It changes each day."One day he says it's the groin; then it's the ankle Another day he says he can play We need to find the solution to this.". "We will talk with the doctor and try to look at his situation We don't know exactly what the problem is. "I don't think there could be anyone who is more disappointed about the way things are going than Harry."This is without a doubt the most frustrating spell that he has ever had. Since November 2003 - let's be frank - he has not done anything. He's not hiding behind that and I'm not hiding behind that."But what is he meant to do? If you have a contract you should be paid and I would hate to see someone not being paid. Would you simply walk away? That's ridiculous."Mandic added: "It's been since November 2003 that he has had the problem and it's up to the Liverpool people to sort the problem out."Benitez claimed on Tuesday that he is becoming baffled by Kewell's fitness problems, with the former Leeds United player unavailable for last night's Champions' League last 16 match with Bayer Leverkusen."One day Harry is OK, and the next he says he is unfit," the Benitez said. It is unbecoming in a man who has the whole of football at his feet..

Harry Kewell's agent made the admission yesterday that his client "has not done anything" for Liverpool for almost 18 months - but insisted that it is up to the Anfield club, and not up to the Australian international himself, to get him fit and back on form. Mourinho does not have such a memory, and that, deep down, may be the explanation for some of his more extreme behaviour. However, after Tuesday night, if this is the problem he would be wise to flush it away. Mourinho should be enough of his own man to shape a similar authority. He should be able to say, "that isn't Chelsea" - but first he must look in the mirror.Instead, he is beginning to ape the worst of Ferguson and Wenger, as though this was the basis of all their success.Mourinho now has the chance to break the cycle. He can offer his team as his supreme statement about who he is and what he does, as Rijkaard planned to do if he had prised victory from a magnificent match.If Mourinho is as smart as so much evidence suggests, he will take that as a gift from Rijkaard, a man whose greatest fulfilment will probably always be the time he played alongside Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten and Franco Baresi when Milan ruled Italy and Europe. He needs to acquire, along with his potential for charm and psychological intrigue, a touch of genuine style.At the height of his success at Manchester United, Sir Matt Busby once walked, beautifully suited, out to the old training pitch and watched one young player briefly get above himself.

Busby strode on the field, looked the boy in the eye, and said, "Never behave like that again... It isn't Manchester United."It was leadership from the top and it was unequivocal. See Cole finally getting hold of his ability and making some real progress.It is also true that Manchester United were not cobbled together in a pawn shop: Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Louis Saha and Alan Smith gave no change from £100m, and who could argue too strenuously with Mourinho when he asked, after Ars? Wenger had pleaded poverty, "was Jose Antonio Reyes a gift, did he find Thierry Henry on a Christmas tree?"With the Carling Cup gathered in, with the most talented team in Europe ejected from the Champions' League, with the Premiership all but his, Mourinho is in search of one last dimension. So much of Italian football, and for the last two years that of the galactico club itself, Real Madrid, have provided evidence that a huge wage bill is no guarantee of success.Are Damien Duff, John Terry, Frank Lampard and Joe Cole, Tuesday's revelation, any less affluent since the arrival of Mourinho? Of course not But see the difference in their play See the work-rate of Lampard and Duff See the sheer self-belief. It was his declaration of his football values and it was magnificently translated by his players.

That should have been enough for Mourinho, and later you did have a sense that he might just have understood this when he spoke generously of the quality of Barcelona's team. So why another burst of self-advertisement, why the latest immature playing to the gallery? It is a problem he needs to address at some speed if he doesn't want his extraordinary work, and that of his players, to be deflected and compromised.This was the night when true power in English football passed quite formally from Old Trafford and Highbury to Stamford Bridge. Now among other charges will be the one that Mourinho has simply inherited success, that Chelsea were an empire waiting to happen.It sounds easy when you say it like that But of course it isn't so. In much less than a year Mourinho has stamped himself indelibly on a place which was awash with wealth but desperately in need of direction. Rijkaard said that his pain was so acute because his team, given the chance to make a great "statement" at Stamford Bridge, had failed.That statement, one of thundering ambition, had come from Mourinho. It should have been enough simply to savour the degree of his achievement, and if there was any doubt about that it was confirmed by his beaten rival Frank Rijkaard, who had to be hustled down the tunnel, so outraged was he by the provocation directed at his bench. He returned to Porto, coached the Under-19s and was spotted by Mourinho.Frank Lampard said that the accusations from Barcelona after the first leg that Chelsea were a dull, defensive side was a key part of the inspiration that his team drew upon to win the match."A lot was said from the Spanish side before this game but I think we showed a lot of people in Europe that we have the character and ability," he said.