Jose Mourinho has confirmed he will not be appealing his one-match stadium ban and £40,000 fine as Chelsea prepare to do battle at Stoke without their manager.
The under-fire Blues manager had until 12noon today to appeal the punishment and push the sanction back to a later date.
Mourinho was slapped with the ban after comments he made to referee Jon Moss during the half-time interval of Chelsea's recent defeat at West Ham.
He will travel with the team to Stoke for the game on Saturday evening but will stay behind at the Blues’ hotel while the rest of the squad make their way to the Britannia Stadium.
Mourinho said at his Friday press briefing : "The match is tomorrow, I know the result of the appeal already, so I decide to give up.
"I think it's stupid to fight a fight you know you already lose. I will travel with the team, until the moment somebody stops me, which I think is the stadium compound.
Chelsea's defeat to West Ham in pictures:
“It is not easy and you can imagine how I feel. I don’t want to speak about it because I would have to go deeper and into a dimension of the situation.
“One thing is to not be on the bench because the referee told me not to be there against West Ham.
“Nobody told me to leave the stadium. At this moment, I am stopped to not just do my work but stopped to be in a football stadium and do something I love.
“In the future, I think we will have lots of managers with stadium bans. I think it should be related to something very serious. This stadium ban is connected to words, complaints.
Mourinho explained to reporters that he would be in charge of all substitutions despite being banned from making contact with his staff during the Premier League fixture.
Chelsea have been working on various scenarios and passages of play to prepare the rest of the coaching team for almost every possibility the game might throw up.
