name one linesman in the top flight but I know who Massey is, because she’s a woman.

It is unfortunate that this is the case but until there are more women given jobs as coaches, physios and assistant refs then the ones we do have will stand-out.

And when they are mistreated, it will be bigger news than if it was a male counterpart.

So to the Chelsea fans who like to remind everyone that Mourinho had a go at two people, the fact of the matter is that Fearn is an unknown person and male physios get sacked or demoted on a yearly basis, it is never newsworthy.

But Carneiro is. And especially given that she, and Fearn, have done nothing wrong.

If the rumours are true, that she hasn’t been seen since the incident, then that is terrible.

Add that to the fact that she has had to endure the public humiliation of this ordeal and other newspapers have dug up former boyfriends to dish out dirt about her personal life.

So tell me, why didn’t the same newspaper splash with stories of Fearn’s intimate life? Is it because he had nothing to dig up?

If that was the case, they could have found some kind of “scandal” to do with him. One newspaper made a big deal of the fact that Jeremy Corbyn’s ex-wife said he ate cold beans straight from the tin.

If a newspaper is desperate enough to run that story then someone out there will have a bad thing to say about Fearn worthy of filling space.

And it staggers me that a few journalists have backed Mourinho in this argument.

One columnist argued that “the doctor will have one form of expertise but Mourinho has another.” In the case of injuries, the doctor’s expertise is the one that matters.

If some managers had it their way, players who are concussed would continue. Sometimes the people who went to medical school are the ones who know better. But even if in this incident they did rush on, they did so because the player had asked them to. Why is that so hard to understand?

“As Hazard wasn’t hurt, it was an error,” he goes on to say. Yes, it was an error. On the part of the player and manager, not the medical staff.