Former Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson has backed Jose Mourinho to take Chelsea out of the doldrums.
The English Premier League champions are currently going through a rough patch in the league, losing their eighth league match on Saturday to lowly-placed new comers, AFC Bournemouth.
In an interview on at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in London, Ferguson said: “I have been watching Jose [Mourinho] recently and spoken to him a couple of times, and this is the first time he has been confronted with non-success.
“If you look at his whole career there has been nothing but a rise all of the time so for the first time in his life he has had to deal with bad publicity, adversity and that is a challenge for him, but there are signs he is getting back to a balanced level although they lost on Saturday.
“I watched the match on Saturday and they could have won by a few goals, but they lost and then he has still has to face that sort of negative publicity and it is never easy for a manager in present-day football because the media attention is huge.
“Football today is such a big financial industry, the television deal is [worth] billions, there is the press involvement, there is pressure from their own fans, it is a very high risk industry today.
“The sort of average time a manager lasts now is a year throughout the whole country and that is not a big time.
“For Jose, I think all good leaders will eventually find a solution. I think he will find a solution and will get back to normal [but it] is not looking great at the moment.
“But I know the guy and I know the work he has done in football and I can’t see it lasting long, I can’t see it.”
Mourinho faces fresh pressure to qualify for the knockout stage of the UEFA Champions League when Chelsea welcome FC Porto to Stamford Bridge on Wednesday.
A win will ensure qualification for the Blues while a win will put the club at the mercy of Maccabi Tel Aviv, who will then have to beat or draw Dynamo Kyiv as a favour to Chelsea.