No one likes us we don't care. Yes it's Millwall's chant but you get a sense that by the time Jose Mourinho finally hangs up the managerial overcoat he will have firmly harangued everyone into assuming he came up with it. Mourinho's Psychology 101 shtick is laughable at times but it works. Us against them, me and my team against the world.
And if the Chelsea manager is the perfect craftsman for siege mentality psychology, Diego Costa is the finest tool he could ever hope to have in his possession. The former Atletico man hasn't even pulled out his full bag of horrible niggly tricks and already he has made himself public enemy no.1 outside west London.
Against Liverpool during the week, he did his very best to upset the Liverpool defence who had surprisingly bullied him the week before. He did it almost perfectly. The only problem? Retrospective bans and a media campaign that is completely biased towards everyone who isn't under the control of Jose.
If you don't believe us about the latter part of that sentence, then just read Chelsea's official pre-match preview ahead of Saturday's top of the table clash with Man City.
It is quite instructive to see how selectively the media hue-and-cry builds up around incidents such as those during our thrilling semi-final victory over Liverpool. That is especially the case when the current furore is compared to the low-key handling, last February, of Toure kicking out at Norwich’s Ricky van Wolfswinkel, unseen by officials, or Sergio Aguero’s two-footed studs-up jump onto David Luiz’s thigh in our FA Cup semi-final the season before.
Aguero was reprieved because referee Chris Foy ‘saw’ the lunge and awarded a free-kick – a principle changed following Wigan winger Callum McManaman’s studs-up challenge on Newcastle's Massadio Haidara.
Now how can you disagree with that?
'It is quite instructive to see how selectively the media hue-and-cry builds up.' If Armagh had employed that level of doublespeak last year then perhaps their siege mentality would have worked out a lot better.
Don't for a second think we're bemoaning this. Yes, we're taking the piss but it's much better seeing a club actually coming out and saying what they want rather than what they should. Mourinho didn't write that of course, but it might as well have been him typing the words via some divine inspiration.
At the end of the day, the brilliant thing about Diego Costa is that when he was doing it for Atletico against the big bad fascists of Real, he was almost universally lauded for it. Here was someone finally ready to dole out the kind of punishment to the Mourinho led defence of Ramos and Pepe that they had been getting away with for years.
Mourinho must have fallen in love that day watching Costa kick, spit at and bully his central defenders. He might not be happy that Costa has been banned but there's no doubt that he's making the most of it. Now what's the chances Chelsea grind out a battling 1-0 win today and then celebrate with their fans as if they've just won the league.
H/T: /r/soccer
