Mourinho vows to stick with Chelsea plan

Jose Mourinho has insisted he will not abandon his plans to transform Chelsea’s playing style in a bid to produce an immediate end to their alarming early season dip. The Chelsea manager accepts he must face criticism after four games without a win, including successive defeats by Everton and Basel in the London club’s last two outings.

But, speaking on Friday ahead of the visit of Fulham to Stamford Bridge for Saturday’s west London derby, he maintained he’d been charged by club owner Roman Abramovich with changing the team’s approach. 

And Mourinho was adamant he would not alter that agenda in an effort to provide an immediate upturn in results. ‘When you want to build something different than the players are adapted to and comfortable with, it’s more difficult,’ he told reporters at Chelsea’s training ground.

‘The easiest thing is for a manager to arrive in a club and not to change, to go in the same direction. Or to keep something and buy a couple of players better than what he had previously. Everything is going in the same direction. ‘But if you want to do something different, there is a period where I understand that, if the results are not good, people will question the direction you go -- but it’s up to me to determine the direction we’re going.