Alex Ferguson says sacking Jose Mourinho would be foolish

London: Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner, has been warned that he would be “foolish” to sack Jose Mourinho by Sir Alex Ferguson, who insists that the Portuguese remains one of the best managers of all time.

Chelsea are two points above the Premier League relegation zone, following an eighth defeat of the season, at home against Bournemouth. There is now huge pressure on Mourinho ahead of the London club’s Champions League tie against Porto tomorrow, when a defeat would leave Chelsea eliminated.

However, Ferguson is confident that Mourinho can still turn around Chelsea’s season and the former Man-chester United manager -believes that sacking him would represent “poor leadership” from the club’s owner, Abramovich.

“He [Abramovich] has sacked so many coaches in the last 10 years that I am sure he has learned from it,” said Ferguson, who was United manager for 26 years before he retired in 2013.

“He has to trust and have confidence Jose can turn it around. There is no point in sacking one of the best coaches of all time, he’s won the European Cup twice, he’s won the League in each country he’s managed in, he’s won the big trophies. It would be foolish to take that step to sack him. That would be bad management. It’s poor leadership, that.”

Ferguson revealed that he had been in touch with Mourinho. “I’ve been watching Jose and I’ve spoken to him a couple of times. It’s the first time he’s been confronted with non-success. If you look at his whole career it’s been nothing but a rise all the time, so for the first time in his life he’s had to deal with bad publicity, adversity and that’s a challenge but there are signs he is getting back to a balanced level even though they lost on Saturday.

“All good leaders will eventually find a solution. He will find a solution and I think he will get back to normal. It’s not looking great at the moment, but I know the guy and work he has done in football and I can’t see it lasting long.”

Asked at a seminar at the TechCrunch event in London what Chelsea’s biggest problems had been, Ferguson said: “Things that have been overlooked are [Thibaut] Courtois being injured in first game, that was a big loss. John Terry at the beginning of the season was not having a great time and that is a loss because he is a leader in the team. When you lose two really influential players like that, it can make a difference.

“What Manchester United were best at was having the consistency. Winning the league didn’t matter, it was the next year that mattered. There are not many teams who can continue that, for instance [Man-chester] City won the league and then lost it the next year, Chelsea won the league and are now having a bad spell.

“It is very difficult to maintain and continue success for five, six, seven years, very difficult. The key is to avoid complacency. “If we won the league, my first step next season was to remind them about many things, about expectation and responsibility, that complacency is a disease. All these things mattered to me because I was always fearful of dropping back off the scale. Fortunately, we had a reasonable consistency, but the most important thing about United for me was every time we lost the league, we won it the next year. So there was a response. The character in the team, that was really important.

Developing character in a football team is just as important as developing the ability of the team and the character in that football team was very, very strong.”

Other than backing Mourinho, Ferguson has been impressed by the impact Jurgen Klopp has already had on Liverpool and admits he is concerned about the club’s potential success under the German.

“I’m worried about him because the one thing United don’t want is Liverpool to get above us,” Ferguson, 73, said. “He’s a fantastic personality, with those big white teeth always showing. Even at Newcastle when they lost the second goal he goes over to Steve McClaren to congratulate him. That’s class, that. And the work he did at Dortmund. I know him quite well from the coaching seminars.”

Klopp has already won over the English media and Ferguson believes that is half the battle for managers, admitting he used to splash his face with cold water before facing the press.

“You have to win twice on a Saturday,” he said.

“You have to win the game and you have to win the press conference. Some managers fail, simply because they lack experience or they’re emotional. You have to gather yourself. I used to wash my face before a press conference. Sometimes you’re forced to go to the press conference immediately and you have to be thinking quickly about how you deal with it.

“You have to give a message to your fans because they’re watching. They want to see their manager come out with a positive attitude and not a beaten man.”