Jose Mourinho has said he hopes Diego Costa’s winning goal against Norwich City will prove to be a turning point for the Chelsea striker.
The Spain forward has come in for growing criticism after struggling to recapture the form he showed during his club’s march to the Premier League title last season.
Costa again missed a number of chances against Norwich before securing Chelsea’s first win in four league games with the 64th-minute winner in a 1-0 success at Stamford Bridge on Saturday — only his third goal in 11 Premier League appearances this season.
Chelsea manager Mourinho said his player has been feeling the strain, but believes Costa can now begin to put a difficult period behind him.
[Uefa Champions League spot is now Jose Mourinho's goal for Chelsea]
“When you don’t score goals, you get heavier,” Mourinho said. “Every game that you don’t score goals, you get 5kg more. You get heavy and the pressure is there.
“In the first half he (Costa) misses two chances. The second one, in the last minute, is really a big one. So it was important for him. Important for us, the result and the goal, but I think also for him.
“He’s working well, he’s a happy guy, he tries everything. He’s positive, so if I had to choose somebody to score the winning goal, I would go exactly with him.
“Everything is connected. I think when you are full of confidence it’s not just about goals, it’s also about — I don’t know if it’s the right word — but fluent.
“You are fluent in your decisions, you choose well your movements, you choose well the number of touches, when to hold, when to keep possession, when to touch, first touch.
“When you lose confidence, you lose this fluent game. Yes, he can do much better, but again, yes, one goal is very important.”
‘A mission for Tom Cruise’
Chelsea remain in the bottom half of the table with a third of the season gone yet while Mourinho has written off his side’s title hopes, he still believes they can finish in the top four.
“We have to go game after game. But I said already in the press conference yesterday that the fourth position for me is not an impossible mission,” he said.
“If you ask me the title, I would say impossible mission. Maybe Tom Cruise can do it.
“It’s complicated because you have to recover points from four candidates.
“But to recover positions and points to teams that normally are in the middle of the table and to grab one of the ones that go up and will also have a little bit of a collapse for sure, because everybody will have.
“The fourth position is a difficult position but a possible target. But match after match. Now is Maccabi (Tel Aviv in the Champions League) and we hope we can win and maybe the Porto-Dynamo result allows us to qualify before the last match, which would be good.
“But if we have to win the last match at home, let’s go for that.”
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @NatSportUAE
