Jose
Mourinho has been accused of putting results before the welfare of his
Chelsea players by the Premier League Doctors' Group.
The Group have condemned Mourinho's treatment of his medical staff as
"unjust in the extreme" after he publicly criticised club doctor Eva
Carneiro and head physio John Fearn for running on to the pitch to treat
Eden Hazard.
Mourinho called Carneiro and Fearn "naive" for attending to Hazard for an
injury towards the end of Saturday's 2-2 Premier League draw with Swansea,
because Chelsea had already had Thibaut Courtois sent off.
Carneiro - who is the highest-profile female doctor in the league - has now
been told she will no longer be on duty for Chelsea first-team matches,
although she will continue to work at the training ground. Fearn will also
be missing from the bench for Sunday's game at Manchester City
The 20-strong Doctors' Group criticised Mourinho for putting results ahead
of player safety, saying: "The Premier League Doctors' Group considers that
removing Dr Eva Carneiro from the Chelsea team bench for their next match is
unjust in the extreme.
"The Chelsea medical staff were clearly summoned on to the field of play by
the match referee to attend to a player.
"A refusal to run onto the pitch would have breached the duty of care
required of the medical team to their patient.
"It is a huge concern that Dr Carneiro has been subjected to unprecedented
media scrutiny and a change in her professional role, merely because she
adhered to her code of professional conduct and did her job properly."
Former head of sports medicine and sports science at Liverpool, Peter
Brukner, also criticised Mourinho.
"I thought it was appalling behaviour by the manager," he said.
"The medical staff deserve a public apology and I'm very disappointed the
club hasn't come out and done something to support them - they were just
doing their job.
"Our first priority as doctors and physios is the health and safety of the
individual player, and that's what they were attending to. They were doing
their job and they've been criticised very publicly.
"He (Mourinho) has a player who has gone down, has remained down and the
referee considered it serious enough to summon the doctor and physio. They
went on as they must do, and as a result the player had to come off the
field.
"What do you expect the doctor to do, just ignore the referee beckoning them
on?
"They were only responding to the referee's instruction to come and treat
the player, so to criticise the medical staff publicly in the way that he
did was absolutely appalling behaviour.
"Maybe he should be criticising his player for staying down, and not his
medical staff for treating him."
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