Jose Mourinho is the Joe Pesci of the Premier League.

I know, I know… I wrote this yesterday and compared the Chelsea manager to Othello. It struck me this morning that the Portuguese actually has more in common with the Italian American actor, or at least, the characters Pesci used to play in Martin Scorcese films.

Jose Mourinho is Goodfellas Tommy De Vito, he is Casino’s Nicky Santoro.

Viewed in that context, Chelsea’s fury at the 12 month good behaviour bond placed on the Chelsea manager seems misplaced.

Here is a man who comes to the Premier League and insults his fellow managers on a regular basis. He pokes them in the eyes. He questions the integrity of match officials. He responds to one question in a post match interview with a soliloquy, Shakespearean in its breadth, but which doesn’t answer the question put to him. He talks of a campaign against Chelsea. He spends 40 minutes on Goals on Sunday, because of a couple of decisions not going his way (a move actually more Sam Rothstein than Nick Santoro).

To borrow a line from Casino, “How much more were they (the bosses) gonna take?”

Let’s be clear here, all that’s happened here is that Mourinho has been asked to behave himself. It’s hardly a baseball bat and a freshly dug hole out in Indiana. It’s not even the football equivalent of that, whatever that might be. The FA statement on Mourinho’s one match ban, suspended for twelve months reads as follows:

 “Jose Mourinho has been given a suspended one-match stadium ban and fined £50,000 after he admitted a breach of FA Rules in relation to post-match media comments.

“The Chelsea manager was charged for misconduct following the game against Southampton on Saturday 3 October 2015.

“It was alleged his remarks constituted improper conduct in that they alleged and/or implied bias on the part of a match official or match officials and/or brought the game into disrepute.

“Mr Mourinho’s suspended stadium ban will be immediately invoked should he be found by an Independent Regulatory Commission to have committed a further breach of FA Rule E3 for any comment or statement to or through the media before 13 October 2016.”

It seems fairly clear cut to me. As long as Mourinho manages to avoid claiming that match officials are biased against Chelsea, a pretty ripe claim bearing in mind some of the events which have gone down in the last few weeks, nothing will happen to him. Of course, there is the small issue that this Portuguese motormouth may not be able to help himself.

Clearly, much of the consternation at Chelsea centres on the fact that Arsène Wenger escaped censure not only for pushing Mourinho in the technical area last season, but for his post match comments in the aftermath of a match where we were royally shafted by Mike Dean. I must admit that I thought Arsène was a little lucky to get away with the push – although it would only have been a yellow card had it occurred on the field of play.

However, if Chelsea can’t see the difference between questioning a referee’s decisions and implying that a match officials are routinely biased against Chelsea, then they may need to go to a Citizens Advice Bureau. It’s free advice, you know! Arsène is not a man driven to criticising referees as a matter of course, the same can not be said of his Chelsea counterpart.

Arsène is a man who, generally, behaves like… well, he behaves as you would expect the Arsenal manager to. Mourinho, on the other hand? Well, we’ve already established what he’s like.

He is now past £100,000 in fines since his return to Chelsea in 2013 and is now on FA sanction number five. He doesn’t seem to get that he can’t just do, and say, whatever he wants. Of course this is the case. Of course it is, he is the manager of a Russian oligarch’s plaything, a club which employs, and celebrates, a racist as its “captain, leader, legend”. Why wouldn’t Mourinho expect to do and say as he pleases?

It seems, with rather dramatic reports now circulating in the Evening Standard of a Chelsea “mutiny”, it may be that the manager himself might be beyond even the help of the national charity. It seems as though the baseball bats might be coming for him after all. Just a week after John Terry and co pledged their support for their manager.

If I may mix my Scorcese films, Mourinho would do well to remember these lines from Goodfellas Henry Hill,

“See, your murderers come with smiles, they come as your friends, the people who’ve cared for you all of your life. And they always seem to come at a time that you’re at your weakest and most in need of their help.”

 

DISCLAIMER: Any comparisons I may have made between Chelsea Football Club and the mafia are purely for dramatic effect.