Mourinho: meltdown or masterstroke?

This morning's press are all over some fairly innocuous comments made by Jose Mourinho after he saw his injury-ravaged side held to a 1 - 1 draw at Wycombe.

Mourinho claimed that will be no new faces arriving in January, despite the fact that targets had been identified. He didn't give any reasons why this is the case but the tabloids have decided that he must be at war with the board.

There is no doubt that Chelsea are suffering at the moment but lets not forget that Mourinho is a master at using the press as a tool to build team spirit. Taken at face value, his comments are puzzling. Either he knows his days are numbered so doesn't care what happens (unlikely in my opinion) or there is a hidden motive behind his comments (isn't there always?)

Since Roman arrived with his ridiculously huge bank balance, Chelsea has been held to ransom in the transfer market, paying way over the odds for players. Perhaps the board will no longer stump up for inflated transfer fees. Jose's comments could be designed to put pressure on the likes of Man City, who are asking £20million for 18-year-old Micah Richards.

Alternatively could this be another case of the Chelsea manager putting himself in the firing line to take the pressure off his players? Nobody is talking about Michael Ballack or divisions in the Chelsea dressing room this morning. It could be that Mourinho has decided that press speculation about a boardroom split is less likely to effect team performance than talk of problems in the dressing room.