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Sing when you're milking: Mourinho talks cows and chants

An ESPN-created image of what Jose Mourinho might look like in close proximity to a cow © Photoshop image: PA/Getty

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Jose Mourinho and media manipulation have long been comfortable bedfellows and seldom more so than when the Portuguese's team is coming under pressure or have suffered a setback.

But people have become so used to his diversionary tactics that Chelsea's defeat at Newcastle on Saturday appears to have convinced him he needed to crank things up with a bout of the bizarre.

After his original complaint about the ballboys at St James' Park didn't quite hit the mark, it was put to him that he would use any method to delay when winning. He replied: "With balls? No. With anything?

"You may as well put a cow in the middle of the pitch, walking. And then stop the game because there was a cow.

"You have to defend with your 10 men, put the 10 men on the goal line, park the bus, but football needs a ball. Not two or zero. Do what you can to win but not everything.

"Sometimes there were zero balls and that cuts the dynamic of the team who is trying to win the game."

Never mind parking the bus, Mourinho may now have added walking the cow to the football lexicon, but that was not his only attempt to conduct the noise around his club.

Having taken on the Chelsea fans earlier in the season for being too quiet (and later said sorry for it), Jose last weekend also fancied himself as the leader of their chanting as well as their club.

"They were good, they pushed the team," Mourinho said in praise of the 3,000 fans who made the trip to Newcastle. "They read the game and they saw that the team was trying everything and deserved their support.

"The good thing is that when we start the game next week against Hull City, if they want to sing something the best song that they can sing is 'We are top of the league'."

So apart from serving up an excuse for a cowshed's worth of puns to be used (udderly ridiculous, Mourinho's beef with Newcastle etc), Moourinho might just have begun to earn a title to go add to the now-cliched Special One: All hail The Conductor!

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