Mourinho warns Mata he must change his game to get back in the team

"I want Oscar as my No.10, I want the other players to adapt to that reality and learn do things they weren't ready to do before"
Juan Mata has been brought face to face with his Chelsea future - and ­discovered it will not be bright.

Blues fans have been calling for the Spaniard - voted the Londoners' Player of the Year for the past two seasons - to have more game-time after watching him last less than an hour of the only two games he's started under Jose Mourinho.

But, in a stark and explicit statement of intent, Mourinho made it clear Mata has lost the status he previously enjoyed and will have to find a new role if he is to get into his starting XI.

The Special One said: “First of all, there are things that I cannot speak of with you but I can with the players - deeply, deeply, the way I’m reading the situation and the reasons why, in this moment, he’s not playing so much, are things I can speak about with him but not you.

“But he played against Everton from the start and you can analyse his performance.

“And he played against Basel, not like Ba or Mikel coming in to rescue the game, but he came on when the team was winning 1-0 and had specific tasks to do.

“It is part of a process with him, too.

“One thing is to play with Ramires and Oscar in the side, them closing each flank, and Mata as a No10 behind a striker - clever assists and clever passes, fantastic actions because he has great talent.

“But it is another thing to adapt to the way we want to play.

“In this moment, Oscar is my No10 and, if somebody tells me that Oscar is not Chelsea’s best player since the beginning of the season, I’d have to disagree.”

It means Mata, whose World Cup place for Spain will be under severe threat if he does not play regular football, being back on the bench against Fulham in Saturday's tea-time game.

Mourinho added: “It is up to him to dislodge Oscar, just as I have to prove to the fans that I am good.

“They can play together, yes, but when Mata adapts to it.

“But I’m not ready to play Oscar, making him follow full-backs, because he plays in that role for the country with more talented players than anyone else in the world in that position.

“So I want to build with Oscar as my No 10. I want the other two players, from the side, to adapt to that reality and learn how to do things they were not ready to do before.”

Adapted from Daily Mirror