The Pre-Match Preamble – Gameweek 17

Intent on milking further controversy from Jose Mourinho’s departure, it seems every football manager has been asked to give their views on the “Special One’s” exit.

They have yet to get around to asking me, so I’ll put things on record by saying that I’ll miss the old so-and-so.

Us Fantasy Football managers have a love/hate relationship with the cast of Premier League bosses, with the dial normally leaning towards the latter.

Like bad referees, we only really air our views on managers when they draw our ire.

Whether it is vague or misleading team news, or the ill-timed application of a rotation policy, a Premier League manager can upset our equilibrium and have us vent our frustration.

Jose certainly walked the line.

For me, he was a constant menace. I approached his press conference in much the same way as the man himself – I saw them as a game.

I’m convinced that Mourinho revelled in the intellectual joust with the press, where ambiguous words were loaded and designed to play with the minds of peers, players and officials.

Things came to head with Jose and me over Diego Costa.

The Spaniard was a player I once loved but now keep at arms length, partly due to Costa’s own insistence on running his studs up the back of defenders, but also because of Mourinho’s vague and sometimes misleading perspective on his fitness and form.

Then there was Jose’s recent decision to bench Eden Hazard – the player of the year and the spark that carried Chelsea to the title for much of last season.

It is assumed that Mourinho has somehow broken Hazard – I only know that he chose to bench him just as I had taken the gamble on the Belgian’s revival. It may have been personal, but I wasn’t going to let Jose get to me.

Mourinho and Chelsea have played a leading role in making these last sixteen Gameweeks the most volatile and unpredictable in memory.

Littered with intrigue and incident, Jose has banished doctors from his bench, broken records for on-air rants and pin-pointed almost his entire squad for criticism, whilst ignoring Branislav Ivanovic’s comical take on defending.

I have to thank Jose for the ride and admit that I’ll miss his influence on our weekends from this point on.

Maybe we’ll see him back. Maybe it will be at Old Trafford – wouldn’t that be fun.

In the meantime, I’ll go back to my own squad and try to learn some lessons from Jose.

Today I’m benching a £58 million midfielder and two of the four top-scoring defenders in the game. Decisions like that are undeniably a bit “special”.