Jose Mourinho is unwilling to adopt a more defensive approach to the game even after Chelsea were dumped out of the Capital One Cup by Sunderland at the Stadium of Light on Tuesday night.
The Blues, who have struggled for goals recently, took the lead early in the second half when Lee Cattermole put the ball into his own net, which they held onto until Fabio Borini equalised two minutes from time. Ki Sung-Yueng found a winner deep into extra time, which proved enough to knock out Chelsea, who failed to capitalise on sustained periods of pressure, at the quarter-final stage.
"If I want to win 1-0, I think I can. One of the easiest things in football is to win 1-0," Mourinho told reporters after the 2-1 defeat. "It's not so difficult. You structure your team from the back, you organise your team from the defensive idea, you don't give freedom to your players to express themselves.
"The dynamic of the team is defensive and what you do is you recover the ball and try to punish the opponent on the counter-attack. To win 1-0 is not the most difficult thing in football.
"I don't want to because we are going in a direction which is the right direction in terms of the quality of football we want to play, and it's quite frustrating that you have to change that and go one step back and go in another direction just because you want better results. It's something I don't want to do."
Chelsea travel to Premier League leaders Arsenal on Monday.
Matt Cotton
