Jose Mourinho denies training ground bust-ups at Chelsea (but admits smiles have gone)

Jose Mourinho afforded a smile in his press conference but insists his players are not laughing much

JOSE MOURINHO has insisted that it is business as usual at Chelsea – but there is not much laughter or joking.

 

Chelsea was declared a “banter free zone” this week with grim faces all round after their worst start to a season in 29 years.

But as his players prepared to open their Champions League campaign against Maccabi Tel Aviv tomorrow, Mourinho insisted that there had been no bust-ups or no crisis meetings. Just very few gags.

The Chelsea manager said: “We are not all smiles, laughing and joking. It's a basic answer. When people are not getting the success that you work for, and I promise you we work a lot for that, people are frustrated and not happy. That's basic.”

 

On Monday, Chelsea were forced to deny a story by talkSPORT pundit Stan Collymore that skipper John Terry and striker Diego Costa had had a training ground flare up. Collymore has since apologised to the club over the comments.

But Mourinho said: “I like people to communicate. You don't need to scream to communicate. You don't need to fight to communicate. Communication is very important, and I try to improve my teams at that level.

“After that, fights or no fights, it's not important. If it happens sometimes between people who like each other very much, it's not a drama. But we haven't arrived at that situation.”

 

Chelsea have had to deny rumours of a rift between John Terry and Diego Costa

Mourinho said he was ready to make changes after the disappointing 3-1 defeat at Everton on Saturday, but striker Radamel Falcao is out with a tendon injury. Ghanian defender Baba Rahman is in the squad and could make his debut, with Serb defender Branislav Ivanovic possibly the man to make way.

Mourinho said: “It's sad that it's like that people try to find problems that don’t exist. It's so simple to accept that results are not good because that's football, because every season you have some teams who have bad results. It's quite sad that people go in other directions.

“But the only real problem we have is we are not having good results. Our lives are about getting good results. But at other clubs you have to go back two, three, five, six, 10 years to remember good results. In our case you have to go back three months. Three months we were the best team in the country, the best manager, the players. So we're not happy, but we know what we are.

“Some managers can be in difficult situations for five, six, 10 years and I am the current champion of England: why should I be in trouble?”