Chelsea need to break out of this siege mentality.
Jose Mourinho has been famously known to include psychological warfare and mind games in his managerial methods at virtually every club that he has plied his trade. He does this mainly through the media by making everyone outside the club the enemy and invoking a siege mentality within his players and the fans.
This has worked for him on several occasions, most notably during his first stint at the club. However, there are a few caveats that go largely overlooked with this style of management.
For starters, the use of siege mentality should be purely supplemental; like adding vitamins to one’s diet. When used correctly, this tactic provides a nice little boost in players’ motivation to win matches. Yet, if you use siege mentality as your sole motivational technique, things tend not to work too well, especially in the long-term.
It also tends to work better on players who are mentally stronger, since they already have an intrinsic desire to win and don’t need to rely on many incentives. A siege mentality only augments the strength of the drive within such players.
To be mentally strong, players have to face adversities in their careers. For example, Didier Drogba faced several injuries early in his career and had to struggle to become the player that we know today. While at Le Mans – his first professional club which he joined at the age of 20 – he was physically incapable of training and playing on a daily basis. His former coach Mac Westerloppe remembers how “it took Didier four years to be capable of training every day and playing every week”.
Frank Lampard was never the most naturally gifted player either, and had to battle the doubters while he was coming through at West Ham United. He even had to endure games where he was incessantly booed by his own fans.
John Terry, who some say is a born leader, had to clean boots and warm toilet seats for senior players during his time in the youth ranks at Chelsea.
Unfortunately, players like Eden Hazard, Oscar and Cesc Fabregas have never faced the same kind of troubles during their professional careers. Consequently with these players, a siege mentality gives them the opportunity to take the easy way out. They make excuses and blame external factors for a lack of satisfactory results rather than self-reflecting and admitting culpability for their own poor performances.
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A need to motivate such players is the reason that leaders are so vital in the dressing room. One might wonder just how many leaders were on the pitch for Chelsea in that match against Liverpool on Saturday. The only two that come to mind are John Terry and Diego Costa; the midfield was sparse in leaders, which was one of the reasons behind the club’s colossal loss.
In football, there is no single area of the pitch that influences a game more than the midfield, and it was one of the biggest reasons why the Chelsea squads of 2003-2008 were so feared. Teams were manhandled and dominated mentally and physically by the likes of Frank Lampard, Michael Ballack and Michael Essien, who were gargantuan in stature compared to the rest of the league.
Chelsea have since steadily lost their most influential players. This summer, the club lost two huge personalities in Didier Drogba and Petr Cech, who were part of the spine that had supported Chelsea for nearly a decade.
What exactly has caused Chelsea’s worst start in the Premier League under their most successful manager is the subject of much debate. However, the one thing that is certain is that Mourinho’s stubbornness to stick with his siege mentality has hurt the club this season. It is clearly not working anymore, and based on the statistics since the second half of last season, it most likely stopped working a long time ago.
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However, there is a saving grace for the West Londoners in this saga. One could draw a parallel between Mourinho’s situation and the situation that Sir Alex Ferguson faced three years into his career at Manchester United. In the early part of the 1989-90 season, United suffered a humiliating 5-1 defeat at the hands of Manchester City and went on a run of six defeats and two draws in eight games. They ended December just outside the relegation zone.
It was a period that Ferguson has since described as “the darkest ever suffered in the game”. Sound familiar?