Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho’s comments on Ashley Barnes’ challenge hasn’t gone down too well with Burnley manager Sean Dyche who has played down the Portuguese’s comments.
Mourinho branded Barnes’ challenge on Nemanja Matic as a ‘criminal tackle’ as his challenge was a dangerous one and could have caused more damage had he come in with more force. The referee decided to take no action in the game and sent of Matic instead for his reaction after the tackle.
Mourinho had revealed on Sky Sportsa Goals on Sunday, a I cana t find words to describe what that player did. Football is about emotions and sometimes people lose emotions.
a Matic had reason to lose his emotions. What are the consequences of Matica s push on the other player? Nothing. One second later, he stands and goes.
a I would like to know how you, Sky Sports, describe the actions of the Burnley player yesterday? My English is not good enough to find a word.”
Dyche revealed that during the aftermath of the tackle, no one except Matic reacted to the challenge as it was a case of going for the ball, “Please everyone look at the reaction from a bunch of expert footballers on the Chelsea side.
“The likes of John Terry, a real warrior, [Kurt] Zouma, big strong boys, [Branislav] Ivanovic right on top of this moment, Jose Mourinho, similar view to me, the crowd behind me, circa 15,000, no-one reacts reacts apart from Matic.
“In fact if you look at the footage when the camera pans back to Mourinho and his assistant, they’re calmly talking about what they should do.
“Now after the event with hindsight, with camera views, with slo-mo, now there’s statements like criminal tackle are being used.
Dyche added that the tackle was seen via the replay and looked bad but for the Mourinho to come out and use such strong words was hard to believe, especially after he never reacted during the game, “I find it hard to believe that all these people who have now come out, especially the manager using very strong phrases about that moment didn’t have any reaction at all at that live moment.
“I find that one a hard one to accept at that live moment.
“Afterwards we can all slo-mo, we can all re-angle and things often look different after the event when you’ve got all the technology that you’ve got.”
Chelsea on the other hand and have time till today 1pm to submit their evidence for the Matic ban to be overturned so that the Serb can face Tottenham in the League cup final.