Jose Mourinho wants “King Didier” to return to Stamford Bridge in the last 16 of the Champions League.

Chelsea secured their progression into the knockout stages as Group E winners with an uninspiring victory against Steaua Bucharest, courtesy of a Demba Ba goal.

The nature of the win summed up Chelsea’s Champions League campaign so far. Having lost home and away against Basle, Mourinho’s men produced the bare minimum to top a group that should really have been far more comfortable.

Their position at the top of the group means they can now be drawn against Didier Drogba’s Galatasaray, AC Milan, Olympiakos, Zenit St Petersburg or Bayer Leverkusen in the last-16 draw on Monday.

Mourinho would be forgiven for simply wanting the most comfortable draw, but instead he wants Drogba to be given a Chelsea return. Drogba’s last act for Chelsea was converting the penalty in the shoot-out which won the Champions League in May last year, before bringing his eight years with the club to an end.

“We have difficult teams,” Mourinho said. “You have the Russian champions, the Greek champions. A German team, Leverkusen, is always very difficult. The Turkish champions with ‘King Didier’ and Milan.

“I think Didier deserves to come here. I think he deserves a reception here even better than mine, when I returned as manager, because he deserves much more than me. He deserves to come here and get the reception I got against Hull City, but for Didier it should be double or three times better and bigger than I had. I know what I felt. I think he deserves that. So, yes, Galatasaray is difficult. Very difficult. But I’d like Didier to be back here and feel what I felt.”

Mourinho does not rate Chelsea among the favourites to win the Champions League and admits that his team must grow up between now and the knockout stage. “We have to grow up, step by step,” Mourinho said. “We go into new matches now for some of my players. Some of my players didn’t play any games in the knockout stage of the Champions League, they played in the group and the Europa League, so it will be a different scenario for some of them.

“Let’s go for the last 16. If we win, we go into the quarter-final and, with only eight teams, we can think a different way. We had one target, which was not to win the Europa League again, and that target is done. Now we have to do the best we can in the Champions League. But now we must forget the Champions League until February, March 2014, and let’s work to improve the team and get results in the English competitions. When we get those results, we’ll be preparing ourselves for the next stage of the Champions League.”

At least a striker was on the scoresheet for Mourinho last night, as Ba scored Chelsea’s winning goal.

Ba also amused Mourinho and most of the Stamford Bridge crowd by missing the easiest of chances. But the Portuguese was not so amused at having a laser aimed at him and his players.

There was even confusion over whether or not Ba had scored. First Ba, then Daniel Georgievski and finally Ba again were credited with the 10th-minute goal.

A Willian corner was headed on by Oscar and the ball looked to have been bundled into the net by Ba, who was named as the goalscorer by the Stamford Bridge stadium announcer.

But the scoreboard showed Georgievski as netting an own goal, with Ba celebrating nonetheless – perhaps hoping Mourinho would be convinced that one of his forwards had actually scored.

Uefa was convinced, as the name of the opening goalscorer changed to Ba shortly before half-time.

Ba must have thought he would double his and Chelsea’s tally after the break, but blazed over from six yards. Mourinho smiled at that squandered chance, but looked on stony-faced when the Senegal international side-footed wide late on.

“It wasn’t a fantastic performance, it was a comfortable performance,” Mourinho said. “It’s enough. We did enough to win, enough to win without a kind of difficult moment. I think if we’d scored the second goal we’d jump to another performance.

“We didn’t have to risk or do silly things, just control the game. This is a competition too important in terms of prestige and financial situation that you cannot do silly things. You have to play safe. So it was not a fantastic performance, but it was also comfortable.

“I was aware of the laser. I don’t know if it creates any kind of problem. I don’t know. During the game I felt it a couple of times, but not big. In the game I cannot be worried with that. I felt the green. I felt no pain. So I kept going.”