Jose Mourinho denies he made Ashley Cole captain against Cardiff as a way of giving him a send-off after eight years at Chelsea.
Cole and fellow Blues veterans John Terry and Frank Lampard are all out of contract this summer.
At a press conference last Friday, Mourinho said he would recommend to the board that all three receive new deals. After yesterday’s 2-1 win in South Wales, the Chelsea manager played down the significance of the 33-year-old left-back leading the side.
He said: “Ashley was not the captain to say goodbye in a nice way, he was the captain because he was the player on the pitch with more years at Chelsea.
“He arrived before Branislav Ivanovic. So he was the one with more time. So we gave him the armband as a consequence of that, not thinking that was his last game. It’s a process but the important thing is the club know who they are, the club know what they can give, the club respect them. After that between players and the club they will arrive to the best decision.”
Chelsea have toiled against the weaker sides this season and yesterday had to come from behind to beat the Premier League’s basement club.
One of Chelsea’s scorers, Andre Schurrle (right), said: “We need to play the same against the big teams as we’ve done this season and then have the will to win against teams who are lower in the table.
“We’ve missed a lot of points in these matches and that’s what we have to improve. We lost at home to Sunderland and at Aston Villa and Crystal Palace and that’s where we lost the title.”
