Norwich City will prove to be a turning point for the Chelsea
striker. The Spain forward has come in for growing
criticism after struggling to recapture the form he showed
during his club's march to the Premier League title last
season.
Costa again missed a number of chances against Norwich
before securing Chelsea's first win in four league games
with the 64th-minute winner in a 1-0 success at Stamford
Bridge on Saturday, only his third goal in 11 English
Premier League appearances this season. Chelsea
manager Mourinho admitted his player has been feeling the
strain, but believes Costa can now begin to put a difficult
period behind him.
"When you don't score goals, you get heavier," said
Mourinho. "Every game that you don't score goals, you get
5kg more. You get heavy and the pressure is there. In the
first half he (Costa) misses two chances. The second one,
in the last minute, is really a big one. So it was important
for him. Important for us, the result and the goal, but I think
also for him."
"He's working well, he's a happy guy, he tries everything,"
the Portuguese boss added. "He's positive, so if I had to
choose somebody to score the winning goal, I would go
exactly with him. Everything is connected.
"You are fluent in your decisions, you choose your
movements well, you choose the number of touches well,
when to hold, when to keep possession. When you lose
confidence, you lose this fluent game. Yes, he can do much
better, but again, one goal is very important."
And the manager believes Costa is benefitting from
showing more discipline on the field.
"He's doing well. He had three yellow cards in 16, 17
official matches in the season. He's not responding,
basically, to provocations. Little things are the salt and the
pepper of football. He's behaving well and everything is
fine."
Mourinho calling for Cruise
Chelsea remain in the bottom half of the table with a third of
the season gone yet while Mourinho has written off his
side's title hopes, he still believes they can finish in the top
four.
"We have to go game after game. But I said already in the
press conference yesterday that the fourth position for me
is not an impossible mission," he explained. "If you ask me
the title, I would say impossible mission. Maybe Tom
Cruise can do it. It's complicated because you have to
recover points from four candidates.
"But to recover positions and points to teams that normally
are in the middle of the table and to grab one of the ones
that go up and will also have a little bit of a collapse for
sure, because everybody will have. The fourth position is a
difficult position but a possible target. But match after
match. Now is Maccabi (Tel Aviv in the Champions League)
and we hope we can win and maybe the Porto-Dynamo
result allows us to qualify before the last match, which
would be good. But if we have to win the last match at
home, let's go for that."
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