Mourinho blasts referees, says ‘they’re afraid to give Chelsea decisions’

Jose Mourinho has argued that referees are afraid of giving decisions in favour of Chelsea, following the refusal to award a penalty to his team in their 1-3 defeat in the hands of Southampton.

“The referees are afraid to give Chelsea decisions. I don’t care if I get punished by the FA.”

“I want to make it clear, I won’t run away and if the club want to sack, they have to. I won’t run away from my responsibilities”

“If the club sack me, they sack the best manager the club has ever had.”

Chelsea’s disastrous season continued with a 3-1 home defeat by Southampton on Saturday that left Jose Mourinho’s Premier League champions 10 points off the pace in 16th place.

Having taken an early lead through Willian, Mourinho’s side collapsed alarmingly, with Steven Davis levelling for Ronald Koeman’s team before second-half goals from Sadio Mane and Graziano Pelle wrapped up the win.

Mourinho had suffered just one home league defeat in over four seasons at Chelsea coming into the season, but has now already seen his side beaten twice at Stamford Bridge during the current campaign, following an earlier defeat by Crystal Palace in August.

There were few signs Chelsea are ready to return to the form that saw them cruise to last season’s title and the growing discontent around the club was apparent when home supporters greeted the final whistle with a chorus of boos.

By his own admission, this is the worst spell of Mourinho’s career and the manager this week found himself in the unfamiliar position of being forced to defend his methods following reports of discontent within his squad.

The failure to beat struggling Newcastle United seven days previously had summed up Chelsea’s problems, with Mourinho describing the first-half display at St James’ Park as being “on a scale of one to 10, minus one”.

That was followed by defeat at Porto in the Champions League and the Portuguese reacted by making four changes.

Skipper John Terry returned to make only his second start in six games, while Radamel Falcao was handed his first league start of the season in place of the suspended Diego Costa.