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| Mourinho praised Diego Costa for his persistence |
JOSE Mourinho welcomed his old Chelsea back to Stamford Bridge.
Then he called on the Tom ‘Mission Impossible’ Cruise spirit to lift them into fourth place.
He said: “Top spot is impossible, maybe Tom Cruise could do it, but the gap is huge, but we take it game after game. Fourth is not impossible.”
Mourinho waved his arms I delight as the final whistle went. He added: “It was more in relief. The last four minutes were tough.”
He praised goal hero Diego Costa for not giving up after several previous attempts had been fluffed. He also gave him an earful for getting caught off-side too many times.
Mourinho went on: “We all know has hasn‘t been fluent. His goal will give him confidence. If I wished for one player to score today it would have been him because he has never stopped working hard.
You don't score goals, you get heavier. Every game that you don't score goals, you get 5kg more. You get heavy and the pressure is there.
“In the first half he misses two chances. The second one, in the last minute, is really a big one. So it was important for him. Important for us, the result and the goal, but I think also for him.
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| Costa embodied a persistent performance from Chelsea |
“He's working well, he's a happy guy, he tries everything. He's positive, so if I had to choose somebody to score the winning goal, I would go exactly with him.
"I don’t think we deserve the heartbeat of the last four minutes. I think we deserve to be enjoying the last three, four minutes with a two, three, 4-0 result, relaxed. But we couldn't.
"Once more the relation between what we played and the number of goals we scored is not good.
“We should score three, four, five goals, and we didn't. But we could cope with the last five minutes. We could cope with the pressure.
The pressure was there – I was feeling, the players were feeling too.
“We coped well with that and we got a result which obviously we needed very, very much.”
He added: “Obviously we are very sorry with everything that happened during the week and I think the stadium and all the professionals had a fantastic reaction of pain and solidarity with all the victims.
“But I would like personally to dedicate the victory to somebody who is so close to us, Gary Staker (club liason officer). He lost his dad yesterday. And he couldn't be with us today. My thoughts are with a big friend, from all of us. Horrible."
Norwich manager Alex Neil said: “A denied penalty appeal didn’t help. We haven’t been on the right end of decisions this season. I don’t criticise refs because I feel they have a hard job.
“We had several lapses of concentration and that cost us the game. Overall, it was a disappointing because I felt we deserved more.”
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