TheCable

Former Chelsea striker Demba Ba has accused Jose Mourinho of favouritism during his time at Stamford Bridge.

Ba feels he was not given time to prove his worth in the first team.

The former Blues forward, who was offloaded to Besiktas in the summer, struggled to get regular playing time with the West London side and has now hit out at Mourinho, claiming that the Chelsea boss was more concerned with reputation than statistics.

“Sometimes, when you are at a club with a lot of big stars, the name counts for more than the statistics. Unfortunately, it was like that in my case,” he told the Daily Mail.

“But I am happy I moved from Newcastle to Chelsea and achieved what I did. I have lots of friends there.

“Eden Hazard is one of my best friends; I am close to Branislav Ivanovic, too. All my wishes are for them to win the league.”

Despite this, the 29-year-old Senegal striker hit 14 goals in 29 starts for the Blues, proving his ability in the Premier League.

Ba is preparing to face Arsenal in Tuesday’s Champions League play-off first leg and the former Newcastle man, who came close to joining the Gunners before Mourinho called off the deal, can understand why his move to Arsene Wenger’s team did not happen.

“I always said the move to Arsenal was close. I thought the deal was done and I would just go and do the medical but it went another way. Jose has said why it didn’t happen. He was honest; he just didn’t want to give them a striker who could score goals, especially with the arrival of [Mesut] Ozil, he said.

“Now I am playing Arsenal in such a big match. It’s crazy but I’ve no regrets about everything that happened. Our team are very young and still learning. We will have a very tough game against Arsenal but we want to go through to the Champions League spot and get the six matches in the group stages.

“The calibre of Chelsea’s forward players is a little different but we have a lot of young players who are very quick and very comfortable with the ball. Maybe we can learn from the Arsenal game at Chelsea and cause damage in the same way.”