Tetchy Jose Mourinho appears to be lost for answers at Chelsea

ANALYSIS: Jack Pitt-Brooke watches the Chelsea manager closely at his latest press conference

Jose Mourinho (GETTY IMAGES)

There were two questions that mattered most as Jose Mourinho faced the press at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground on Tuesday: What on earth has happened to his team? And how much longer will he be allowed to manage them?

Mourinho could not answer the first question, but said that Roman Abramovich would allow him to serve out the rest of his contract, which expires in June 2019. It was a rare piece of optimism from a man whose disposition has not been especially sunny recently.

For that to happen, Mourinho will have to mastermind one of the great turnarounds in recent football history. It would have to start with Dynamo Kiev tonight, and leading Chelsea to qualification from the Champions League. Then they would need a result at Stoke City on Saturday, not that he will be there to manage his team. Two wins might keep Mourinho in the job until after this month’s international break, but it does not seem very likely from here.

Such a reversal of results and form would require Mourinho to solve the problem at the heart of the club. But when Mourinho was asked yesterday to diagnose how last season’s champions could have 11 points from 11 league games this year, he would not.

“I know [why],” Mourinho said. “No [I cannot tell you], because I would be here a long time. Some of them I cannot, I don’t even want to touch them. It is not one reason. One reason would be easy to fix. It is not one reason, it is a combination of factors. I don’t want to say more than that.”

Mourinho just said that he was always trying to be a better manager. “I try to improve every day, analysing every detail of my work every day, preparing sessions, analysing matches, preparing matches,” he said, trying to sound self-reflective but just missing the mark. “It is difficult to study from others. When you reach my level, it is difficult to learn from others. You have to learn from yourself.”

The most expansive answer of a tetchy press conference was when Mourinho looked back on the 2004 Champions League final, and what the 41-year-old Mourinho promised about his future self. “In May 2004, when I won the Champions League with Porto, I said that one day in my career, bad results would come,” he said.

“One day the bad results will come, and I will face the bad results with all the same honesty and dignity that I am now facing as European champion.”

Whether Mourinho has faced Chelsea’s collapsing results with “honesty and dignity” is a matter of interpretation. Whether he has the stability at Chelsea to ride it out is entirely up to Abramovich.