Former Chelsea striker Didier Drogba believes manager Jose Mourinho’s influence waned during his first spell in charge of the club.
Mourinho’s current spell in charge has not gone according to plan and, despite winning the Premier League title last term, his position is under increasing scrutiny following an awful start to the 2015-16 season.
Chelsea have lost seven of their opening 12 league games and sit 16th in the table, a run of results which has prompted questions over the future of the Portuguese coach.
Reports have suggested that Mourinho has ‘lost the dressing room’, and Drogba, who ended his second spell at Chelsea in the summer to join Montreal Impact, suggests that this would not be the first time it has happened to Mourinho at Stamford Bridge.
“I believe things often come in three-year cycles [and] we had arrived at the end of such a cycle,” Drogba is quoted by the Daily Mirror as writing in his new autobiography “Commitment.”
“By the start of the fourth [season] that Jose had been in charge, I think we had started to reach a point where it was sometimes harder for his message to get through.
“We wanted to hear it, we tried, but somehow we had lost a little bit of what made us special.”
Drogba also sheds light on the short reign of Andre Villas-Boas at Chelsea.
Villas-Boas, who lasted just nine months in charge was, according to the Ivorian striker, doomed when he tried to marginalise senior figures such as Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole.
“That’s his right, because the club needed to keep moving forwards, but he shouldn’t have kept those players at the club while he was trying to make his revolution,” Drogba wrote.
“Although we weren’t going around complaining, it had an impact on the rest of the squad if we weren’t happy.
“Andre’s mistake was to think that it was going to be easy — that we just had to do things his way and we would win.
“You have to be able to listen [to experienced individuals] and communicate with them. Otherwise, if you manage a team like Chelsea, you’re heading for a fall.”
