Tracking Down Jose Mourinho's Safe Area

Poor Jose Mourinho. It seems as though he's adopted the Chris Rock strategy for trying to gain popularity. He's started a new interview strategy of "Everybody Hates Chelsea."

In his sudden fit of paranoia, he's established that there are only about 200,000 possible Chelsea fans in the entire universe. Now, Jose being the master tactician that he is established it scientifically by limiting the space where possible Chelsea fans might exist to a GPS-ish accuracy.

"It is the world against Chelsea. The Fulham Road, the King's Road and Setubal - my place in Portugal which is very small, only 50,000 people - are the only ones with us. Apart from those places it is the world against us."

I shouldn't quite call it that accurate since he seems to forget that the Fulham Road, not surprsingly, starts in Fulham where it intersects with the Fulham Palace Road - ground zero for Fulham support. So even those he thinks are for him are partially against him. :) Though I think that all the bandwagon Chelsea fans all over the world are scratching their heads as to why they're left out.

Since it's the group stage of the Champions League that he's talking about, I'm thinking for this he might be right. However, once it's in the knockouts, he'll be surprised (how he didn't learn this last year I don't know) how many people root for Chelsea just because they're an English team.

Though being involved in footcer for as long as he has, it's outrageous that he doesn't realize that most neutrals root for the underdog (this is true in any sport). I think he just needs to get used to that fact now that Chelsea is no longer the upstarts displacing Manchester United and Arsenal, but now they're the targets. Jose is not in Porto anymore.

Actually, today he's in Liverpool but the GPS location, I'm not sure. :)

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Sarcastic clapping has become the new swearing at referees. I can't believe in my giant screed against other teams from Monday I forgot Portsmouth.

In their 1-0 loss to Bolton last weekend, Alain Perrin (aka "the poor team's Arsene Wenger") got ejected from the match for sarcastically applauding the referee about a call. I'm not sure exactly what he was expecting after Wayne Rooney and a La Liga player (whose name I forget) got ejected from games for doing the same thing.

What I really can't believe about the whole situation, however, is that the FA let him get off without a touchline ban for Pompey's next match. If anything is true in the EPL it's that managers have the spotlight more than players. And, well, they should be a little more mature at the end of the day since it's their job to control situations, not create them.

It's one thing for Wayne Rooney to be a bad role model but who on Earth could have expected him to be a bad role model for Alain Perrin?

While the FA didn't dole out any punishment, there may have been reprocussions from a higher power. Almost immediately after Perrin was let off the hook it was announced that Tresor Lua Lua, pretty much the only player clicking in the south coaster's offense, has malaria and will miss approximately two weeks.

He seems to have picked it up while on national duty for his home country the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the last international break.

Now, it's been a big story this season that managers are getting really upset about injuries being picked up while stars play for their national teams. But what kind of outrage is this development going to cause?

Are the powers that be in the coaching ranks going to suggest the players all wear GPS systems to make sure they don't travel into any disease areas?

Or maybe mandate that it's only safe for them to travel to those limited areas where Chelsea fans live. At least, that could be the case if Jose Mourinho gets involved.