Has Mourinho's repetitive dismissing of our chances at the title actually and ultimately cost us it?

It's often said that one of the last things you want to do in football is give players an opportunity or an excuse not to perform. As we all of us know really very well by now, throughout this season, José infamously has continually, persistently downplayed, if not outright denied, our ability to lift the title come May right from the word go. Young side, transitional season, squad deficiencies, we are 'ahead of schedule', and others have all been used throughout this campaign to minimize and dismiss any suggestion or assertion we can win it this year.
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Now, my question is, is anyone of the opinion that this uncharacteristic shrieking of responsibility from him on behalf of the club has played on our players' minds and caused them to, consciously or unconsciously, not put in as much effort on a consistent, game-to-game basis as they would have otherwise done? When you see them perform so supremely against all the top sides, only to, the very week after, look totally happy and content to walk it for 90 minutes against x random 'weaker' side we should be putting away easily, it really, and rightly, raises alot of questions.
He's renowned as a proponent, and master, of the 'take pressure off the players' psychological strategy, but has he taken too much off of them this year? Has his constantly putting forth excuses for them not to go out and commit to totally and wholeheartedly trying to win this thing caused them to think along the lines of, 'Well, the gaffer says we're not ready to win it anyway, why bother busting a gut and giving my absolute everything trying to beat (insert any random mid-table side or relegation dogfighter we've been putrid against and dropped points to this season) when we're not being expected to do so until next season anyway'.
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I'm certainly not suggesting we're 'above' all this by virtue of entitlement and that victories over these sides should be default, and/or that we have, in any way whatsoever, some divine right to beat them, but the disconnect between our form against the top sides and against the rest of the ones in the league has been profound, protracted, and increasingly concerning. That we top the Top 7 'Mini League' yet will end up losing this thing on points dropped against relegation battlers, and at the stage of the season where things like determination, drive and focus — qualities typically replete in Mourinho teams — matter most, is just astounding.
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Thoughts?

For me / imo, that's not the reason. In fact it might be the opposite ie one of the reasons why Chelsea was able to fight until the end.

The reason is his constant criticism to chelsea's forwards especially publicly. For me, that for sure made all the difference between winning the title this year and not winning it. The title this term couldve been easily won if Mourinho knew how to deal with the psychological needs of the strikers.

Actually, I don't think that's made any difference at all. They would have been cack whether he said anything about them or not. In fact, some of his comments in particular may have indeed helped them - Eto'o's brief goalscoring purple patch immediately following the '35 year old' comments after not scoring for months being one example.

I don't think it was that, I imagine what Jose says in a press is completely different to what he tells the players.

I also think our inability to break down a parked bus has cost us.

If we had a constant goalscorer like Suarez, we'd be running away with the league regardless of what Jose says.

huntsman wrote:For me / imo, that's not the reason. In fact it might be the opposite ie one of the reasons why Chelsea was able to fight until the end.

The reason is his constant criticism to chelsea's forwards especially publicly. For me, that for sure made all the difference between winning the title this year and not winning it. The title this term couldve been easily won if Mourinho knew how to deal with the psychological needs of the strikers.

No and no ( red and blue part ) .

You guys overachieved this season imo. I highly doubt that Eto'o's confidence dropped because of some critics of the coach. This guy has a strong mentality . Same goes for Torres who went through difficult times in recents years. It's not some random comments ( usual stuff ) that is going to break them down. Had it been Lukaku, then maybe.

You guys overachieved imo. Let's not forget that william, Schurle ( ? ) have been surprisingly great.

Oh absolutely @Benin. I maintain that we never should have been in this position in the first place, and have often said it's to Mourinho's complete credit that we are (under all but about 5 other managers in the world and we'd be struggling for Top 4 imo), I'm just speculating that now that we did get ourselves in that position, did his continued denial that we were ever good enough to win it in the first place play a part in our bottling it.

Kick wrote:If we had a constant goalscorer like Suarez, we'd be running away with the league regardless of what Jose says.

100%. But my point is, having gotten ourselves to where we did about 5 or 6 weeks ago (which, again, was complete overachievement), should we really have needed a world class striker to beat the likes of Villa, Palace and Sunderland to close the season out on top?

Kick wrote:I don't think it was that, I imagine what Jose says in a press is completely different to what he tells the players.

Another very real, highly plausible possibility.

Shed wrote:

Kick wrote:If we had a constant goalscorer like Suarez, we'd be running away with the league regardless of what Jose says.

100%. But my point is, having gotten ourselves to where we did about 5 or 6 weeks ago (which, again, was complete overachievement), should we really have needed a world class striker to beat the likes of Villa, Palace and Sunderland to close the season out on top?

Kick wrote:I don't think it was that, I imagine what Jose says in a press is completely different to what he tells the players.

Another very real, highly plausible possibility.

Yes. When a team parks the bus like that, you need a top CF to be clinical enough to take those chances.

Fair enough. Our performances against those sides, and many others go farther back into the campaign, could have been much better, but it is true that in almost all of them we created multiple gilt-edged chances that, had they been put away, would have made a monumental difference to us right now.

Eto's case is different. He has a strong mentality and a zero price tag to carry over his shoulders. When you publicly criticize your forwards (torres, Lukaku, Ba, and eto) saying that you need another forward who can score because your forwards cant, then that is extremely unprofessional. You dont go saying this stuff out in the public.

There is not a single doubt in my mind that the reason why Chelsea lost the title this season was due to losing points against small teams because the strikers were emasculated. Easily a coach like mourinho would ve increased the confidence of the strikers 10 folds and they would have reaped a few goals that wouldve made all the difference.

Remember the name of the game is to do what you can with what you have (the team, the strikers) and improve on what you dont  have (naturally gifted strikers) when you can (next season). This is a fact.

When you fear something or worry about something your mind's focus converges on areas and thoughts that end up creating the same thing / situation which you fear. This is another fact.

He didn't even start criticising them until at least the last third of the season, up to which point he was largely supportive of them, saying things like 'they contribute more to the team than just to score', 'not every striker's best attribute is pure goalscoring', 'we trust the 3 strikers we have now', etc.

October 22 2013:

November 29 2013:

December 27 2013:

January 12 2014:

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Yes he did support the strikers until recently. The mou factor played a big part in beating city in both meetings. And park the bus tactics are definitely hard to break down. Yes we would probably be miles ahead with a clinical striker, but we are also missing something else. Oscar is fading away, hazard and eto are our only real threat (on paper).

Well it's no secret that José often says things just to get a reaction but I wouldn't say that's the reason or one of the reasons why we've failed to win the PL.

I mean we've never actually grinded out an undeserved win, it usually takes us to dominate the match and create dozens of chances and sometimes even that has not been enough as well and you don't win the league if your whole season has been like that (unless of course the other 19 teams do even worse)

And even the most damaging thing he said (not classifying Demba Ba and Torres as strikers and claiming Eto'o is way past his prime) didn't cause any problems because in fact they started to play even better since he said that. Now, I don't know if it's our players that don't take seriously what he's saying to the journalists word by word or if he explains his words to the players themselves, but like I said, I don't think we've failed to win the PL because of his press conferences, our players weren't conditioned negatively by them, they've still tried to win every single match and to win the PL. We've failed because we're not good enough, simple as that.