Jose Mourinho has spent much of this season being proved right.
He was vindicated when he insisted Chelsea would not go through the Premier League campaign undefeated, justified when he claimed it was impossible to do the quadruple and correct when he argued that even a domestic treble was too difficult to be realistic.
He was right to say, on Friday, that it would be a "disgrace" if Chelsea lost at home to Bradford City and, following one of the greatest shocks in the FA Cup, right to stand by his initial verdict.
Mourinho’s subsequent analysis was that he has been pursuing the appropriate path for the rest of the season, too.
He has been a one-man antidote to squad rotation. While others cite sports science and statistics when giving players a break, he has been accused of overworking individuals such as John Terry, Branislav Ivanovic, Nemanja Matic, Cesc Fabregas and Eden Hazard.
The Portuguese did not on the blackest day of his reign.
Fabregas and Hazard made cameos against Bradford, while the three more defensive-orientated players did not figure at all as Chelsea conceded four times to a team 18 points off the lead in League One.
No wonder, Mourinho said, he usually made few changes.
A reliance on a core of players should not be so pronounced, though, and neither are the stand-ins as substandard as he suggests.
If they are failing, that may reflect on him.
Perhaps some are performing in the manner of players who feel they do not command their manager’s confidence, but they have plenty of pedigree.
Ramires is a World Cup semi-finalist, albeit in a 7-1 defeat, Loic Remy scored 14 Premier League goals last season, Kurt Zouma cost £12 million (Dh66.2m) and Mohammed Salah £11m.
John Obi Mikel is a veteran of more than 300 appearances for Chelsea and, unlike the other quartet, has featured in some of the season’s bigger games, even if the defensive midfielder has an unfortunate inability to prevent opponents equalising.
The two old-timers, Petr Cech and Didier Drogba, may belong in a different category again. They are Mourinho favourites from his first spell in charge as well as the two greatest contributors to the 2012 Uefa Champions League win.
His affection for both is apparent, even if sentiment is married with a pragmatic recognition that neither belongs in the first 11 any more.
Yet those eight ought to form the basis of one of the strongest second-string sides in England, especially if their numbers are augmented by summer signing Filipe Luis and World Cup winner Andre Schurrle, who, for different reasons, did not play against Bradford.
Perhaps more troubling than the struggles of the highly decorated squad players was the absence of Chelsea’s next generation.
The only youngster to feature was 18-year-old Andreas Christensen, who was exonerated from blame by Mourinho.
Yet the Portuguese is showing a reluctance to practise what he preaches.
In July, he insisted it would be his fault if academy products Lewis Baker, Dominic Solanke and Izzy Brown were not soon first-team stars. They have made one appearance between them this season.
Midfielder Nathan Ake stayed on the bench against Bradford, along with Ruben Loftus-Cheek.
Chelsea made a great deal of Loftus-Cheek’s call-up for December’s Champions League game against Sporting Lisbon, but the 19-year-old forward was granted seven minutes on the pitch and has not taken the field since.
If strength in depth can seem an illusion glimpsed in victory, the opposite can apply. Defeats can suggest a squad lacks depth, yet Mourinho’s actions all season have implied that.
He has long preferred to work with a comparatively small group of players who are regularly involved, but the inner circle is normally bigger than this.
Perhaps the message conveyed is that the others are not really wanted; that they are not good enough.
It has echoes of his self-fulfilling prophecies last season when Mourinho said Chelsea were not favourites to win the title and then they squandered a promising position to finish third.
This time, at least, he did not attempt to dodge the burden of expectation, but it also dented his aura of invincibility – he had never lost to lower-division opposition.
He tended to offer an immunity against such shocks whereas, given Manuel Pellegrini’s difficulties against Championship clubs in the FA Cup, Manchester City’s defeat to Middlesbrough was not a surprise of the same magnitude.
But while early cup exits tend to cost squad players more game time and probably made Mourinho more entrenched in his thinking, the reality is that Chelsea have played 34 times already this season.
They could face another 25 games and, if his first-choice players tire, Mourinho’s handling of the untrusted understudies may come to seem wrong.
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