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Newcastle 2-2 Chelsea
by Roger Domeneghetti
at St James’ Park
JOSE MOURINHO slammed his Chelsea players for a terrible first-half performance at St James’ Park which he said ranked among the most abject during his two spells at the club.
“I’ve played so many matches with Chelsea over seven years that we’ve had some bad performances but this first half was one of the worst,” he said.
His team were two down after 57 minutes after some lax defending from Kurt Zouma and Cesc Fabregas allowed first Ayoze Perez and then Georgina Wijnaldum to score for a Newcastle team that looked revitalised after their mid-week defeat against Sheffield Wednesday.
“When you have so many awful individual performances, it’s impossible for a team to be a team,” said Mourinho. “The reason why we had so many bad individual performances is difficult to answer but it is the reason why, in the first half the team was not there.”
It was two second-half substitutes that rescued a point for the Chelsea manager, who is still to win at Newcastle in the League. With 12 minutes left, Ramires fired in a 25-yard shot that gave Tim Krul no chance. Six minutes later his run did enough to distract the Newcastle keeper allowing Willian to curl in a free-kick from just outside the area.
The Chelsea boss acknowledged that Newcastle deserved a point but damned his opponents with faint praise. “I think one of the reasons why, over the years, Newcastle doesn’t finish higher is this mentality. It’s because they choose some matches to sweat blood and in other matches they don’t. This is an attitude of a team that wins nothing. It is bad for them. If they played like this they would win many matches at home.”
Steve McClaren was inclined to agree with the assessment, citing the team’s better performances this season. “I’ll be levelling the same at the players. It’s exactly right: Old Trafford, Arsenal, Chelsea, next week we’ve got Man City. It’s a tough league. I think in the end we all have to be satisfied with a great performance and we have set a benchmark now, a standard. That is how we want to play every week.”
