After his team’s 3-1 victory against Manchester United on Sunday, Chelsea’s manager, Jose Mourinho, in a press conference, all but ruled out Manchester United’s chances of successfully defending the Premier League title they won last year just before Sir Alex Ferguson announced his retirement.
According to ‘the special one’ Manchester United would have to overcome a 12, 13 and 14 points difference against Chelsea, Man. City and Arsenal respectively.
“It’s a 14-point difference. And 13. And 12. Can they recover to one of these teams? They can”. Mourinho remarked.
“But to recover to three of them, it needs three teams to have almost a collapse.
“For the title it will be difficult for them. What I hope to do is they beat all of them (Chelsea’s rivals) to finish top four and they beat all of them.”
Mourinho, however, hasn’t written off the remaining 17 teams in the Premier league. At least not Liverpool, Tottenham or Everton.
“It’s not just three,” Mourinho said. “The distance is short. Six points from us to Liverpool. Six points to Tottenham.
“Tottenham are winning lots of matches, Liverpool too, and scoring goals. Everton, if they win tomorrow (at West Brom), they jump into that.”
When questioned about the record he has set by having his 100th unbeaten Premier league game at Stamford Bridge, Mourinho said: “I don’t care about records,”
“I want to win the next match. This was the last match, but it’s quite a coincidence: the first (Premier League win) was against Man United, the 100th was against Man United.
“The previous owner of the record was Man United manager (Ferguson), so quite a coincidence.
“The important thing for me is that these 100 matches, they gave 300 points to Chelsea and especially today these three points are very important for us.”
As usual, Mourinho wasn’t completely satisfied with his team’s performance.
“We have to improve,” Mourinho said. “I want better. The first 20 minutes were not good.
“I want the game to be in our control since the beginning and it was not.”
