Mourinho reveals Chelsea’s objective after Bournemouth loss

The Blues fell to an eighth Premier League defeat of the season – only Sunderland and Aston Villa have lost more – and their fourth at Stamford Bridge as Bournemouth secured a crucial 1-0 victory on Saturday.

After yesterday’s loss against Bournemouth, last season’s champions are marooned in 14th place and are 14 points off a top-four place, and Jose Mourinho was highly critical of his players for failing to score against a team that had never before kept a clean sheet away from home in the top flight.

Chelsea’s first Premier League home defeat in their last 44 games against a newly-promoted side deepened the crisis at Stamford Bridge, but lifted Bournemouth out of the drop zone.

Defeat to Eddie Howe’s side leaves the west London club 14 points off Manchester United in the final Champions League spot.

“I am concerned obviously”.

CHELSEA boss Jose Mourinho felt his side had wasted a string of chances against Cherries but refused to point the finger at Nemanja Matic for his glaring second-half miss. “The problem is that our objective is to finish in the top four – maybe now we have to think about top six”.

Speaking to Sky Sports, the 38-year-old said: “We believed we were on the right path, you look at our recent games, we’ve done really well and performed ever so well in several of them and not got the wins we feel we’ve deserved”.

Goalscorer Murray, who had only just come off the bench, feels Bournemouth matched the Premier League champions throughout the clash. I have no doubts about that but I think if you analyse matches and especially match after match, you can clearly identify a few players who find it hard to be consistent. “I don’t think so”, he said.

September 19: Diego Costa is banned retrospectively for a running feud with Arsenal defenders Laurent Koscielny and Gabriel in Chelsea’s 2-0 win.

They refused to buckle under the early onslaught and when Hazard was caught in possession the ball sped across Chelsea’s goal for Junior Stanislas to hit a fierce 7th-minute shot Gary Chaill bravely blocked. When signs started showing then itself, why wasn’t more done in the summer? “We were not intense enough with the ball, without the ball to create problems to our opponents”.

“When you get good momentum and good consecutive results, it’s because you have stability in performances”.

“A team that was defending and being, some people call “intelligent” and some people call “lack of fair play”. I don’t think so.

“I have to give my maximum every match. They were stopping the play, calling for the medical department and drinking water like it is basketball time out”.

“It was a penalty and the goal is offside, but the referee made a mistake and the linesman made another mistake”, Mourinho added.