MOURINHO PONDERS ON 'PARKING THE BUS'

Jose Mourinho admitted he may have to shut up shop after seeing Chelsea dumped out of the Capital One Cup by Sunderland.

The Blues were leading 1-0 courtesy of Lee Cattermole's own goal and had one foot in the semi-finals when substitutes Fabio Borini and Ki Sung-yueng turned
the tie on its head to first take it into extra-time and then snatch victory at the Stadium of Light.
Mourinho refused to blame his players, but admitted their failure to kill off the Black Cats had left him seriously considering adopting a more conservative approach, albeit against his better judgment.

The Chelsea boss said:

"Maybe the way to rectify it is not to concede goals.
"Maybe the way is to have a different approach and not to concede goals because when you don't score enough goals, when you are a very offensive team
and you don't score enough goals to win matches, maybe the right approach is to be more defensive, concede fewer goals and win matches with the few goals we
score.
"But that's not what I want because that's not what we have in mind in the building up of this team. We want this team to play the way we are playing, we want this team to have evolution, but based on the
football we are playing at the moment.
"We need to score goals to finish
opponents because we feel very
comfortable on the pitch. The possession of the ball becomes easy, the creation becomes easy.
"We had big chances to score goals, but we didn't score."

After a tepid opening 45 minutes, the visitors took the lead 39 seconds into the second half when Cattermole could only bundle Cesar Azpilicueta's cross into his
own goal under pressure from Frank Lampard. But the Londoners failed to build on their lead despite creating a host of chances in the immediate aftermath of the goal, and they were eventually made to pay when Borini latched on to Jozy Altidore's blocked shot and blasted the home side level with two minutes remaining. The Italian had a glorious opportunity to win it in stoppage time, and it was Sunderland who created the better openings in extra time with 41-year-old keeper Mark Schwarzer turning away Ki's goal-bound header, but finding himself
powerless to repel the South Korea
international's 119th-minute shot.
Mourinho said:

"In the Premier League, I
haven't lost one single game because the opponent was better than us. I lost in the Champions League - Basle played better than us in a game where we produced absolutely nothing and we were
punished in the last minute.
"Every other game - here, Stoke,
Newcastle, Everton - every game we have lost, every game, it's the same story: chances and chances and football and football and not enough goals."