THE FORMER LIVERPOOL striker cannot understand the Portuguese manager’s time-wasting tactics after the Reds’ defeat by Chelsea in last season’s Premier League run-in.
Luis Suarez has hit out at Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho’s tactics in last season’s dramatic win over Liverpool. Goals from Demba Ba and Willian secured victory for the Blues in April as the Reds fell short in the title race, with Mourinho criticised by Brendan Rodgers for “parking two buses rather than one”.
And Suarez, who has since joined Barcelona in an €88 million deal, believes that the time-wasting methods used by the former Real Madrid boss were baffling despite their effectiveness.
“Every coach has his methods — that’s not important to me — but I don’t like his way of time-wasting from the very start,” he wrote in his autobiography, ‘Crossing The Line’.
“I asked myself: ‘But why does he do this from the first minute?’ I even asked one of his players and he said to me: ‘What do you want me to do? If it makes us play well, I have to do it. What else can I do? If I don’t, I won’t play any more.’
“We were playing at home and a draw would have been good for us. I didn’t expect Chelsea to go for a draw — only a win would have helped them. For them wasting time wasn’t good. I didn’t understand.
“We didn’t play well but there wasn’t much else that we could do. They had 10 players in front of us, most of them within their area. We could try to draw them out of position by moving the ball quickly but then another defender appeared before us.
“It’s hard when you see that there’s no room to move in and we saw that time was running out. His way of playing to the lock frustrated us. Mourinho know that if they wasted time, we would get frustrated, play crazily and do anything.”
The Reds host Mourinho’s side on Saturday with the Blues unbeaten in all competitions this season while Rodgers’ team have won just once in their last five outings.
