Mourinho miffed at pre-season refereeing

It might be pre-season for Chelsea Football Club, but that won't stop the manager from doing his thing when the officiating annoys him. Maybe he needs to warm up as well?

We knew they were in a more advanced stage of pre-season so we were expecting a competitive, intense game. We came here and the referee thought it was a circus for Bremen fans to have fun and he killed the match. I like their team, they are fast, defend with a lot of players, they are physical. It was the perfect opponent but we didn’t play.

Every duel and free-kick went against us, the penalties, especially the last one, were nonsense. Being aggressive with (Nathan) Ake, an 18-year-old, was disappointing. We wanted to train but the referee didn’t let us have a good session.

Source: ChelseaFC.com.

Which, well, fair play, I suppose. The referee certainly didn't have a great game, with the penalties, but I'm not really sure how he stopped Chelsea from playing in general. We won about a dozen dangerous free kicks (mostly through Diego Costa) which we did nothing with, so it's not like Werder Bremen were getting all the calls. Sure, the result might have had a lot to do with the officiating, but I don't think the performance did -- the midfield was a disjointed mess and we simply weren't creating anything going forward.

As Mourinho says, the fact that four returnees -- Thibaut Courtois, Eden Hazard, Didier Drogba and John Obi Mikel -- got playing time was the only real positive. Although I'm not going to get stressed about anything in pre-season, I really hope to see a performance far beyond what we witnessed on Sunday the next time the Blues take the field.