Kezman blames Grant for loss

IN CHELSEA postmortems these days, the finger-pointing does not normally get far beyond Avram Grant.

The common threads are that the manager is no Jose Mourinho, that his substitutions are flawed and that he fails to command respect and thereby elicit responses from his players.

It was a novel twist, however, to hear the criticisms articulated so bitingly by an opposition player.

Granted, the player in question was a one-time Mourinho devotee. Mateja Kezman was signed for Chelsea in 2004 by Mourinho, then moved to Fenerbahce via Atletico Madrid. But after his team's 2-1 Champions League victory over Chelsea here on Wednesday night, which has fired Turkish optimism that the semi-final is within reach, his words were, nevertheless, wounding.

"Chelsea without Mourinho is not the same," said the Serbia striker, who won the Premier League title in his one season in England and also scored the decisive goal in the League Cup final against Liverpool. "Under Mourinho they were a machine which for 90 minutes or 95 minutes was working without a mistake or any faults. Now they have ups and downs and you can see them.

"We watched their last couple of games and against Middlesbrough and Sunderland they made four or five mistakes in both games. There's not the same spirit in the team any more. It's not the machine it used to be. If Mourinho had been in charge (on Wednesday night) of course it would have been different. He is a very different coach and in the time of Mourinho there were no surprises, no mistakes. Everything worked fantastically.

"Now you can see there are gaps there. You can see that something is not working. If Frank Lampard is substituted after 75 minutes it means something is wrong. Maybe it's good for us because it gives us the chance to go to the semi-final."

Grant claimed that Lampard had to come off because he lacked a little stamina after suffering from a stomach bug but the midfielder did not mask his disappointment. He became the latest Chelsea player to stalk off slowly, like a Test batsman ruing a dodgy lbw. Grant's hold on the dressingroom is betrayed by such moments, which are isolated-to-nonexistent at Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool.

The Israeli routinely stands accused of failing to positively influence a match and Kezman's comments about his own manager, Zico, might have resonated with some of his former team-mates.

Fenerbahce trailed 1-0 at half-time when the famous Brazilian addressed his players. "He gave an inspirational talk," said Kezman. "It's unbelievable to work with Zico and everything he says I want to listen to. There's a great respect between him and us and he gives us big motivation to play for him. Zico just explained to us at half-time that we had shown Chelsea too much respect. He said, 'Play your football, show what you can do and enjoy this game'. That was the difference in the second half."

Grant, however, could be forgiven for steering the inquest towards his players. His starting selection and tactics worked well, with Lampard and Michael Ballack dictating tempo, and he was not to blame for Chelsea's profligacy in front of goal, for which Didier Drogba was the chief culprit. Had Chelsea taken their chances the tie would have been over, and it was heartening to hear Ballack accept that responsibility lay with those on the pitch.

"There are no excuses - it was our fault," said the German. "We controlled the game and had everything in our hands but we didn't concentrate for every second. We had two or three good chances to score another goal and we didn't. But we have another game next Tuesday and we should win at home." Drogba said: "We know we will get a lot of chances in the second leg but we have to score them and I have to score them. I had chances to score and I didn't."