Jose Mourinho maintains Chelsea can still finish in the Premier League top four after acknowledging Diego Costa’s scoreless streak had weighed heavily on the striker.
The Chelsea manager conceded the champions’ title defence was over after Chelsea’s 1-0 win over Norwich City on Saturday, just a fourth win from 13 games this season, but he reckons Uefa Champions League qualification for next season is achievable.
“It’s a bit of a relief,” Mourinho said after Costa’s first goal since the win over Aston Villa last month ended a three-match losing streak.
“The pressure was there – I was feeling, the players were feeling, too.
“We coped well with that and we got a result which obviously we needed very, very much.”
Chelsea are 12 points adrift of fourth-placed Arsenal and, while Mourinho conceded that the task facing his side could be compared to that of a popular movie franchise, he stated it was attainable.
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“Fourth position for me is not an impossible mission. If you ask me the title I would say impossible mission,” he said.
“Maybe Tom Cruise can do it, [but] it’s complicated because you have to recover points from four candidates.
“But to grab one of the [teams] that go up and will also have a little bit of a collapse ... the fourth position is a difficult position but a possible target.”
Costa conceded earlier this season to reporting for pre-season overweight, and the striker, who was prolific last term in Chelsea’s title triumph, had scored just three times prior to the international break.
The Brazil-born Spain striker had spurned two good opportunities and been absent in the six-yard box when Eden Hazard fashioned two more before pouncing following Cesc Fabregas’s quick free-kick in the 64th minute.
“You don’t score goals, you get heavier,” Mourinho said of his forward. “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 missed 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.”
Costa’s fluency was not what it should be, and Mourinho said he had to remind his striker to return to position quickly moments prior to the goal.
“When you lose confidence, you lose this fluent game. Yes, he can do much better, but again, yes, one goal is very important,” Mourinho said. “I was telling him that he was being caught offside a couple of times, also in the first half, because he was late to recover position.
“When the team tries to reach that, he needs to be in a position to attack that, not in an offside position.
“The goal was a little bit like that because he was in a position that he could attack space and not in a space offside.”
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