The FA brought down the hammer on Chelsea FC manager Jose Mourinho for his comments after the match against Southampton and he has fired back. Mourinho was fined £50,000 and given a suspended one-match ban that will be put in effect if he runs afoul of the FA’s law in the next year.
Naturally the manager was upset with the news and went so far as to call it a “disgrace”. He spoke to the press at a promotion event for his book MOURINHO and said, as quoted by Sky Sports:
"“I’m happy that I don’t have an electronic tag. £50,000 is a disgrace. The possibility of getting a stadium ban is astonishing. There is something that, now, we know. One, we can push people in the technical area. We can, no problem.”“The word ‘afraid’ is a punishment, and a hard punishment. But to say the referee was ‘weak and naive’, referring to one of the top referees, not just in this country, also in Europe, to call him ‘weak and naive’ we can do.“The only good thing of this last decision by the FA is that every manager in this country can write in a little book and, when he goes to the press conference, he knows that ‘afraid’ costs £50,000. ‘Weak and naive’, you can do it.”Source: Sky Sports"
What Mourinho is referring to with the second bit of his comments are the actions of Arsene Wenger in recent years. After Chelsea FC defeated Arsenal 2-0 with the help of some controversial calls, Wenger called the referee “weak and naive” for not sending off Diego Costa. He also called for referees to target the Spanish forward which sounds like the sort of thing that would get you fined but he was not levied one.
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Mourinho also referred once again to the fact that Wenger pushed him in the Chelsea technical area and was not fined or banned. In contrast, then-Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew pushed a player with his forehead and received a seven match ban. Pushing a manager is obviously not the same as head-butting a player but one would think that any physical contact by a manager on a player or the opposing manager would call for some sort of punishment but not in Wenger’s case.
The Arsenal manager continues to say whatever is on his mind, including taking shots at the FA and the referees, and escaping without punishment. The FA is well within their rights to punish Mourinho but as we have called for on this site time and time again, they need to show some consistency in their decisions.
There is no need to revisit all of the mistakes they have made in recent years but even the most unbiased fan must have noticed by now that Chelsea FC players and managers seem to be unfairly targeted by the FA. It will be interesting to see if there is further punishment by the FA on Mourinho for his recent comments about the ban but at this point nothing would surprise Chelsea faithful.