Mourinho: I'd love to see 'King Didier' back at the Bridge with Galatasaray in last 16

Jose Mourinho wants a Champions League reunion with ‘King Didier’ Drogba by drawing Roberto Mancini’s Galatasaray in the last 16.

The Chelsea manager still does not think his team can win the competition but at least they will have some fun along the way, after qualifying for the knockout stage as Group E winners.

Objective one — ‘not to win the Europa League again’ — has already been achieved, even if inconsistent Chelsea continue to flatter to deceive.

                     
                     
                     

Now Mourinho wants a rematch with a striker who won three Premier League titles, four FA Cups, two League Cups and the Champions League during a glittering eight-year career at Stamford Bridge.

Mourinho said: ‘We had one target, which was not to win the Europa League again and that target is done. Now we have to do the best we can in the Champions League.

‘Yes, Galatasaray is difficult. The Turkish champions with King Didier. Very difficult. But I’d like Didier to be back here and feel what I felt. He deserves to come here and get the reception double or three times better and bigger than I had.

‘I think there are teams in better conditions than Chelsea to win the competition, or at least to be considered favourites.

                     
                       
                       

It’s easy to understand that Bayern Munich are champions. They have the same team and, I think, played three Champions League finals in four or five years. 

'You have Barcelona, same team and champions three times in the last five or six years. 

Real Madrid have the same players plus Gareth Bale.

‘But let’s go for the last 16. If we win, we go into the quarter-final and, with only eight teams, we can think a different way.

‘But now we must forget the Champions League and work to improve the team and get results in the English competitions.’

                   

Mourinho’s assertion that his Crash Test Dummies will not win the Champions League or Premier League seemed apt last night as his side failed to give Chelsea fans a ‘performance and a result to be proud of’. 

They got the result they desired, of course, but another inconsistent performance prompted a few  grumbles around Stamford Bridge.

Chelsea enjoyed the vast majority of possession yet only won 1-0 thanks to a clumsy Demba Ba goal. So much for a swashbuckling ascent into the knockout stages. 

This was functional rather than thrilling, once again.

                  

We should not have been surprised, however. Unlike the predictable training-ground dummies Mourinho quipped could probably score against his defensively shaky side, you never quite know what you are going to get with this Chelsea team. Drama? Probably. Goals? Yes, but they could come for or against Mourinho’s men. Inconsistency? Most definitely.

The clinical, occasionally brutal Chelsea who could snuff the life out of a match and ‘kill opponents’ when three points were at stake seem to belong to a different era.

‘Not good enough,’ declared  Chelsea captain John Terry emphatically in the matchday programme after last weekend’s defeat at Stoke.

It was interesting to hear Mourinho call this campaign his ‘first season’ during his 45-minute monologue in Tuesday’s pre-match briefing. There is clearly, and understandably, still much affection for the second coming of the Special One — just as there would be for Drogba’s return.

But this is no time for sentimentality. With ‘an important period’ coming up over Christmas it is time for Chelsea to rediscover the ruthless streak that brought them such success last time around, and fast.

How a striker of Drogba’s potency and poise — at defensive corners as well as in the attacking third — would be welcomed back to  Stamford Bridge.