Paul Parker: Chelsea players have lost belief in Jose Mourinho, like United squad did with Moyes

Jose Mourinho has lost it.

Chelsea have lost their inner strength, their belief that they can win any match even when they fall behind.

They used to think it would always happen just because he was there, he was his figurehead.

Not any more.

And you have to say that he's lost a lot of his aura because he's lost the players, or at least a good percentage of them.

I don't think a lot of them believe in him any more - and that's something that comes from him, the strength you feel from looking over at the man on the touchline.

That's exactly what made Manchester United so great for so many years - and it's exactly what United lost when Sir Alex retired. Those same players had just won Alex Ferguson a Premier League, yet those same players couldn't do it under David Moyes.

Sometimes, it really is all about the person in charge - and that's what Chelsea have lost. They don't believe in Mourinho.

Maybe it's because of the way he's conducting himself, maybe it's because he's publicly talked down and publicly shamed some of them instead of looking at himself.

And so they've put down their swords. They're not fighting for him any more.

It's his main players from last season who are the ones who aren't contributing. They haven't suddenly become bad players. People are saying "oh, their confidence has gone", but low confidence doesn't suddenly turn Nemanja Matic bad overnight, or stop Eden Hazard dribbling past people. It looks like they can't get themselves going, as if they've not been allowed to do what they've done before.

Hazard has taken a long time to find any sort of form this season, but Matic's decline is the key to why they've been letting in more goals. With him not there to protect the back four, John Terry has been exposed like never before - to the extent that maybe, when it comes to one-on-one defending, we'll have to admit that Terry isn't as good as everyone has thought. When people were calling for him to be back in the England side last season I was saying that a lot of his success was about the players in front of him. This season, with those players in front of him being upset by Mourinho or not playing regularly, it's all going Pete Tong.

Is there any way back? Not this season, from the looks of things. Looking at the stats for the season so far you'd have to conclude that Chelsea already can't win the league - I don't think it's ever been done from the position they're in, in terms of points - and they probably can't even qualify for the Champions League either. Given how bad things are they might even have to stick with him and say, look, we might be lucky and get the Europa League.

But the way Chelsea are, you have to ask if they are going to be able to get what they want in the future, with players not wanting to play for Mourinho, and not willing to miss out on Champions League football.

It's going to be a tough decision, but it's one that someone at Stamford Bridge is going to have to make because Mourinho himself has made it quite clear that he will not go unless he's pushed out. Someone's going to have to force his hand.

With all this stuff he's been saying about not wanting assurances from the club, he's actually daring them to fire him: telling the world that he doesn't want a vote of confidence from Roman Abramovich is actually a way of pushing everyone away, antagonising people to force the issue.

Everyone said that Mourinho wouldn't get his three-year itch this time round. But guess what? It has happened, and it's worse than it ever was at Inter Milan or Real Madrid. It's something we've never witnessed before in English football - and this kind of horseplay certainly wouldn't have happened with a British manager.

So should Chelsea fire him? A lot of people are now saying that to do so would be crazy, because he's still got all his positive attributes.

But that argument misses one key issue: he's never been in this situation before. What Chelsea need right now is a manager with experience of turning things round, someone who's smelt some relegation problems but come through the bad times.

He's never had that - he's always had it easy - and he's struggling to deal with it. His ego is killing him, with the fact that he's not up there, not sitting pretty at the top able to start talking down at people, throwing out his so-called 'opinions' on why he's better than everyone else.

At the moment he's the one that's down there - and no-one's throwing anything at him, because everyone knows that at the end of the day what goes around comes around. He's getting back all the crap he's thrown at everybody for years. Arsene Wenger I imagine would love to laugh out loud, but he'll just sit back quietly and not say anything. Like the say, sometimes, silence is golden.

If they did pull the trigger? They might as well sit back and let the players run it, because they're the ones who've got the last few managers sacked, and who pushed for Mourinho to come back in the first place.

There's been a lot of talk about Carlo Ancelotti returning, but would he really come back after the disgraceful way they fired him last time? I don't think so. And anyway, I'd rather Carlo waited and became manager of Manchester United at the end of next season!