12.000 ord i to afsnit om Jose Mourinho af en af verdens bedste fodboldskribenter på verdens vel nok nok bedste fodboldmagasins hjemmeside er årets første og sikkert også bedste julegave.
Nobody then, perhaps, realised quite what a struggle those final yards had been, had any notion just how difficult things had become. Certainly nobody suspected then what would happen this season as Chelsea suffered the worst opening third to a campaign of any defending champion – worse than Leeds United, who finished seventeenth in 1992-93, worse even than Manchester City, who were relegated in 1937-38. Nobody recognised that what we were seeing was not necessarily a wearing champion staggering to the finish but a club entering a period of profound crisis.