The champions are reeling after a dismal start to the season but José Mourinho did not get where he is by crumpling at the first hint of trouble

The first thing to say about the almost implausible and strangely dishevelled way that Chelsea have started the season is that anyone wishing to dance on José Mourinho’s grave had better make sure the coffin is firmly nailed down first.

This time a couple of weeks ago, Chelsea were the popular choice to defend the league championship with the same ease with which they won it. Two games later, knees have jerked and they are being depicted as the first crisis story of the new campaign, teetering on the brink of a full-on meltdown before we have even reached its 10th day. It’s not true, of course. There are 108 points to play for and let’s remember Mourinho did not get where he is by crumpling at the first hint of trouble.

Likewise, anyone presumptuous enough to think John Terry should be directed to the knackers’ yard on the basis of one 45-minute ordeal, facing the best striker in the land, could seriously be in danger of under-estimating the man’s competitive courage. Terry had a difficult afternoon against Sergio Agüero, as many do, and his substitution was so out of the norm that, naturally, it was a big part of the story from Sunday’s game at Manchester City. Yet there is also a sense here that some of the people who have decided a black sheet can now be draped over Terry’s career have read too much into one match and, in some cases, that it might be wishful thinking when the player in question has gone through spells of his professional life, to borrow the quote from Percival Wilde, where he has made enemies as naturally as soap makes suds.

What can be said is that Sunday bordered on public humiliation for Terry and there is something remarkable about the way Chelsea have staggered through the initial stages of their title defence given the swirl of negative publicity and unpleasant stench that is still hanging over them from the Eva Carneiro dispute.

To recap, they are two doctors down. We have had the first press-conference walk-out of the season, albeit Mourinho reached only as far as the door before making his way back to the top table. Chelsea have taken one point out of six and their captain has been reminded what can happen when age becomes a player’s hardest opponent. It is not a crisis, but it is chaos, and there has not been a period like it for Mourinho at Chelsea since his first spell at the club entered its final stages, when his hair started to look out of control, the gaze was wild and Sir Alex Ferguson began one early-morning press conference at Manchester United by asking whether “the sparrows are waking up coughing at Stamford Bridge.”

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It is their worst start since 1998, pre-dating the Abramovich era, and goes completely against the reputation of Mourinho’s teams for being quick starters, especially when their winless start also comes on the back of the Community Shield and Arsène Wenger’s first victory over his bete noire in 14 attempts spread over 11 years. Mourinho now says his team “controlled” that game, just as he believes Sunday’s 3-0 beating was a “fake result”, when most people would clearly have seen City playing with the greater vibrancy, and Chelsea’s defence being opened up with uncommon ease.

Chelsea did have a patch for 20 minutes or so in the second half when they pushed their opponents back, just as they did against Arsenal, but overall it merely needs a totting-up of the number of chances for City, or Agüero alone, to realise Mourinho’s assessment of how his team had played was generous, to say the least. It was City who looked like the defending champions and, while reiterating that a five-point gap in August is not critical, it is clearly a useful advantage for Manuel Pellegrini’s renascent team, especially when it is also apparent that Chelsea’s deficiencies do not just stop at Terry struggling so far to reproduce his form from last season.

Branislav Ivanovic has started the new campaign looking more vulnerable than he ever did when they won the league. Cesc Fàbregas has not yet snapped out of the drop in form that started to affect him in the spring and perhaps it is time someone pointed out to Diego Costa there are no bonus points for excessive testosterone and remind him of the corresponding fixture at City last season and the little scene that unfolded when he and Vincent Kompany tussled for the same ball, holding their ground like two warring old stags. Neither gave an inch, mano a mano, and when Kompany finally emerged with the ball there was an appreciative hand from Costa to recognise what had happened.

Costa has been applying an increasingly loose interpretation of the rules since he suffered his hamstring problem last season and it does raise the question of whether he is trying to over-compensate for his lack of sharpness. His favoured way of damaging opponents before that point was by showing off his imposing physical strength and finishing ability inside the penalty area. Now, his primary tactic is to be an irritation in other ways, jabbering away, flicking people in the face and, accidentally on purpose, standing on their toes.

There was little doubt the flailing elbow from Fernandinho was dangerous and could have warranted a red card but sympathy has to be tempered bearing in mind the victim had perpetrated a similar offence a few minutes earlier. Costa had been trying to pick a fight with Fernandinho, usually an innocuous kind of opponent, for some time and there was something revealing about the scene at the end of the first half when he shaped as if he was going after the Brazilian and even his own team-mates looked weary of the posturing. Costa has shown us his temper; it would be appreciated now if he could remind us of his talent, reassess his priorities and return to being the marauding, all-action centre-forward who was dismantling defences this time a year ago.

For Chelsea, it is imperative, especially when Radamel Falcao still has to prove he is more than just a vanity signing and, for all the outstanding qualities that made Eden Hazard last season’s footballer of the year, the silliness of Mourinho saying his best player was now superior to Cristiano Ronaldo. Take away some of Ronaldo’s blistering pace, his prodigious scoring output (61 goals last season), his power, the bludgeoning shot, the dazzling, improvisational skill and the ability to head the ball like Tommy Lawton; what you would be left with is Eden Hazard.

As for the Carneiro issue, there isn’t a great deal left to be said about the unpleasant way it has been handled other than it is strange, perhaps, that nobody has brought up the letter Ferguson, then the Manchester United manager, wrote to a 20-year-old female physiotherapist who had requested a work placement in 1994 and didn’t realise, perhaps, what kind of industry it was.

Ferguson turned her down, on the basis “the general thoughts of the players regarding a female physiotherapist was that they would prefer to be treated by a male physiotherapist, they would feel more comfortable and they felt it would be much easier to discuss their problems with another male”. Generously, however, he did add: “Most of the players felt that football was very much a male sport and did not really like the thought of females being involved with the treatment of sports injuries within the training complex, though they did not object if they had to see a female physiotherapist at a hospital or sports clinic.”

Mourinho is the only person who can tell us whether the same thinking has gone into Carneiro’s demotion, though it is certainly intriguing that one journalist who purports to be close to his camp has written that one of the manager’s concerns was that “the dressing-room dynamic was affected by the presence of a female”.

All that really can be said for certain is that Chelsea have begun the season in a way that, sooner or later, will result in the classic Mourinho-led siege mentality and that Mourinho needs a performance and a result that can clear the air a little at West Brom on Saturday.

But here’s a strange fact. Mourinho’s last six league defeats have come against managers whose surnames begin with P: Pulis, Poyet, Pardew, Pochettino, Pulis again and Pellegrini. His next two games are against Pulis and Pardew.