Chelsea must overcome their past and embrace a new mindset inspired by Mourinho

Whether it’s the Videoslots or betting on the football, everyone likes the thrill of a little flutter, and right now Chelsea are probably the most interesting team to bet on in all of football.

Time and again they confound expectations – and not always in a good way for their fans. The season so far has been a mixture of impressive results when we’re expected to lose, and some awful bungles of winnable games through comedic missing of chances or stupid red cards.

It really takes us back to the late 90s, when Chelsea were known for being able to raise themselves to big performances in the big games, snatching impressive wins off Sir Alex Ferguson’s Man United and the other giants of the time, but would regularly slip up against the likes of Charlton.

It was that inconsistency back then that stopped us from becoming a superpower in the league until the arrival of Jose Mourinho. He was able to maintain the quality and the belief which helped us against the top teams and in Europe, but he added a relentless side to our game which meant that every home fixture against Blackburn or Portsmouth because as vital a 3 points as our trips to Highbury or Anfield.

That’s what we desperately need now. It’s all very well showing how good you can be in games against the top sides, but in the end you’d rather have 3 points from beating Luton than 1 point from almost beating Man City.

Under Mourinho, the mentality came partly from signing the right players – really good ones who still maintained an insatiable appetite for winning every when they had trophies – but it also came from having that psychology drilled into the players by their coach.

There was simply no room to slack off for these guys, and until Mauricio Pochettino makes this group feel like their career, at least at Chelsea, is always on the line, there’s no way we will see anything similar.

This is, of course, the obvious problem with the huge long contracts handed out by the sporting directors. How can any player feel like the manager has power over them when they’re tied to the club for the best part of the decade, and the coach is going to be sacked every 18 months at least? They just can’t.

Pochettino seems a great man manager, but perhaps the way things have been set up here by the owners are going to make it impossible for any coach to have the authority they need.