Mourinho still happy to take on all-comers

"A lot of you are very frustrated at the moment because you can't write what you want to write. So tomorrow is a big bad feeling for you," he said, telling the man from The Sun splendidly "you think you are a bad boy . . . but I can be a bad boy" before seemingly inviting him for further measured debate at the Cobham training ground. He was wrong, of course. We newspapermen love Mourinho. He is a strutting, posing, walking, ready-made headline. Whether he wins or loses, he is unbeatably printable. He reckoned his gesture was aimed at us, not the Liverpool fans. Yeah, of course, Jose. perhaps you imagined those purplefaced blokes in red shirts a couple of yards away were waving laptops at you, not fists.

Mourinho's expulsion by a police officer could be argued to be just about his first truly serious error of judgement in his time in the English domestic game. The gesture was as obviously inflammatory as it was unnecessary and prevented him from being able to address his team before extra-time, having instead to pen a few hastily scribbled notes for his assistant Steve Clarke to interpret.

It could conceivably have cost Chelsea. The irony is that it didn't simply because of the steel and discipline Mourinho himself has instilled into the side almost as second nature. If he reckoned he felt no worries watching TV in the Sky room in the bowels of the stadium while his team discussed their approach to the extra 30 minutes, it was because he had absolute trust in his key lieutentants out there to finish the task without him.

Once again, then, a debt was owed to John Terry. He was awesomely combative, with a couple of surging breaks from the back also making him appear utterly tireless as Liverpool flagged. Chelsea have three players who could lay serious claim to being the footballer of the year; Petr Cech, Frank Lampard and Terry - I'd even venture a fourth, Claude Makelele if his fantastic efficiency wasn't somehow also nigh-invisible - but it is the lion-hearted captain who deserves it most.

"It's not about me - it is about us," protested Mourinho.

Sometimes, you forget this, though, since the cult of his still unfathomable personality so dominates games these days. Yet, strangely, it almost feels as if his larger-than-life presence may actually take the pressure off his players, since he appears quite content to direct all the loathing upon his own shoulders.

"Someone asked me last week 'Do you want to be loved by the football world or do you want to win trophies?'," reflected Mourinho. "I said 'I just want to win trophies, I don't want to be in love with you'."

Will English football ever want to be in love with him, though, in the way Chelsea's faithful naturally already are?

One day, perhaps, but not while his coaching nous still barely seems to acknowledge the possibility of his own fallibility.

He has the happy mix of skill - and luck - that all great coaches need.

So it was that when he gambled late on introducing a fourth striker and leaving the defence only threestrong, Chelsea were almost undone by Steven Gerrard before the eerie inevitability about Kezman scoring the ugliest of extra-time winners.

"If I made a mistake (about the gesture), I apologise. I'm happy I'm not going to jail because of that," said Mourinho.

"But I tell you one thing - I have to adapt to English football but you have to adapt to me."

Or to put it another way, perhaps if we learn to accept his brilliance as a coach, he will maybe feel relaxed enough to demonstrate a little more humility.