In a crowded room at the club’s training ground the Chelsea manager threatened to storm out if anyone asked about the week’s big issue

It was the latest of those moments that shine an unforgiving light on the controlling and sometimes petulant nature of José Mourinho’s character. The Chelsea manager was in the firing line, after the storm that he had created with his behaviour towards two of his medical staff, and the small press conference suite at the club’s training ground in Cobham was stuffy and claustrophobic.

Mourinho was in no mood to share his feelings about his decision to strip Eva Carneiro, the first-team doctor, and Jon Fearn, the club’s head physiotherapist, of some of their responsibilities, after their crime from the previous Saturday of running on to treat Eden Hazard, having being told to do so by the referee, in added time at the end of the 2-2 home draw with Swansea City.

Mourinho had refused to address the seriousness of the issue that he had put on the agenda – whether the opinion of medical specialists had to be primary – when he insisted his inquisitors could ask whatever they liked but “you cannot make me answer”.

“José, you should answer these questions …” one journalist ventured.

“You shouldn’t ask,” Mourinho shot back. Suitably tangled up, and with the questions about the lamentable affair and PR disaster still coming, Mourinho issued a warning. “Don’t make another question because I go,” he said. “Think twice about the next question because I go. Think twice …”

In came another one about Carneiro and back went Mourinho’s chair. “Have a good weekend,” he said, before getting up and stalking off towards the side door. “I go. I play against Manchester City. You want to speak about that? I go,” he said.

Mourinho was talked back to the table and, by then, it was clear that it was pointless prodding him any further. There had been a surprising concession from him, when he said that Carneiro and Fearn might have been barred from taking their places on the bench at City on Sunday but that “doesn’t mean that they can’t be in the future”. There was a whiff of conciliation.

Mourinho spoke about the clear-the-air meeting he had held with his medical staff on Thursday, in which he stated at the outset that, if ever they felt a player had a serious problem, they did not need to wait for the referee or him. They should run on straight away.

“It doesn’t matter if the referee is not happy with that, if the manager is not happy with that,” he said, in clipped tones. “If you know, if you feel … you go and you don’t think twice. The players are more important than the result, the manager, even the referee.”

Mourinho’s overriding emotion, though, was of one of agitation, of incredulity. How could his decision to demote two people for, essentially, doing their jobs in a diligent manner be questioned so ferociously? The contradictions dotted his rhetoric.

Mourinho talked of football being an emotional game and how he had open relationships with his staff. He said it was fine to have disagreements. “They told me that we need disagreements to improve,” Mourinho said. He suggested that creative tensions were a good thing although, with Mourinho, there is the sense that nobody would do too well if they disagreed too strongly with him.

There was also what felt like a barb from him towards Carneiro, whose profile and popularity has always been high. “For some, it is important to be on the bench but for others, it is more important what they do behind the scenes, what they do for the good of the team,” Mourinho said. “The most important thing is not what other people think you do, it is what you do.”

It was highly theatrical, as it tends to be with Mourinho. Beforehand there had been a traffic jam on the internal road into the training ground, when the stewards ran out of passes for members of the media while, on the lawn around the corner, a TV news crew filmed a scene-setter. Inside the suite it was standing room only. There was tension, and the expectation of a performance.

It has seemed that what happened with Carneiro and Fearn was not a sudden and isolated eruption, rather a symptom of broader frustrations which have been niggling at Mourinho. Here, after returning from his threatened walk-out, he laid the biggest one bare. In short, Mourinho said, Chelsea have not been ready to begin the season.

Mourinho used fewer players in the Premier League last season than any other manager – the result, he said, of the team starting well and players, in effect, becoming undroppable – but the upshot was that they were shattered towards its end. Mourinho gave them one month off but the pre-season, he said, was too short and the club have been forced to go “in another direction”.

Mourinho also noted how his key signings last summer – Diego Costa, Cesc Fàbregas and Thibaut Courtois – arrived early whereas this time out, the club have not managed, so far, to strengthen their best XI. “You can say ‘Why didn’t we do our business before the start of the pre-season?’ like we did last year but it’s not because we don’t want to, it’s because it’s not possible,” Mourinho said. “So, in this moment, we are a bit limited but I have no doubt that the club will give the squad a couple more players.

“We were tired towards the end of last season and the team had problems. We went for a slower start – a short pre-season, with only three matches before the Community Shield – and we knew that the start is not going to be the same kind of start that we had last year.

“Clearly we know what we are doing. Clearly some bodies didn’t react as well as we expected. We are not at the top of our game. The normal tendency is, week after week, to improve.”

The normal tendency for Mourinho, when things are not going smoothly, is to scapegoat various people and things. Carneiro and Fearn are the latest victims, while Mourinho also had a moan on Friday about the failure of the club’s appeal against Courtois’ red card against Swansea. Chelsea’s appeals, he noted, always fail.

Mourinho has seemingly been in a bad mood for weeks and it is lost on nobody how quickly things have unravelled for him at clubs in the past. He urgently needs the dark clouds to blow over.