James Lawton: Will Mourinho's mind games undermine unity of purpose of the 'bunch of one'?

Could it just be that the bunch of one is about to turn into the Wild Bunch - a collection of talented players growing increasingly restive under the autocratic whims of the Special One?

Carvalho has undoubtedly flipped over his exclusion from the Chelsea team at Wigan last weekend. For him it pointed to a future of uncertainty in that area of life which is most precious to players who, along with their talent, have the fiercest competitive instinct.

Michael Owen is much further down this road than Carvalho, but this week the defender joined England's unhappy striker in the limbo of exclusion from the first team - in Carvalho's case without even the consolation of riding the bench.

Mourinho's response to Carvalho's distress has been hard and dismissive, and for some it reveals his one weakness as potentially one of the greatest coaches the game has ever seen.

The coach doesn't know the pain of Carvalho because he never knew the joy of being not merely a competent player but one of the best in Europe and the world. Mourinho made his career in football on his wits, his natural intelligence, and, among other things, his skilful attachment to the coat-tails of Sir Bobby Robson. Carvalho is where he is because of a God-given talent and a passion to make the most of it. Carvalho is not a celebrity player; he is somebody who may take the rewards of being at Chelsea but who will always feel diminished if he is not one of the first written down on a team-sheet, and that is quite separate from any comfort he might find in a relentlessly swelling bank account.

This is where Mourinho is showing a failure of perception that can only be explained by his own experience or, as a player, his absolute lack of it.

Instead of fining Carvalho two weeks' wages and sneering that maybe he should take an IQ test and see a doctor in the wake of his outburst of disappointment, Mourinho would have been far better attempting to understand quite what was going on in his player's head.

This was described graphically enough by the player to the wider world when he declared: "I want to know why I didn't play. How can I explain when I don't understand it? I gave a lot of thought and time to myself, but cannot find a valid explanation."

Of course he cannot. Could he tell himself that he is not a better defender than the man who took his place, William Gallas? The Frenchman is a fine player, and certainly much better operating in the middle of defence than as a full-back, but superior to Carvalho? The record of last season, the evidence provided by the Portuguese in his perfect dovetailing with John Terry, makes a nonsense of such a suggestion.

In the last crusade the Chelsea effort was a wonder of consistent efficiency. The concept of a squad rather than a team seemed to be accepted quite remarkably in the dressing-room. But how long can you keep a lid on the aspirations, and the needs, of some of the world's most talented players? Fighters fight, they say, and the best players, the ones with the deepest competitive instincts, play. It is not a strong desire, a preference, it is the most powerful imperative in their lives.

This is the reality that the Special One has to deal with as he seeks to confirm the astonishing success of his first assault on English football. It was always going to be so. Mourinho says that he will speak to Carvalho personally, give him the benefit of his vision and his wisdom and underline his earlier demand that all Chelsea players must show patience because "everybody has to have a chance".

But then who will show most patience in the equation of Arjen Robben, Damien Duff and Shaun Wright-Phillips - three of the most talented wide players in the game in the year of a World Cup? Which among them will most happily kick his heels, and how does Joe Cole, so desperately ambitious but so marginal to the England action in Copenhagen, react?

Mourinho did brilliantly at Porto; he was the motivator supreme and the provider of success for the players he elevated so dramatically. But it is different at Chelsea. The resources are so much greater, the stockpiling of talent so relentless. Something has to give in the psychology of players for whom the action is like oxygen.

Carvalho is the first to crack and at, for Mourinho, an alarmingly early stage of the new campaign. He represents a dangerous current running through the bunch of one, and this has to be the best of news for the rest of the pack.

No one should be too surprised. However special you are, the chances are you will never rise too far beyond the force of human nature. That is the work of a god, a status which Mourinho, who knows, might not yet have truly achieved.