The epic saga between Mourinho and Shevchenko continues this week with Mourinho claiming that although he has nine “untouchables” in his current squad the Ukrainian star is not one of them. The Special One states that although Sheva is a friend of Abramovich the Russian tycoon has not instructed Mourinho to play him and indeed does not interfere with the team selection. This begs a serious question for Sheva as he is continually being undermined in the English press by the club. We must remember that he has proven his footballing ability at the highest tier when with Milan but now is suffering from what can only be called a persecution from Chelsea.

I’m left pondering who the nine untouchable players are and if maybe this is the problem with integrating world class footballers into the Chelsea team. I discussed this problem in my article last week and it is a question I would pose again, why exactly do players fail when they put on that Chelsea blue shirt? Is it the manager, is the owner or is it the team? Mourinho’s comments would suggest to me that the problems lie with the team because Mourinho has confirmed that certain members cannot and will not be removed from the first team and that their names will be on the match card week in week out.

Lampard, Terry, Robben etc etc are the obvious players the mighty one is referring too and I’m wondering why Mourinho picks them for every game they are available. Is this a healthy team building ethic when young players and top class players who have not started their Chelsea career with all guns blazing feel they cannot break through no matter how hard they try? I think its a dangerous statement from Mourinho as it reinforces what I have feared all along, find something that works and stick with it, when its faltering stick with it and when Man United are running away with the title in December, stick with it. Not good Jose, not good at all!

His words have just proven that for any young up and coming star or indeed any international performer a move to Chelsea could just mean the death of your career!

This entry was posted on Friday, December 8th, 2006 at 8:50 am and is filed under Chelsea. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.