BY THE time you get round to reading this, Jose Mourinho will hopefully be recovering from surgery, having undergone an emergency operation to have Ashley Barnes removed from under his skin where he clearly resided all weekend.

That was some rant the Chelsea manager embarked on, starting late on Saturday afternoon and extending into Sunday lunchtime.

Labelling Barnes’ challenge on Nemanja Matic “criminal” and wondering aloud how many matches the striker should be banned for, Mourinho stopped short of suggesting Barnes should be put on the next available rocket and blasted into deep space, but only just.

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In fairness to the Blues boss, his ire towards Barnes was understandable. There is, for example, no doubt that the striker should have been cautioned for his reckless challenge on Branislav Ivanovic. And although only the player himself will ever know if there was malice aforethought in his subsequent tangle with Matic, it certainly didn’t look good.

However, Mourinho lost any trace of credibility with his outlandish suggestion that not only should Barnes have walked for his challenge on Ivanovic, but that Chelsea should have gone in at the interval 3-0 up after missing out on two stone-wall spot-kicks.

To deal with the penalty issues first, both of them fall into the “seen them given” category – a bit like the Gareth McAuley handball incident against West Brom a couple of weeks back. They certainly weren’t nailed-on.

As for casting themselves as the victims of an over-physical approach, let’s remind ourselves here that the Clarets weren’t lining up against a Kensington Mixed Infants XI, but a street-wise, experienced outfit who know how to handle themselves.

Oscar quite clearly raked his studs down Danny Ings’ calf in the second half, Kurt Zouma and John Terry were taking no prisoners at the back and it’s taken less than six months in English football for Diego Costa to acquire a certain reputation.

Yet the thing that sticks in the craw most about Mourinho’s melodramatic moaning is that it detracts from what a terrific performance Burnley put in at Stamford Bridge. The key to their success was not panicking after conceding an early goal and sticking to their game plan.

The plain truth is that other than a 10-minute patch in the second half where a succession of low balls fizzed across Tom Heaton’s six-yard box, the champions elect were made to look very ordinary.

And I think that deep down, we all know that’s why Jose created such a smoke-screen.