• Champions League

Mourinho goes soft on his strikers

ESPN staff
February 27, 2014
Chelsea pegged back in Turkey

Jose Mourinho has followed up his criticism of his strikers by complaining again that Chelsea cannot kill teams off.

But the manager was at pains to share the blame around after French TV aired him making derogatory remarks about his forwards and caused a furore around Samuel Eto'o.

Chelsea drew 1-1 with Galatasaray in the first leg of their last-16 Champions League encounter on Wednesday night after failing to captialise on an early goal from Fernando Torres, one of the strikers under fire.

"Some other teams have three chances and score three goals. We have five and score one," Mourinho said. "That's not a critique of the strikers but it's the profile of the team we have.

"We create but when we arrive in the final third of the pitch, the correct pass and right movement is something we don't have.

"We are paying for that, in the Premier League we are losing points and in the Champions League we could have had a different result."

Mourinho has bemoaned Chelsea's lack of a killer instinct several times this season but took the unusual step of claiming his strikers were not alone in disappointing him.

The pre-match build-up had focused on his comments about not having a striker at Chelsea with the Chelsea manager becoming embroiled in a row with Canal+ about how the comments came to be aired.

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd
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