Football
ESPN staff 9y

Jose Mourinho hits out at Schurrle and Salah after Chelsea beat Shrewsbury

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has told some of his fringe players they have made his next team selection "easy" after they failed to make the most of their opportunity against Shrewsbury.

Andre Schurrle, Mohamed Salah and Filipe Luis all struggled as Chelsea scraped through 2-1 to reach the League Cup quarterfinals. They needed a late own goal from Jermaine Grandison to progress on Tuesday after Andy Mangan had levelled with 13 minutes left.

Didier Drogba scored the opener, his second in two games, but Mourinho -- who made seven changes from Sunday's 1-1 draw at Manchester United -- was not happy with his fringe players ahead of Saturday's visit of QPR.

"I expect players to give me problems. I love problems. But a lot of them didn't and they've made it easy to choose my team for Saturday,'' said Mourinho, who gave a debut to right-back Andreas Christensen.

"If players who played 90 minutes two days ago were fantastic I expect people who are not playing a lot to raise the level to create me problems. They didn't create me big problems."

Asked if Schurrle and Salah in particular had disappointed him, Mourinho said: "Yes."

But the boss said Drogba was an example to the rest of his squad after his key role: "Yes I was worried when they equalised but we go through and Didier played a massive part in that. Hopefully he will be good for the weekend but we will have to see because right now his character is stronger than his body.

"Maybe what he has done today is through his character -- not his body. That's what makes players special and any of the young players lucky enough to play alongside him, learn from that."

Drogba added: "I played here before, with Galatasaray. Shrewsbury have improved since then. It was difficult with the weather. I wouldn't say I enjoyed the game. It was difficult but I started playing in places like this."

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